Mycorhizal

I participated in the GMTK game jam, and this is what I managed to make in 48 hours.

It's more an experiment with implementing some L-Systems in Unity than anything else - it's barely a game!

Up arrow = grow a branch

Down arrow = grow roots

A = grow a leaf at the current branch

Spacebar = wait a turn

Esc = quit

If you can't grow a branch/leaf/roots, you probably need to wait (using spacebar) until you have enough resources to grow that part.

The idea/thematic link with "Joined" is/was intended to be that on connecting your roots with other entities, you could start creating a mycorhizal network and increase your resources/open the way to more interesting gameplay including Defense Compounds and Allelochemicals. I didn't get as far as implementing some very basic gameplay mechanics, however.

I think I learned some cool stuff from this. One thing is that L-Systems, while sort of cool, are not ideal for growing a tree like this. The static trees, mushrooms and shrubs generated with L-Systems looked much better than the ones the players grew themselves. The L-System ended up being an awkward DSL middle-man for a half-baked procedural generation system; much better to simply go directly for the half-baked procedural generation system! L-Systems remind me of nothing so much as this esoteric language (maybe NSFW, depending on workplace). Another thing was the power of prefabs in Unity in combination with simple builder scripts.

If I entered a similar game jam in future, I think I would:

1. Start from the concept, rather than work towards it
2. Start from interactivity, rather than try to bolt it on
3. Try and find more free assets to support the work, instead of using default assets
4. Try and have a blank project with simple functionality set up (Menus, GameOver logic, common UI screens, sensible folder structures, etc.) before I start