I'm A Tree | vanillabreeze

I‘m A Tree

I'm A Tree is a serious VR game running on Oculus Rift. In the game, players will experience all the life of a tree, from a little short sapling to a towering tree. Players need to use a mouse and their eyes to collect the sunshine and water to grow themselves.

My role in I'm a tree is the main programming and also the main plannning. As another programmer was hurrying on his thesis. In the last half time, I had to decide which machanics to be kept and which to be abandoned as I was the only programmer who could judge how complete the game would be at the end.

Actually, at the beginning, our design is extremely detailed and complex, especially in the mechanic of growing. But when I realized it was unrealistic for us to complete it in only two weeks, what the tutor said encouraged me to make a decision. She said: "It is normal in most of the occasion that we have no enough time to add and build all the design , you have to choose something less important to cut down. In this case, what you need to consider is the concept of the game - what you really want to express through the game and what you want the player experience in this game." It really helped me. I cut down the unnecessary and complex mechanics and focused on how to make the experience more engaging and immersing.

You are a new-born tree in the forest with two trees much higher than you. You need to collect water and sunlight to provide yourself with enough nutrition to grow higher and higher. As you are getting taller, your eyesight will be much wider, and you can see the brand new landscape of the forest. And you will find you can look down at two trees,whose head you could not see at the beginning. It will be a extremely impressive process.

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I'm A tree was made during this Summer Academy program(from 7.18 to 7.25) in Hongkong PolyU. It aimed to coorperate graduates majoring in design in PolyU with undergraduares majoring in programming and art in CUC to make serious games. Encouraged by the instructors here, we decided to use Oculous Rift to design our games.

Our theme is GROWTH. Then we chose "tree" to illustrate the progress of growth. The life of tree resembles that of human -- we will grow higher and higher with enough nutrition. And OR will be a good platform for us to let the players fully merge in playing a role as a tree. As a "tree", the players do not need to move so that the problem of dizzy caused by rotating and moving can be avoided.

As for the core mechanics, it is very sample. The players should use the mouse to click the icons of water and sunshine to collect them. Then one blue "water" and one yellow ''sunshine" can compound a green "nutrition" which is the necessity of growth. There is no difficulties for players to continue the game, because we just want players can expericence the whole process.

Below shows one of our tutor testing the first demo.