Space to Grow
Game Info:
- Release Type: Commercial (?), Open Source
- Projected Release Date: Early 2020
- Genre: Sci-fi Farming and Raising Sim Visual Novel
Jack and Kelly struggled through their first two years of marriage in the first game, Our Personal Space, and are now embarking on a new adventure - parenting. Be an authoritarian tiger dad, or a laid-back buddy dad, or anything inbetween while at the same time planning your farm to carefully meet your family's and community's needs. Lead your community as you navigate between several factions: the rich megacorp R.E.T. from Earth and its miners, your fellow colonists, and a group of maverick farmers who split off and form their own settlement.
Progress:
- TEXT: 100%, 150,000 words! We have events where you have to decide how to deal with new miners that arrive as well as family events where you choose your approach to potty-training, sibling rivalry, chores, allowances, and more!
- GRAPHICS: 60% All the main characters are done! Just side characters left (but there's a lot of them...), as well as CGs (we need at least 8; one per ending). Still working on blocking as well.
- GUI: 90% The farming screen needs a few tweaks, and we need to some changes for phones, but otherwise the interface is done.
- CODE: 100% Farming and child/parenting variables all work!
- MUSIC: 75% We have songs picked out for most events. One artist we're looking at is Jeff Wahl.
- Influence your child's development from baby to young adult through parenting decisions
- Experiment with a variety of crops to feed and satistfy your community.
- Take charge of a community with several factions, each vying for the resources of Talaam.
- Science fiction setting that blends modern technology and old-fashioned frontier improvisation
- Open source code licensed under the GPLv3 and other licenses.
TBD
Our Team
- Andrea Landaker: Lead Designer, Programmer, Writer
- Rachel Helps: Designer, Writer, Programmer
- Clarissa Helps: Character Artist
Each year, the player uses a grid diagram to plan what crops to plant where. The user will have to get a minimum number of calories and nutrition, and from there can try to maximize fun and minimize work. Older kids can be conscripted to help on the farm to increase the amount of work you can do. Different kinds of crops have the following variables:
- Calories - how much raw energy they provide
- Nutrition - how much nutrition (vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc) they provide
- Credits - versatile, unusual, and well-liked crops earn more money.
- Work Required - how much work is required for one square compared to other crops
Parenting Gameplay
Parenting choices are heavily influenced by Baumrind's research into parenting styles. Parenting decisions will affect the daughter's development of three main traits: Attachment, Competence, and Independence. Different combinations of these at the end of the game will lead to different endings (sort of like Princess Maker). In addition, these decisions will affect later parts of the story.
Community Development
There will also be opportunities to influence the direction of the community's decisions and interaction with the R.E.T. corporation and its miners who've arrived to bring natural resources back to Earth.
Questions for YOU
- Did you play the first game? If so, would you be sad if some of your decisions did not carry over (Kelly's profession, hobbies, decision to have kids or not?)?
- Does this sound fun/interesting?
- The first game had a female protag, and this game has a male protag. Does that bother you or make you less likely to play?
- I want there to be some interaction between farming decisions and parenting decisions; any ideas about that?
- What kinds of parenting issues/dilemmas would you like to see in this kind of game?
- What kind of tropes/ideas have been done to death and you hope not to see in a farming/parenting game?