Glowing Garden is a casual mushroom growing game, where the player assumes the role of a young mushroom sprite - Mico.

Mico like any young mushroom finds their freedom underground in the earth where they can dig and collect various nutrients that can be used like seeds to plant their garden of bioluminescent mushrooms.

Exploring the underground, collecting nutrients & leaving a trail of mycelium.

More about Glowing Garden…

Glowing Garden is the culmination of a lot of ideas of my own stemming from a genuine interest for Mycology - the study of mushrooms. My desire when designing this game was to make the beauty of mushrooms more seen and accessible in games.

Glowing Garden was developed as my Capstone project for my Masters degree in Games & Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Working on a team of four students, published under the team name of *Active Duck Studio,* I contributed to this game as its Creative director and Co-producer meaning I oversaw the production of the game during it’s four month development cycle.

Such a small team meant I also contributed as one of the two programmers on the team, using the *Unity* game engine I was responsible for implementing the following features listed below:

I designed and implemented the games character controller.
Mico moves through two different environments - Overground and Underground. As well as having two distinct sets of steering, they also have to transition between them smoothly.
The method of steering in both environments is the same but the motion of the player changes drastically. On the oveground, Mico has access to jumping & walking. Underground Mico has the ability to dig and collect nutrients.
I was responsible for implementing the games systems as well. The game uses two resources to control the pace and loop of the game - Stamina and Mycos.
Stamina controls how long the player can stay underground. It drains as the player moves underground. Without stamina, Mico cannot collect the nutrients - also know as Mycos.

Mycos are the glowing nutrients scattered throughout the underground. In order for the player to grow mushrooms they must search the underground environment.

If collected Mycos are returned to the surface, they are turned into mushrooms as the player emerges into the overground.
The most fun part of this game I designed and implemented was its mushroom interactions!

Mushrooms in Glowing Garden have three distinct states / maturities that determine their appearance and size. They can be represented as:
- Pinheads
- Buttons
- Adults
When a mushroom is planted after collecting a nutrient it begins as a pinhead and progressively grows into an adult, changing the shape of the mushrooms cap and stipe in each state.
As well as coding the games mechanics and features, I was also responsible for generating weekly playtest builds & executables using Perforce version control software.

I taught my team to use the Unity engine’s Perforce integration, set the version control standards. For example: How to label pushes, when to push changes, when the team should sync changes, building and distributing new builds to team members & playtesters.
The UI in Glowing Garden is used for a variety of purposes which I was responsible for implementing.
The interface for the games main menu was designed and implemented by myself as well as the pause screens and all the functionality within them.
The interface while playing the game consists of the stamina meter and nutrient slots situated around the player while they are underground.
The game has one NPC which they player can interact with, causing some dialogue interaction between the Mico and Mother Mush, who guides the player whilst they play the game.
Along-side working closely with the games audio engineer and composer, I was responsible for creating the functional audio feedback in the games as well.

Besides the audio feedback for the players various actions such as , walking, jumping and digging - there are also two game music pieces which are swapped in-between when the player changes environments in the game.
I made use of a high-pass filter to make overground sounds distant when the player transitions into the soil to add a hint of realism to the games environment.