Project Overview
This game was the result of a rejected idea for Ludum Dare 52. Based off the theme "Harvest", Misfit Garden is a logic puzzle game where you must fit plants into a garden while accommodating for each plant's needs.
Misfit Garden is a mobile game that was released on the Google Play Store. There is also a build for windows here on itch.io.
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The game was made with a small team of 5.
Bryan Huke: Game Developer, Game Designer, Project Lead
Anjali Nijjar : 2D Artist and Animator
Angel Lee: 2D Artist and Animator
Daniel: Music Composer
Brett Estess: SFX Artist
Puzzle Generation
Generating puzzles was the system I was fearing the most going into this project; however, with lots of planning and thinking ahead, I managed to build a decent puzzle generator first try.
The generation works by first placing the sprinklers randomly. The bigger the puzzle size, the more sprinklers are placed on average.
To help with the plants, I created a scriptable object to hold a set of seeds. These sets can be easily created and edited in the Unity editor. They are also divided into three sizes (large, medium, small). The size is determined not only by the amount of seeds, but also by how restrictive the seeds are in their requirements.
To select what seeds to add, it selects a set of seeds to add, and then places them on the TheoreticalGrid in such a way that their conditions are met. This process is repeated until new sets cannot be added. The system starts with the large sets, then moves onto the medium sets, and finally the smalls. This process not only ensures the puzzle can be solved, but also efficiently builds the puzzle by adding sets that decrease in size in order to optimize the algorithm.
What Went Wrong?
I made two main mistakes over the course of the project.
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The first is how stalled out the project got. First couple weeks went smoothly and efficiently getting the game prototypes and backend systems created. Unfortunately life got in the way and slowed down my progress for a couple weeks. The mistake was letting that interruption continue affecting the project even after things were back to normal. It was hard for me to hit my stride again even though the game was almost finished.
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The second mistake I made manifested when I was making the tutorial. This was one of the very last things I worked on for the game and I felt like I was putting a band-aid over the base game. While I don't think my implementation of the tutorial was bad, I do think I could've designed the core game to be more flexible in order to support future additions such as tutorials or extra game modes.
Both of these mistakes weren't major at all; however, this is not the first project I've run into them. The important part is that I am slowly getting better at avoiding these problems with each project I take on.
Making a Mobile Game
Misfit Garden is the first time I have worked on a mobile game/app outside of a classroom setting. While the majority of the development was fairly identical to my experience with all the PC games I've made, there was one main difference: the game design. Game design is one of the most fascinating parts of development for me simply because it is an entirely different challenge for each game you work on.
The main thing I wanted to accomplish with the game design was to make the game relaxing and very casual. I did not want to create gameplay that required the player's undivided attention. This shaped the game as a whole. Not only is there not time limit or pressure to solve a puzzle quickly, I also made sure that puzzles can be easy to re-digest in a scenario where the player puts their phone down for a few minutes before continuing.
Releasing on the Play Store
Excluding game jams, this is the first game I've fully published. This is also the first time I've published a game on a major platform (Google Play in this case). Simply going through the entire process was a great way to learn. Things like app signing, target api, release builds vs. development builds, and privacy policies were things I've never encountered in my previous projects. Luckily things went smoothly, and it's been surreal to something I've made on the Play Store!
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Additionally, the game released on itch.io alongside most of my other games. As mentioned previously, this was the first release that was more than a game jam. Since it felt more important, I made the store page reflect that!
I did recently take the game back down off of the play store simply due to the upkeep and moving onto new projects, but the game can still be downloaded for windows computers or android phones through itch.io!
