Grow, a pointless garden simulator
Roberto Roch shares a brilliant Game Engine project
Grow is a tiny (non)game made with Blender’s game engine. Originally made for peace,love, and jam, it was built trying to follow the jam’s guidelines of creating “non-violent, peaceful games that embody harmony, coexistence, acceptance and resolution”.
Since the game fitted the requirements for another jam that was running last week(http://itch.io/jam/ruinjam2014), I managed to squeeze in some performance improvements, submitted it, and decided to spread the word about it a bit more this time. Fellow Blenderhead Eddy Gautier encouraged my to submit this here too, so that’s why you’re (probably) reading this. Anyway…
You can download the latest version of grow from here.
I have had reports of AMD cards users with problems with some of the shaders, it’d be great if someone having issues could find the time to contact me, since I have no way to test and resolve those problems.
Here’s a (somewhat outdated) gameplay video:
hehe Eddy Gautier it’s me for the rest of the internet (stupid facebook who don’t understand numbers can be part of a name)
as I’ve said on stupid facebook, so poetic, great thanks Roberto
Haha okay now I’m certain I know what kind of person you are.
Thanks e5dy, this is the kind of thing I’ve been meaning to do since I first started learning Blender. :)
It’s pretty gross that BlenderNation is editorializing to follow the bizarre fake-intellectual movement to classify what is a “real” game. This is a game, stop the crap with the smirking quotations and calling games “non-games” for not having platforms or metrics.
Roberto provided that title himself.
I’m pretty sure you’re an amateur (in the literal sense, that’s not a patronizing quip), but that is the purpose of quotation marks in headlines. It’s necessary to separate quotes from editorial.
seriously ? you can’t think different? is this “non game” disturbing you so much
or it’s just your way of life “be a troll”
Haha oh man hahaha go back to reddit kid. That’s a place where people are self-centered enough to believe that kind of BS.
You’ve crossed a line here, I won’t tolerate such insults. Your comment has been removed.
Hahaha a Redditor yourself I see.
As Bart already said, the title was provided by me, and the sentence is the tagline I’m using for the game, it actually was the reason for the first sold unit of the game too. I’m calling it like that, and non-game, because there’s not winning or losing condition in it, you can just plant stuff, and take screenshots of your garden.
Yeah, that’s irrelevant to the very fundamental journalistic requirement to separate fact from editorial. “Non-game” is *your* subtitle.
I mean you’re obviously still wrong, the whole “non-game” garbage is a semantic game played by “core gamers” who are vehemently opposed to diversity in games. You know, the kind of raving dudebros who go on Metacritic and give 0/100 review scores to Gone Home openly admitting they didn’t play it but that they still refuse to accept it’s status as a game. It’s a position that *seems* completely logical at first blush, “of course it’s not a game, games have X feature this game doesn’t have,” but that’s a historically ignorant mindset. Look up the history of games and you’ll immediately find hundred of games that don’t resemble any arbitrary definition set by a Reddit dudebro.
So please, have journalistic integrity, and don’t play into the ignorant anti-intellectual semantic games of politically right-wing neckbeards.
This was posted to ruinjam, which was created to mock the “nonexistent demise of video games”, so I understand the context.
I haven’t played Gone Home, although I know what game it is, and I suppose I’d like it, the same way I liked Dear Esther or The Graveyard (this game is the main inspiration for a project I’ve been mulling over, and developing, for years), I’m fine with calling all of them games, including grow.
I’m fine if Bart wants to edit the article over this.
I assumed that it being posted in ruinjam would at least provide some background of where I’m coming from, and I’d be able to talk about my work however I want, guess not. Being wrong by default is really hard to work with.
I’d probably would have gotten the same kind of comments from the other direction by “Reddit dudebro”s, as you called them, if I did otherwise, I suppose.
But, I actually prefer engaging with you, so I have that going for me, which is nice.
If you bare with me for a bit…
The reason I didn’t call this a game is because I don’t want to make games, I want to build worlds with entities and stories you can play with.
I’m not sure if that ends up meaning the same presented as such, but in my mind it’s something very different to God of War, or Tomb Raider, and if those things want to call themselves games, I don’t want to make games. It just happens I use a game engine as my tool to deliver the message.
I understand the need and purpose of what you’re saying, but I’d be more comfortable calling grow a life simulator, even though it’s still being posted in the games category, and pertaining to the global pool of games.
I wasn’t familiar with RunJam, and it sounds pretty neat, I hope I have time to play the entries someday. Unfortunately, the context you mentioned isn’t implied simply by the name of the (frankly) obscure game jam, and none of it was communicated by the article posted. Instead it comes off as milquetoast, placating the impotent threat of raging 14-year-olds on 4chan. But I think I understand the feeling now, I’d rather be sarcastic than explain the history of Zoey Quinn, and talking to you I can say I essentially agree with you.
That said, Blender Nation does have a responsibility, even as an amateur publication, to distinguish between opinion and fact. “A pointless gardening simulator” is actually fact since it’s your subtitle, and should be represented as such, not the opinion of the editor. Unless it is, then I’ve got beef.
To be more specific to your philosophy though, I understand the desire to distance oneself from the kind of games that, to anyone looking at sales data and advertising spending, have come to represent what the word “game” means. But this is a historically naïve position. Creating imaginative words has been play and games for centuries before computers were conceived, to say nothing of when people first decided to build formal games inside computers. People have been playing make-believe much longer than they’ve been playing Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, this has erupted as a semantic war in recent years, with raging kids with no education beyond a degree in cantankerous studies from /r/ University ranting bitterly impassioned trysts against the degeneration of what they perceive to be games. In a seperate political situation where people weren’t *literally recieving death threats* I would be amused by someone self-labeling his game as a non-game, but while I agree with your reasons I think you’re wrong.
this looks awesome! i love the atmosphere you’ve created Roberto :) please don’t stop i wanna see more…
Thanks a lot, lyndon! :)
I mean to keep adding stuff to it, but it’ll probably be only on my spare time, so don’t expect updates any time soon, sorry. :/
great job and very nice music