Feedback Wizard's garden - An unconventional RPG game

Wizard's Garden

Hey there! I've been working on a little RPG game for about 3 to 4 months now and wanted to showcase it. I'm hoping to get some feedback on my current progress.


The game

It's a role-playing game in a medieval fantasy setting. Very original, I know. Except instead of a knight, thief or mage you play as an enchanted flowerpot who fends of evil forest dwellers with the plants it grows in its pot.


The character

The character is a flowerpot that has come alive through a wizard's magic. The wizard has gone mad after losing his son some years ago, and is desperately trying to bring him back using magic. Any time one of his magic experiments fails, he throws it out the window in anger, littering the garden with arcane waste. One of these failed experiments, some kind of elixir, hit a flowerpot standing in the window frame, the glass broke and the flowerpot tumbled down into the garden. After he had come to a stop, the effects of the potion became apparent and the pot sprung up, looking around in wonder…



Mechanics

The main mechanic of the game revolves around plants. You collect seeds and use them to grow plants with different abilities. To make the growing of the plants look nice, I worked with some shaders to make it reveal gradually;


I also started working on the flower, this is done in Maya using blendshapes (WIP);


Of course I also had to animate the plant to match the walking animation;


Enemies

The first area is the ‘arcane waste', the area right outside the wizard's window. Here, mutated dung beetles dwell, collecting all the thrown out goods. I made some simple behaviour in Unity to expand on when I get to the enemies;




Narrative and level design

The old idea was to spawn the player in a secluded space where he or she can get used to the movement controls. Leaving that area, they then follow a pathway adorned by dandelions. These dandelions get hit by three wind blasts before turning into their white counterparts, with the seeds getting carried in the wind. One of the seeds will remain on the path, giving the player their first weapon. The next area will have a couple of passed out dung beetles so the player can play around with their new toy. Eventually the player will reach the nest of the beetles and descent into the first real area of the game.

The new idea involves a cinematic. The flowerpot falls from the window and lands in the dumping place outside. The pot gets found by two beetle scavengers and they roll it into their nest. On their way, they pass the dandelions, identical to the first idea. The dandelions are there to foreshadow how it works as a weapon.
The flowerpot falls down into the nest, landing in a pile of collected junk, stuck. In the light beam coming from outside we can see a dandelion seed gently falling down, into the pot. You get prompted to press a butten, which will make your plant grow. Then you get prompted with the attack button, which, when pressed will make the pot smash away the junk that its stuck in. Once free, you can embark further into the nest, and whatever awaits there...

I played around with shader vertex displacement to get a basic wind blast effect;


Here is a schematic of the first iteration of the beetle nest;



And a 2.5D sketch of how it will look;



And that's where I'm at right now! I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm having a lot of fun putting this game together.

I'd love to hear what you think!

 

So far so good......I really love the plant and in-progress enemy animations and cant wait to see how this turns out!!