GardenScapes Prototype GDD

Lost CTRL - Ertürk Erdemli

Game Overview:
Description:
Gardenscapes is a casual landscape match-3 game in which the
player tries to make the abandoned garden beautiful by passing
levels. Grid based levels which contain fruits, power ups and
traps are given to the player step by step. After completing
levels, a star will be given to the player to complete tasks. After
clicking on the tasks on UI, some brand new garden prop
options will be given to the player to decorate the garden. The
player chooses one of them for each task and makes the
abandoned garden alluring. There will be some minigames in
the process as a meta game.
Genre: Match-3 Casual
Theme: Fruits & Garden
Art Vision: High Poly 3D Rendered Toony Stylized Models with
2D Animations from Spine
Camera Angle & Movement:
In levels - Orthographic
In the Garden - Isometric
Note: The player can zoom in and zoom out in the garden or
move the camera wherever s/he wants without changing the
angle.
 Platform: Apple Store & Android Store

Game Mechanics:

Core Mechanic:
● Core mechanic of Gardenscapes is “swapping” two fruits
next to each other to match at least 3 same colors and
explode them.
● Number of objectives that must be exploded on the board
will be given to the player on UI such as mostly fruits etc.
● As the player matches given objectives on the board, the
number of objectives decrease on UI according to the
number of exploded objectives.

Core Gameplay:
● In each level, the player has the number of moves. Each
time the player swaps two fruits on the board, the
number of moves decreases by one.
 ● If the number of objectives decreases to 0 before the
number of moves finishes, the level will be passed
successfully.
● Otherwise, if the number of moves finishes before the
number of objectives finishes, the player fails.
● If the target is completed, the power ups are replaced
with the fruits on the board as much as the number of
moves and the power ups explode.
● The player is given a certain number of coins and the level
is completed.
● Additionally it is not possible to replay the already played
section.

Grid System:

● In levels, there are tile boards which contain fruits, traps and
power ups.
● In each level, the tile board changes so the board must be
created modular which level designers can adjust the number
of empty tiles vertically and horizontally.
● The default level will be manually sorted by the level designer.
When the player swaps any two tiles and the match is achieved,
the exploding fruits create a gap and fruits fall from above to fill
the gap.
● The space in which the fruits falling from above will fall is
visualized below.
● When the fruit falling from above reaches the last empty tile, it
checks whether the 1x1 left and right bottom, 2x2 left and right
and 3x3 left and right bottom tiles to understand that the tiles
are empty or not.
● If the tiles left or right bottom are empty, the fruit falls to the
bottom left or bottom right.
● If the bottom left and the bottom right tiles are empty at the
same time, the fruits which fall from above fall left and right
row by row.
● When the tiles on bottom left or bottom right are filled, the
fruits fall from only one column and stop falling to left and right
bottom tiles.
● Although the level designer is going to design default levels, the
fruits which fall from above will be created procedurally.
● “What type of fruit will fall ?”,
“Where will they fall ?”
or
“What type of fruits will exist where the fruits fall ?”,
“Is there any match potential where the fruits fall ?”
must be considered to prevent no matches on the board.
There will be 3 level difficulties to provide the gameflow
properly.
● Easy
 ● Normal
● Hard

Matching System:

● There will be 6 elements as fruits which will be

placed on grids. Example images above.
● Symbols will be created as 2D high saturated sprites
with soft shadow.
● If the player doesn’t make any move for a while,
randomly possible 3 fruits will shine up and scale up
a little bit to attract the player's attention.
● There won’t be any animation on them. (based on
the decision of the Art Team, will they use spine or
some software like it ?)
 ● Matching Types

● PowerUps, Boosters, In-Game Boosters

Heart System
● There is a heart system which reflects the number of
rights for playing the level.
● As default 5 hearts will be given to the player. Each time
the player can’t succeed in the levels, the rights of playing
levels will be reduced by one.
● When the number of hearts decreases to 0, there will be
two options.
● One of the options is to wait for the heart's regeneration
according to the timer.
● Second option is to redirect the player to want hearts
from other players (Social Meta).
● If the player passes the level successfully, hearts don’t get
reduced.

Star System
● There is a star system which ensures that the player
decorates the abandoned garden.
● The player gains stars and s/he will have rights to
decorate the garden.
 ● Note: the star system is like the connection between the
core gameplay and the metagame.
● When the player completes the level, mostly a star will be
given to the player to complete the task.
● After the level, the task board comes up and a task for the
garden exists.
● As the player taps on “complete” UI, the scene directs the
player to the garden.
● Each task requires the number of star(s) to be completed.
● Even though various tasks require one star only, some
tasks may require stars more than one.

