Design of Druid's Haven

As part of the first sprint, we had to create a Design Document (which you can check out here). The game changed a lot, of course, because we had to create this document even before starting to prototype, but the original loop of "plant, survive, grow" remains in the game.

This was the first time that I wrote a design document that would be the source for a whole team (instead of personal use), and it was a very educational experience trying to bring everyone on the same page.

We could have had more detailed descriptions of how we imagined the plant interactions, but in the early stage of ideation, this felt more like a detail. I was also still in the middle of my research.

The most important design question for Druid's Haven was what biodiversity even looks like in a game. I designed the initial system for it. Here is the full document, but to summarize part of it:

There are three different types of plants (support, engineer, and deterrent), which provide something within the ecosystem (e.g. support provides resources). Planting diverse plants next to each other gives both a buff to show that species diversity is important.

Each individual plant has randomized stats within a range (e.g. an oak has between 100-150 HP). Harsh conditions like heat or disease travel along the map and affect the plants. The random stats for plants are to show that not every plant will die under the same conditions, which is why we need genetic diversity.

Towards the end of a level we would have cataclysmic events that heavily target one stat (which would kill a monoculture or specific plant), followed by a final wave to test the resilience of the ecosystem you've built.

When Druid's Haven moved from distinct levels to an endless mode, the big problem became how seeds for new plants should spawn.

One problem was that if one plant was wiped out, you couldn't restore it. Another was at what rate and which conditions because now we had to balance the difficulty. If plants spawned seeds then it became an exponential function of more plants = more seeds = more plants.

The core problem was this: since seeds are our only resource, they are the primary medium for rewarding player behavior. Our goal was to teach the importance of biodiversity, but if every plant only provided its own seed, then we were constrained by our main reward system.

In the design document, I describe a couple solutions, but my main proposal was to split the seed into both a resource for new plants and a currency to buy upgrades in a shop. This serves to provide choices for the player and an opportunity for us to reward increasing biodiversity.