As part of the Fluffy Dog Studio team, I helped organize and participated in an internal 2-day game jam with the team. The studio was broken up into 5 person teams and was given the initiative of creating a game for the following theme: "Simple and Oddly Satisfying."
For the project, I worked on the game and UX design, along with mentoring team members on level design and world-building.
The game is available to play on itch io.
First Day
Brainstorming
One of the first things we did on the first day was to brainstorm a game idea and production plan. The team came together and pitched various ideas. I pitched the idea of a 'relaxing mowing game.' The game idea was inspired by viral tik tok videos of people mowing random stranger lawns for free.
It was oddly satisfying seeing people mow the lawns and thought it would be a great fit for the theme! The team liked the idea and we moved forward with it, coming up with additional ideas for the game. Below is some brainstorming notes the team put together during a brainstorming session.
We brainstormed game mechanics, UI/UX, art style, and worldbuilding along with assets we could utilize from the Unity Asset Store. We also brainstormed ideas for the future if we decided to move forward with the game after the game jam.
Design and Implementation
After brainstorming, we worked on ironing the UI/UX design, game mechanics, and level design. The team also worked on getting core functionality and features built for the game in the Unity game engine.
Since this was a 2-day game jam, our goal was to design and implement the core features for the game on the first day which was:
Mowing the grass
Counter for mowing area
Creating 3D Art for Lawn Mower
Gathering assets for modeling, and music
Worldbuilding Level 1
Second Day
Polish
With the core features done on the first day, we used the second day to add polish and prep for presenting the game to the team. We worked on the:
Main menu
Level Switching and adding more levels
Lawn Mower Animations and VFX
Implementing music
Final Game
Below is a gameplay video of how the game turned out!
Hope you enjoyed this article, thanks for reading it!