Level Walkthrough:

Levels & Details

Level Elements

Meta Games:

Garden:
● The main metagame of Gardenscapes is to clean and
decorate the abandoned garden.
● In order to clean and decorate the garden, the player
must complete a lot of tasks.
 ● In order to complete the task and make the garden
alluring, each task requires the number of stars as a level's
reward.
● As the player completes the match-3 level and gains a
star.
● A task UI pop-up comes out which contains daily tasks,
inbox, feed and renovations.
● When the player taps on the current task UI, the scene
changes to the garden.
● The garden occurs from different areas and the main goal
of the meta is to decorate the abandoned garden.
● Moreover, the garden pieces that were mentioned above,
occur from different tasks. For example; the first task is to
repair the bridge and the second one is to construct a
railing on the bridge. Thirth mission is to build brand new
sculptures instead of the broken sculptures which means
that the player completes a lot of missions to decorate an
area.
● According to the task, abandoned garden props will be
removed and brand new props will be placed.
● There will be three options to choose to decorate the
garden properly. These options will be visualized on UI.
● Whichever the player taps on, will be placed.
● There is a day system that includes a task system.

Days System & Tasks System:

● There is a day system which contains a task system in it.

● There are missions to complete tasks in the garden. Stars
earned by the player are used to complete these missions.
● Depending on the story, the characters who will visually
complete the tasks are included in the game, and after the
dialogues are completed, the side character completes
the task.
● Days are made up of tasks. The day bar at the top of the
task pop-up continues to fill as the task is completed.
● The day is complete when the bar is full. When the day is
completed, the game opens a new locked area in the
garden so the player progresses through the story.
● Some rewards will be visualized on the progress bar
which gives the player a reward as the player approaches
the gift sprite.
● Note: The time in the game doesn’t represent the
real-time. The game has its own time period.
Lucky Spin:

● The side character Einar Davidsson visits your garden

with his Lucky Spin every day to let you spin the wheel to
win prizes daily.
● Lucky Spin is a circle which is seperated 8 triangle pieces
which contain daily reward.
● The player taps on “Spin” UI and the center of the circle
starts rotating clockwise. There is a static pin on top of
the circle. The center stops in a short time. When the
center stops, the daily reward which exists on the piece
that the red pin shows will be given to the player.
● The player can spin and collect your bonus at any time
each day.
● The player can only play the Lucky Spin once daily.
Uncollected bonuses don't save or accumulate.
Game Flow:
Controls:

Spaw - In levels
The player swaps 2 pieces in levels.
Tap - In levels
In order to select the tile that the player wants to move, tap on
it.
Zoom In & Zoom Out - in the Garden
Tap - Garden
On new props to place them.
Tap - In Dialogues
to skip cutscenes and dialogues.

Story Background:
Long ago, a butler named Austin came into the service of a rich
gentleman. For many many years he buttled and buttled for him until
the rich man reached a ripe old age. Loyal to a fault, Austin stood by
his master dutifully through all his ups and downs. Austin, too, had
grown well into adulthood and soon his master's fated time had
come to depart this world. It was a sad day for all. But Austin took
pride in the work he did to maintain the mansion and its grounds and
at least took solace that he would inherit his master's mansion to live
out the rest of his days.

In the days and weeks that followed, Austin set to work filing his
master's will and testament when he came upon a shocking surprise
- the master had an heir! Who knew?! This person, never called,
never wrote, why they never even stopped by for a visit! Not even
once! And yet there it was written in the master's undeniable hand -
the mansion was to be left to this person who never cared for his
master. It was then that Butler Austin cracked. For many more weeks
he smoked 3 packs a day [Ed's note: no really - have you heard his
voice?!] and eventually hatched a devious plot. He would allow this
uncaring, undeserving person to become the new master but his
days of butling were over! He had buttled his last buttle! No, he
would instead make the new master do all the butling! And so he
devised a sinister plan: The butler would fool his new master into
doing all the work for him! All his new master would have to do to get
anything done around the yard is complete a mostly luck-based
match 3 puzzle while doing all the work!

Map

Characters
Art:

2D & Interface:
Mostly everything is going to exist with 2D sprite and
animations from Spine.
● All Character Sprites
● All Character Dialogue Pop-ups
● Character Animations
● Modular Tile Board
● Levels Background
● Power-up Sprites and Boxes
● Task Board
● Loading Screen
● Entry Screen
● All Lucky Spin Aspects
● Minigame Pop-up
● Social Tab Pop-up
● Star Icon
● Heart Icon
● Fruit Sprites
 3D:
All Areas will be high poly 3D Render.
All Garden Aspects such as
● Benches
● Grasses
● Trees
● Pools
● Houses
● Stairs
● Doors
● etc.

Animations:
● All Character Animations
● Environment Prop Animations
● Fruit Animations
● Coin Animations
● UI Animations
and other aspects will be created in Spine.

Environment:
● Comment: Environment will be generated as a high poly
3D render. (By doing that, although there are lots of
aspects to be rendered, there will not be any optimization
problem because the areas will be 3D render and
 animations will be created as 2D.) Another option is to put
prop prefabs to the scene and use LOD but that is going
to be the proper option.
● At the beginning of the game, the environment is like an
abandoned Garden which looks like an old garden and
house. At the beginning of the story, the garden should
look dirty, old, abandoned. As the player progresses
through the story. The garden should look attractive,
clean and well-groomed.

Q&A: (The title will be filled by other team members)

Wishes: (The title will be filled by other team members)