Overgrown

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Overgrown was my entry for the 42nd Ludum Dare game jam. Built around the theme of "running out of space".

My goal with this game was to explore more fast paced gameplay and push the limit on the amount of polish that I could deliver in a single weekend. To accomplish this, I decided early on that the loop must be as simple as possible.

I brainstormed several ideas, but the most promising was one that reflected some stress that had been dealing with a bit in the real world - weeding my garden. Not only would this give me a perfect setup to accomplish a simple game loop, but I could very easily explore frantic gameplay and even create a somewhat therapeutic experience to relieve some of my real world stress.

The game loop is simple: the player starts in a garden with weeds that are beginning to spread. They must use their machete to strategically chop the weeds to prevent them from destroying their flowers. The challenge is that every weed has the ability to spawn more weeds, so the player must carefully control the growth so that it doesn't overwhelm them.

To make the combat satisfying, I wanted to make the player feel very powerful despite the challenge ahead so that even when the weeds overtake them, they feel as if they are fully equipped to complete the task at hand. The struggle would entice them to keep trying to better understand how the weeds spread and have better control of their machete.

As a whole, the end product ended up being in a more complete and satisfying state than my previous Ludum Dare title. I'm quite happy with how it turned out and I learned a lot about efficiently organizing work and knowing when to cut features to make the deadline without much added stress.

View Game on Itch.io

Status:	Completed
Created:	August, 13th 2018
Role:	Design / Engineering
Tools:	Godot GDScript Aseprite