GARDENING: TAKING THE PHYSICAL INTO THE VIRTUAL
Written by Amy Stout
By now, you may have gathered that Loam is a game about gardening. It is one of my favorite activities to do because it a stress reliever and combines creativity with strategy and planning. Nature is incredible because it will just do its thing, and it will react to the different things you throw its way, be it good or bad! One of my favorite past times related to gardening is to look at flowers, read books about sustainable gardening, and watch shows about ordinary people transforming their yards into a lush oasis. That is why I clung to the idea of gardening as the theme of our game.
People garden for many reasons. Some for food and harvest, some to revel in the beauty, and some for the challenge and attracting wildlife.
My interests primarily reside in the beauty that comes from tending a garden.
My interests primarily reside in the beauty that comes from tending a garden. I would love for my flowers to bloom every season; I am not always so lucky. At first glance, gardening appears to be a hobby that you have during the summer months. That is not true. There are periods of planning, planting, decorating, nurturing, and enjoying. These can overlap each other, but there is always something to do. Right now, in the dead of winter, I am planning for the year ahead. I look at what didn’t survive last year – be it because it didn’t receive enough sunlight, or maybe it got dug up and carried away by chipmunks. Critters in your yard are cute, but if you garden as a hobby or farm for a living, you will understand why so many of your favorite cartoon animals are cast as villains.
The purple flower balloon plant (in the picture above) got dug up and carried away by chipmunks the day after they were planted. Luckily the chipmunks in our game don’t steal your plants!
What I love about working on a gardening game is I can advise our team on what is enjoyable in the physical world and what can be left out or made more playable. A question I find myself asking is what do I enjoy doing in the physical world, and what parts do I dislike the most? How can we make those tasks that most people don’t look forward to pleasant? For instance, weeding may not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but in a virtual world, we can make it fun by adding a visual or audio effect and giving you a reward – aside from just a weed-free yard!
A part of tending the garden that I find particularly satisfying is walking around to see the growth state of each of my plants. We are including varying levels of growth in the game, including budding and blooming, but we bend reality a bit by speeding up the process so that there is less of a waiting period and you can see the fruits of your labor in less time.
What makes virtual reality the perfect platform for a game like Loam is that you can walk around your garden and see your creation from the first-person point of view. Everything in the game is to scale, and we have an assortment of plants and décor that range in size. When I playtest the game, I like to create interest by planting sunflowers behind lilies around a birdbath, so there is always something within eyesight when you’re looking up and down.
The fellow garden hobbyists on our team and I work together and pull knowledge to get it right for the game. Many of the more technical aspects of gardening are simplified to make it achievable for novice gardeners. But we are still aiming to make it challenging enough for those people who garden in the physical world to appreciate the beauty and wonder that comes from creating your own piece of paradise in virtual reality. The best part is there’s no heavy lifting required.
I want to know what you think. What are your favorite parts of gardening? What do you wish you could skip? Tell us @LoamGame on Instagram and Twitter.
