Features
01.
Single-Player
02.
Narrative-Driven
03.
Puzzles
04.
Magical Theme
05.
Cosy Game
Trailer
About the Game
Awakened Acres is a narrative driven puzzle game in which the player is asked to tend to their Uncle’s farm, which upon arriving, they find to be corrupted. With the help of a lonely talking carrot, and some more friends they grow along the way, the player completes puzzles using themed spells to break the hex placed upon the land and free their kidnapped uncle from the evil Seed Sorceress.
As the lead designer on the project, I had a role in many of the design elements.
My main contribution and the area I am most proud of is the UI/HUD. I created the concepts for these, which the artists on the team turned into usable assets fitting the art style of Awakened Acres. From this, I was able to use these blank journal pages and add in the elements required. I mostly created the quest descriptions as well as the notes found throughout the world, added at a later date as part of another module.
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I also had a large role in the Mirror Puzzle section of the game, which is the first puzzle area the player encounters. I helped to create the layouts that the mirrors would lie in and the mechanics surrounding this, which our developer added into the game. As part of another module, I explored this area further and added additional mechanics such as the ability to move the mirrors into the correct positions and the ability to collect notes for the player to see the correct position to add an element of challenge to this puzzle.
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Lastly, I spent a large chunk of time helping with the environment of the game, placing assets to make the world feel calm and peaceful in the farm area and more haunted/spooky feeling in the mirror puzzle and the Sorceress' woods, adding in lighting and particle effects to act as fireflies. I reworked the assets for the fences to make benches in various states of decay additionally to compliment the set dressing.
My Contribution
How We Made It
Awakened Acres was created as part of our third year modules Game Pre-Production and Integrated Project 3. We were given a brief by Hyper Luminal Games and instructed to make a game based on the information given.
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What started out as a simple farming game, soon became something far more complex. A core aspect of the brief is interaction with the magical sentient crops of Awakened Acres, and we wanted to make magic a core element of the game altogether. This branched out to learning spells based on the correlated fruit or vegetable, and utilising these spells within the puzzles created for the game.
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As an extension of this, the narrative is additionally magic-focused. The player has been invited to tend to the farm by their Uncle, but upon arriving they discover that in fact a carrot sent the letter! Her Uncle has been kidnapped by the evil Seed Sorceress who has placed a hex on the land. Completion of the puzzles weakens this hex and gets the player one step closer to saving their Uncle.
Developers:
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Designers:
Mark Allison, Caitlin Forbes, Laura Ward, Maryam Yunis
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Artists:
Gurjeen Kaur, Fergus MacPherson, Elena Mihaylova, Petar Posavec, Yimeng Jiang