Thanks for Playing!

Some Gameplay Notes:

  • Be soft on the buttons. Pressing an E or T interaction multiple times will prompt multiple instances of the text to play, or worse, cause you to skip important dialogues all together. Pressing the button once is enough.
  • Construct 3's jump-through platforms are very finicky,  you might get pushed off or fall through moving platforms when they overlap other objects. This also applies when climbing diagonally, the more you jump the better. 
  • Lastly, pressing SPACE will reset the layout without losing your progress (it's a last resort if you ever get physically stuck)
    Goodluck!

Some Backstory:
Horticulture Hero was made as a final project for my Video Games as Literature class at Concordia University. I wanted to make something that reflected the lack of diversity in the video game industry, without making something too political. Essentially, I wanted to create a game that I could be proud of, outside the classroom. This is how our Hero was born. In our class we learned how toxic the cycle of AAA games, made by white cis men, for white cis men, can be on the entire industry (Anthropy). The success of a single title will be used as a template for multiple titles to follow, attracting the same audience. This narrow audience, inspired by these games, enter the industry only to produce similar titles, continuing the pattern. The more generations that are raised with this viewpoint, the harder it becomes to change it. In my narrative metaphor, the AAA games are represented by the White Flowers, while the ants are the individuals who are raised consuming them, and who go on to plant their own white flowers, perpetuating their idolization of the status quo. Therefore the greenhouse represents both the gaming industry and community, which has been made exclusive by the ants’ dominance. This issue has necessitated the rise of many indie developers, who create their own representation. The protagonist, along with the friends he meets, represent both players outside the “gamer” community as well as aspiring creators. Snail’s role is to pave the way by convincing the ants that other, Colourful Flowers can be just as interesting and successful as the White Flowers they have been raised on. Unfortunately his seed, his game idea, cannot grow nearly as tall as the flowers already in the greenhouse because he doesn’t have access to as much water. Water in this case stands in for game-making resources which are frequently denied to diverse games, including larger development teams and financial support. Snail represents the underdog archetype, and decides to climb the greenhouse anyways to prove his point, and along the way he opens doors for others’ ideas to be represented as well.  

"Artist Statement":
Being new to game development, I was excited to explore this new medium, with an enthusiastic near-expert-level number of ideas. Of course, due to time and scope and my own knowledge, I cut a lot of corners off my project and rounded it down to a more simple one-off concept. On paper, the idea was simple: A couple of bugs help a snail plant a new garden. But once I opened Construct 3 and got to work, I saw how many possibilities there were. Fades, timers, speech bubbles, global variables! Suddenly I was adding cutscenes, dozens and dozens of unique sprites, and throwing myself head-first into making everything I could within the time limit. The end product isn’t perfect, but I’m happy to say it’s done and I’m very proud. Now, with a better understanding of how games are made and the possibilities at my disposal, I can see myself making many more projects in the future :)

~Salem

Anthropy, Anna. “The Problem With Videogames.” Rise of the Videogame Zinesters How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Dropouts, Queers, Housewives, and People like You Are Taking Back an Art Form, Seven Stories Press, 2012.

Fron, Janine, et al. “Hegemony of Play.” DiGRA 2007: Situated Play, 2007.

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.0 out of 5 stars
(3 total ratings)
Authorvirulent_lemons
GenrePlatformer, Adventure, Interactive Fiction, Role Playing
Made withConstruct
Tags2D, Atmospheric, construct, Cute, Exploration, Singleplayer

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

White ant: No! white is the only color any other color is bad!

meh: O-o thats racism

noice game keep makeing



u frogot one aspect of AAA and indie
its called the youtube thing
youtubers play a big part in the success of a game the most respected/popular youtubers will play a game and many others will come and get it making that game popular for AAA games this means that people like the format and will buy it again so they produce the games to feed the growing crowd and they dont need youtubers any more they keep growing and growing (this reminds me of a game https://blackthornprod-games.itch.io/the-howler ) until there unstoppable(all they have to do is add a twist and some hidden secrets and vlola new game) the youtubers are all powerful in the gaming industry they give the reviws that are best and say a 1/5 is very bad and the game will likely be frogoten that it even exists and a 4/5 will make a game popular or a 5/5 will make it LEGENDARY and it will grow and grow until AAA peeps buy it and exploit it

It's a <pwa data-pwa-id="pwa-90C4562B07CA4B1407913F6961E7146A" data-pwa-rule-id="READABILITY_2264" data-pwa-category="style" data-pwa-hint="Readability may be enhanced by removing this" data-pwa-suggestions="(omit)" data-pwa-heavy="false" data-pwa-dictionary-word="really " class="pwa-mark pwa-mark-done">really </pwa>cute game too bad it keeps crashing :(

It was a pretty cute game had some fun playing through it my play through here: 


(2 edits) (+1)

Haha, thanks for playing! This was just a school project so I'm pleasantly surprised to see someone engaging with it, plus watching your play-through has been really good feedback! The politics were a requirement for the class, but i'm glad you still found it cute :)
(Sorry you had trouble with the bottle seed + worm combo, it seems a lot of people were having that problem! I'll be looking into fixing it)

Thanks for making the game I enjoyed it and I probably was the one that was failing on the worm bottle I noticed later I was clicking through the chat too fast because I though that was all of it for some characters so that might have been on my end I appreciate the comment and you watching my video :D.