Plant Panic
A frantic first-person plant-em-up where you must sell plants to pay your rent and survive. Equipped with just a simple watering can, a single plant holder and a tiny window, players scramble to keep their seedlings alive and the landlord away.
ROLE
Game designer
TEAM
Team of 3: a designer, a programmer and an artist
ENGINE
Unity
PROJECT
University mini-game built around a jam word, 2023
Core Loop: Risk vs Reward
• Take an order, grow the plant, sell it, repeat before rent is due
• Choose how many plants to juggle, and pay for every one that dies
• Cactus and Lily have opposing needs, so mixing avoids bottlenecks
• Buy an upgrade each level, or keep the cash as a challenge
Sweet Spots and the Plant Book
• Plants grow faster inside a water and sunlight sweet spot
• Designed and built the sweet spot UI and level messages
• The Plant Book explains each plant without pausing the timer
• Fertiliser raises sweet spots: faster growth, harder to manage
Level Layout and Iteration
• Vital objects sit apart to keep players moving and scanning
• Fixed plant spots stayed: three plants was already frantic
• The dash upgrade, from our buddy team, makes a large room a reward
• Balancing and tutorial passes after unguided playtests
What I Took From It
• My impact: as the team's designer I owned the gameplay design, from objectives and plant behaviours to level layout and balancing
• Game jam word: Growth, taken literally. The story was inspired by the rental crisis
• In hindsight a looser reading of the jam word may have pushed us further: constraint breeds innovation
• When an observer needed a UI element explained, that was the cue it needed another pass
Credits
Team of 3
Lachlan Taylor: Game Designer
Joel Braund: Programmer
Noah Leitch: Art and Modelling
