Flower Defense
Defend the tree from robot invaders by spreading its roots! Rotate the roots to attach them to already placed roots, gather nutrients from Mushrooms to grow the tree faster and place laser turrets to destroy the bugs. Yes, we know that last one is kind of out there :D
Flower Defense is my first game jam game ever. After many years of just creating games for fun myself and never actually getting around to publishing anything, I decided to look into participating in a Game Jam last November. With the coronavirus pandemic almost fully contained, I didn't want to participate in an online Game Jam, so I started looking for a game jam in my area. However, I realized that this would be harder than anticipated, since appareantly game jams are not that popular in Germany and definitely not around where I live. My best bet was going to be the Global Game Jam, which takes place around January and February every year. In 2022, around 35 locations in Germany decided to host a Global Game Jam, so I hoped that it would be the same for 2023. However, with February only two weeks away, I was horrified to find only six locations in Germany had signed up to host a Game Jam... and five of them were over four hours away by car. Luckily, Hannover was rather close with "only" a two hour drive, so I decided to sign up for the Hannover Game Jam. On the actual day of the game jam, I checked the site again and suddenly there was 33 registered locations in Germany, including one 25 minutes away... Turns out many locations always sign up last minute, but that's too short of a notice for me, so I went to Hannover anyways. Oh, and I should probably mention that my good friend Titus also wanted to participate in a game jam, so we went together! Can't hurt to have someone you already know, huh?
Idea
The topic for the 2023 Global Game Jam was "Roots". The topic was actually revealed a few days before the game jam, but Titus and I decided to only watch the announcement video on the actual day of the game jam to keep the surprise factor. On the drive to Hannover, we were talking about different ways you could spin this concept. The most obvious take would be plant roots, but maybe you could also do something with a dentist theme (you know, root canal something), a computer science theme (root directory, root user, etc.), or even square roots of numbers. At this point I went on a tangent about Virtue's Last Reward I think... (If you've played the game, you know what I'm talking about ;D) Once In Hannover, we decided to team up with Jonas, Stefan and Kai. Jonas is a rather talented musician, and it also was his first game jam! It was great to have him on the team, since this meant we could have some awesome music in our game. I think Stefan was a computer scientist with a focus on algorithms? He definitely did help us out with some of the more complex algorithmic calculations in our game, so I'm glad he was there. Kai was a game development veteran who actually quit his job to make his own game full-time! It was amazing to have him on board as he's been using the Unity Engine for years and knew many tricks and tips that we didn't know about (You can check out his game at https://pecker-game.com/).
Together we thought about the game idea for a while and ended up choosing the plant root theme.
The Game
The core gameplay consists of building a network of roots to defend the tree from robot bug invaders. There are four kinds of roots (well, five technically): X-shaped, I-shaped, T-shaped and L-shaped. You can only connect roots to open connections on other roots. The starting piece is always an X piece so you can build in all four directions. The robot bugs move around the map and eat the tree's root pieces. If a piece is eaten, it is removed from the tree. But if other pieces were connected to the tree only by that piece, they are also removed! This means that it's advisable to build a network that is interconnected so you don't run the risk of losing many roots at once. Of course, there is also the option of using a Turret X-piece to shoot the bugs. We thought that you'd need a more direct way of dealing with the bugs, so we added this feature. There is only a 10% chance of getting a turret piece, so it's kind of luck dependent. If you get multiple turret pieces, the game gets pretty easy :D If the bugs eat the root piece, you lose some of the tree's leaves. If you lose all leaves, it's game over! You slowly regenerate leaves over time, and the rate is increased if you have roots on mushroom pieces.
Have fun playing!