One idea mower

The One Day Mower game was initially done as a part of the Minimal Jam along with others in the r/SoloDevelopment community. I had seen a tutorial on adding grass to a 3d scene and I thought it would be fun to play around with extending it to simulate mowing. It turned out pretty well for a jam game, though it never left that single concept.

It felt great to accomplish that core concept, but it was pretty rough around the edges and there were a handful of things I didn’t get done. Originally I had planned to make a few levels and add some story. Sadly that didn’t get done.

In the time since the jam, I have been slowly chipping away at the game while also working on a couple other projects.

• Updated the lawnmower movements, controls, and animations
• Created four levels
• Added controller support
• Added menus
• Tweaked the graphics a little bit
• Added a new mechanic of toys you can accidentally destroy

One jam mower

The game is at a point where I can see it as a neat short game with just a few changes/additions. Amazingly, the community organizers at r/SoloDevelopment created another jam that starts today called the Marathon Jam all about making progress on existing projects. I think it is fitting therefore to continue working on this game in that jam.

I created this post to share the existing state of the game for the jam and to call out the changes I would like to make over the course of this jam.

Goals

• Create an “endless mode” that randomizes lawns with items, houses, etc that focuses on a scoring system over the requirements in the existing levels
• Use the existing levels as tutorials for the new endless mode
• Update the UI to adopt a more phone app style than a web portal aesthetic (story related)
• Implement a dialog system to use as a framing for each tutorial level

Stretch Goals

• Tweak some of the tutorial levels
• Add a bunch of additional items and houses for the endless mode