- Role: Solo Developer
- Team Size: 1
- Engine: Unity
- Platform: PC, Mobile
- Production Time: 4 Weeks
- Released on: Google Play Store, Itch.Io
Grass Watering Simulator 2018 is a 2D strategy game in which the player takes on the role of a homeowner during the California drought. The environmentally inconsiderate Homeowner’s Association wants all the lawns in perfect shape, even though the price of water is at an all time high. Because of this, the player must water their lawn as little as possible to save money, but just enough to keep the Homeowner’s Association from sending fees!
The main system of the game revolves around watering patches of grass. Each grass has 5 states, from Perfect to Dead. Watering a patch of grass costs $10 and it increases its state by two,
and all surrounding states by one. If the state of the grass surpasses Perfect, it becomes Dead. Dead grass can not be watered and must be replaced for $25. At the start of each new day, all grass states decrease by one. At the end of each week, you get paid and a Homeowner Representative grades your lawn and assigns fees based on the quality. Those are the basic rules, and I’ve included the Rules sheet below if you want to read more into it.
First, I started with my physical prototype. I’ve included images of it below.
Afterwards, I started work on my digital prototype. My first prototype looked like this:
I had a basic 5×5 grid of grass tiles which randomly populated based off of a 10-23-34 bell curve I made, with the highest probability of spawning going to the grass’s middle state. I also had art from my physical prototype for the grass tiles, and I quickly noted how horrible it looked and immediately vowed to make new grass sprites as soon as I had time. In this version I also had a complete money system and calendar system for the level length.
In the next iteration I added more art and refined the watering mechanic. I took a video of the game in action here:
After that, it was mostly adding content to the game. I added:
- 11 new levels
- A tutorial
- An editor tool that allowed me to remove tiles from a level, making the player work around gaps in their lawn
- Music and Sounds
- A save system that persisted over game iterations
- The ability to make any level endless
Below are pictures from the final build and my final Design Document.
Link to open document in another tab
Final Documentation