Sunflower - Atlanta GameDev's Game Jam

I have taken an interest in game development recently and this local game jam popped up on my timeline after I joined the Atlanta GameDevs community, detailed below is the exact document I wrote during the game jam, with some modifications after it was all done. This specific game jam was pretty tight as it only lasted for three days. But I was able to finish my game (with some scope downsizing after I realized my ideas were a bit amibitious). I had an amazing time and I’m definitely going to make more games and join more jams in the future.

Theme

Initial Thoughts

Phi - Golden ratio, sunflower Mundane - Farming, relaxing, collecting Functional - The host clarified that this meant functional programming. I couldn’t think of a way to use that as a theme, but I did write the game in a functional way. Extra curry (😏IYKYK)

What is Sunflower

An idle game about growing a sunflower, sunflowers grow their seeds in the golden ratio which is very aesthetically pleasing to my eyes. The game will have a huge sunflower in the background with no seeds and the player’s job is to maximize seeds production until the sunflower is completely full. The game will start off pretty slow, manual, mundane, and as the player progresses they will be able to make seeds faster. Ideally the maximum number of seeds for the player to win the game should have a golden ratio association to it.

Think Plants vs. Zombies X cookie clicker

Mechanics

Main Goal: The player’s main goal is to fill the sunflower with as many seeds as possible (golden ratio). They accomplish this by collecting the main currency of the game, sunshine, the more sunshine they collect the faster they can grow seeds because they can get upgrades that speed it up.

Day / Night cycle: The player will be able to collect sunshine during the day and access the shop at night.

Shop / Tech Tree: The shop will contain upgrades that will allow the player to collect more sunshine.

See Night Cycle section.

Aesthetics / Art

Day Cycle (Active Gameplay) Night Cycle (Upgrades)

Upgrades

prestige: lose all upgrades but gain permanent boost Fertilizer: +1 seed per second Heavy Seeds: +1 seed per pod (seed per second from fertilizer * X) Production bonus: 0% - 1000%

Conclusion

I did not have much time to update this document during the game jam (It was from 6pm Friday to 6pm Sunday and I didn’t start till Saturday 😂) but I worked hard on the game and managed to finish it with some alterations to my initial game plan.

What changed?

Day / Night Cycle -> Upgrade Menu

The day and night cycle was switched out for an upgrade menu. After looking at how much time I had to make this game, an upgrade menu felt more appropriate. It also felt better for an incremental because of the instant feedback and not having to wait for a whole cycle before buying upgrades.

Tech Tree

Initially I wanted to implement a tech tree with many upgrades but I had to scope it down to 3 upgrades (seed generators) and 1 prestige mechanic. I definitely want to explore a tech tree mechanic in the future just to learn how to implement something like that. Would I structure it as an actual tree in code? Or just a mega struct with flags?

Main game mechanics

Initially I thought about filling the sunflower once, and that would be the end of the game. After implementing that, it felt way too slow and not as rewarding visually. So I implemented a bonus mechanic for each filled sunflower the player got that increased linearly with completions. To make the completions feel better, I implemented a motivational message every time the flower resets.

Also added particle effects to improve the game feel. Very happy with how those look especially when the player has a lot of upgrades and the flower starts filling up and exploding very quickly.

Story

I did not think of the story until about 4 hours before the jam was over so a lot of that was improvised at the last minute. I had a lot of fun drawing Farmer John and thinking of a plot twist because my girlfriend said that he was terrifying in the game intro.

What’s so terrifying about this lil dude? What’s he hiding under that hat 🤔?