Designer Blog 1

Hello everyone!

My name is Kaeli Becvar and I am the lead designer for Gobby’s Farm. In Gobby’s Farm, you play as a goblin named Gobby, and realize that with the last winter month, you don’t have enough food to keep your family fed. Coming upon a well preserved garden in the middle of winter, Gobby takes the produce and praises the Goblin Gods for allowing him to feed his family. However, this garden belongs to a Wizard that isn't very happy about his produce missing each week, setting out to lay traps to capture whatever is rampaging through the gardens at night.

The development team is composed of nine members total and being led by our producer, Nolan Owens. If you’d like to read more information about our team and what they’re up to in the development of Gobby’s Farm, you can read Nolan’s producer blog! As lead designer, my role in this blog is to show the overall design of the game and the process of leading a talented team to create the stylized world that is Gobby’s Farm. Mainly being a modeler for my career choice, I was encouraged to pitch with my game by teachers and students alike. Being selected was thrilling while also being terrifying, knowing next to nothing for what needed to be done for game design. However, I spent an entire weekend dedicated to creating a detailed Game Design Document (GDD) to allow my team to read and to reference. You can view the document here: GOBBY’S FARM - G.D.D. From props, map layout ideas, systems and enemies, I’ve listed all information possible to make sure my vision is readable and understandable to my team.

I created this game loop example to visualize the flow I’d like the game to follow. Though most nights are repeats, new areas will open for players along with increased difficulty and dangers increasing as well. Though this could change and be added on to make the game more fun and engaging, this the base loop that the player will run through no matter what. 

The Core Idea of Gobby’s farm is gathering enough resources in a time limit. Each area is broken into 4 or 5 areas that will open after each night for the player to explore in. Every new area has new plants with more points to finish the players quota quicker or to use them to sabotage turrets and traps or to distract enemies. But if the player wants to save their points, they’re able to use the environment to their advantage to hide from enemies with crouching, jumping over traps, or even sprinting away from gun fire. 

In order for the areas to be unique and recognisable, I’ve set specific models to be made for each spot. With that, I tasked my level designers to add some flair to the area’s assigned to them to make it interactable and fun for the player to run through. With that, I tasked the programmers to get the base mechanics of the game to begin working and having a base goblin model to test player movements. 

The style for Gobby’s Farm is a cartoon style, fairytale, creating the essence of a story being told to someone’s grandchild. This creates a cutesy, fun style that will captivate a wide range of age groups. Having the style be a little too realistic would make it feel as though it’s meant to be a true horror game, which we want to stress players, but not scare them.

With all of this shown and discussed, the team started their work while being handled by my producer. Using that time, I began to flush out the general look I’d want for my UI/UX wireframe so when it came to drawing the assets I need and everything, we can make sure buttons work and how the game should generally look. Using the storybook elements I want incorporated for the style in general, I used the idea that Gobby tore the pages as his little guide for how he “farms.”

This also shows the general gameplay loop in clearer detail to how the player will play and what would happen if they keep a poison vegetable to the end of the night, if they don’t make the quota or if they die from enemies and traps. It also shows where all buttons will go depending on which scene they’re on.

As we’re working towards our first playable prototype, I plan on having one or two area’s open using the props that are completed and making sure everything is interactable and playable. Also will add in simple traps, poison vegetables, a summary of points when returning to the exit, and everything else to make the game loop happen. This will allow me to test that the game runs well, it’s fun to play, and that throwing to disarm traps or the gathering is all working as intended. We have created the vegetables needed and the art for Gobby and the Wizard ready to be worked upon, along with scripts being written for them as well!

So far, the development of Gobby’s Farm is off to a great start, though there is a lot of things that still need to be modeled and coded, it’s all doable and will be a successful little goblin game! For Gobby!