In developing this game, we took inspiration from Stardew Valley and Pokemon to build a sort of conglomerate of the two. This was developed at the Gator Game Jam 2019 event, a 40-hour hackathon event focused exclusively on the development of videogames.
Agriscape is a 2D Farming RPG where the player is a farmer and grows various types of vegetables. However, the player soon realizes that this is no ordinary farming game: in Agriscape, the plants fight back! In a race against the clock as hunger and attacks from plants drain the player's life, the player must choose which plants to grow, sell, eat, and fight as certain plants offer a higher reward, but pose a more formidable risk. In later stages of the game, the player can buy "weapons" (various farming tools) to more easily defeat difficult opponents.
The game was exclusively developed in the Unity Engine, using 2D textures and sprites obtained by a combination of making them ourselves (using Photoshop and other photo-editing software), editing existing art for our use, and using art available for use from the Unity Asset Store and other online resources.
The main functionalities of the game are derived from Unity scripts that we wrote in C#.
Unity, as in previous experiences, is very finicky when used in conjunction with version-control software. Even when using the Unity Collaborate version-control system, there were instances where unforeseen merge conflicts erased hours of work. Another important lesson in version-control protocol.
For a game built within only 40 hours (with breaks for sleep and eating), the quality of the game's gameplay and visuals are surprising. While there are definitely areas of the game that are currently lacking, there is potential for this game to become a full-fledged project with a target audience of casual players seeking a shorter length arcade-style game.
This project has served as a great opportunity to experiment with the 2D game development capabilities of the Unity Engine and all of the artistic components associated with such a game.
As a standalone game, we feel that there is substantial potential for Agriscape in the form of an app and a desktop game. As such, the future may hold continued development of the game for these platforms and releasing them on the mobile app stores such as Google Play and on game distribution services such as Steam. Of course, polishes can be made in just about every aspect of the game to give a more complete feel to the player.