Mother Earth
About
Role: Designed and coded from scratch as a solo game.
Game Engine: Unity.
Mother Earth is a Firs Nation themed Farming Simulator, where the player takes the role of a farmer, who has the mission to help heal his tribe’s sacred tree. In order to do this, the player must engage in different activities primarily taking care of the land. Harvesting, Gathering, Crafting, Building, Raising Animals and even Developing Relationships with the rest of the tribe, are only a few things you will be able to do every day.
Challenges And Design Process
At the very begging of the design process, the concept for the game was completely different compared to what it ended up being. The early prototype was a more narrative-driven experience with RPG elements. This made the scope of the project easily get out of hand considering the time constraints. At that point, it was back to the drawing board. A new concept was developed that embraced a core game loop that was simpler and was based on player actions that were repeated over and over instead of a linear story-driven experience. Of course, a more subtle layer of progression and story was kept but certainly not as the main feature.
Using a modular approach when designing features and mechanics, this new game structure gave the chance to build a solid experience that could be played from start to finish adopting mostly the “Submission” aesthetic of gameplay, but that would leave the door open for further expanding the experience by adding more content within the already established “rules” of the game.
Game Features
Quests
The player is able to complete quests for NPCs located in the village. By completing these, players would get in exchange different types of rewards in form of Items or Access to new Upgrades. Completing Quests for a particular NPC would increase your relationship with them, which will condition the quality of the rewards.
energy
Most actions in the game, except for moving and interacting with NPCs, use Energy a vital resource that needs to be managed carefully to make every day the most efficient possible. Eating food Items would recover bits of energy and going to sleep until the next day would recover it fully.
Farming
Crops are a key element of gameplay. Players would be able to grow all kinds of crops and plants by planting, watering and later harvesting them to get Items that can be sold, used for crafting or just consumption for energy.
Crafting
The player has access to different crafting stations such as a Woodwork Station, Cooking Station and Tool’s Station. Using these, new Items can be crafted to be later sold or used again to craft improved and better Items.
Animals
The player would be able to raise different types of animals. By petting and feeding them every day, they would give resources in return. Cows would give milk, Chicken would give eggs, etc.
Items & Resources
Several Items are scattered throughout the world, which can be collected to later be used in recipes to craft new Items or be sold for Wampum (The Game’s Currency). Some of these Items can be eaten to recover energy.
Different types of Resources can be gathered using the appropriate tools, that can later be used for crafting or buy tools or farm upgrades.
Relationships
The player is able develop relationships with NPCs and Animals, the first would give better rewards after quests are completed for them, and the last would give better quality resources.
Buy & Sell
The Main focus of the game is to grow the farm so that the story progresses. The way to do this is to carefully manage the economy. Players would have the choice of gathering, collecting or crafting Items to be sold. Also several NPCs throughout the village would offer some Items for sale, so that the player gets a choice to pursue their production of resources in any way they want.
Upgrades
Farm upgrades can be perform by building new structures that would unlock features such as having Animals or being able to recover energy faster.
Tools can also be upgraded to optimize the resource gathering by making the process faster and getting more materials at once.