Artist's Statement

For my critical city building project, I focused on the theme of both environmentalism and self improvement. My game is titled “Garden Grower”, and the goal of the game is to freely build your own garden, spending rain drops in exchange for decorations and bonuses. I came up with this idea with the theme of “critique” in mind. Many of the games we have observed in regards to city building tend to subtly criticize problems such as climate change, politics, etc. For example, having to manage your city’s pollution in SimCity is a subtle message that environmentalism matters. For my game, the only resources available are naturally spawning, randomly generated raindrops. The only benefit tier 1 buildings can offer are more rain drops.

 I wanted to encourage the player to focus on the visual aspect of the game, and improving their own personal garden. All pieces are able to be freely moved and organized-- this allows the player to arrange their garden and improve it as they please. This ties into the personal aspect of the game-- over quarantine many people invested their time in new hobbies. I, personally, have always wanted to have my own garden-- which is pretty high hopes for NYC. In this game I wanted to simulate city building, with improving a garden that is self-motivated by the player. My goal is to have the player desire to improve their garden by their own will and desire. 

Overall making this game was a pretty therapeutic experience, and allowed me to further develop my skills in incremental coding and level design.