• 3-person team
• 12 hours
• Made w/ Unity

Inspired by the classic Windows XP desktop background, Grass Grass Grass was a mobile idle game we developed start-to-finish in under 12 hours.

Features implemented in this MVP are: (the bolded items were all me)

• Grass, which grows slowly over time
• A scoring system, representing the total biomass of grass grown since the start, and simultaneously the player’s expendable money
• A magic clock, which the player can tap to actively nudge time forward
• Cow “enemies”, which will eat up your precious grass if you don’t tap them
• A passing truck, which spawns periodically and you can tap for bonuses
• A dolly camera providing different views in the 3D scene, revealing more grass territories to be unlocked
• UI
• Purchaseable upgrades
• A functional day-night cycle, which affects grass growth rate
• The terrain, including its grass patch systems and placement and simple waypoint nav system (used by the truck and cows)
• Game state serialization (see post-mortem)

Post-Mortem

I think 12 hours for a playable MVP is pretty decent—although I would definitely want to spend more time on the design and treatment portions before considering real monetization.

Also, we almost finished offline ticking (which is a crucial mechanic for any idle game), but we got hung up on serialization issues just as the game jam clock was running out. It would have only taken us a mere 30 minutes more or so to figure that out too, but that’s life.

Other than serialization, design treatment, and general polish, the other planned feature that didn’t quite make it in was different types of grass—for example, a grass variety that grows faster at night, or one that is poisonous to cows.