INTRODUCTION
Made for REGENERATE Jam – 48 hours of reimagining farming in games to focus on regenerative and sustainable practices.
#1 for 'Most Likely to Make an Impact'
#2 Overall Rank
Role: Solo Developer
Skills: Programming, Narrative Design, Game Design
Tools: Unity, Yarn Spinner
Concept
I chose to focus on teaching the player about companion planting – the practice of planting mutually beneficial crops together – through a simple puzzle game. The player enters a dream, interacts with trees to learn about companion planting, then solves a puzzle using what they’ve learnt.
Yarn Spinner
I used Yarn Spinner to manage all the text in the game and customised the appearance of the dialogue runner to match the pixel art assets. I made use of Yarn commands to change scenes and start dialogue nodes as needed.
Click and Drag Puzzle
I created a simple click-and-drag based puzzles where players would drag vegetables into different slots on a plan, with the slots turning green if they held the correct item.
For a more challenging version of this, I’d add a mechanic for players to ‘check’ their answers rather than having the slots turns green immediately – and give a limited number of guesses.
Win Conditions
I used colliders to check that vegetables were placed in the correct slots and change the colour of the slot to indicate correct placement. Once all vegetablePlaced bools were true, I automatically triggered a change to the next scene.
Buttons
Ahead of the main puzzle, I created this stargazing scene with optional clickable images that triggered text exploring self-doubt. I thought this was an effective way to make the narrative more engaging, while still giving the option for players who were more interested in the gameplay to skip past it.
Post Processing
I used URP post-processing effects to create the dreamlike effect of the dream garden. I chose to use Vignette and Color Adjustment which I think was effective without being overcomplicated. I also added an image of a pixel sky to the UI canvas and made it semi-transparent to add the starry effect.
