Gameplay

Enemies

Your goal is to keep all of the falling weeds off of your lawn. Periodically they will fall from the sky with gradually increasing speed, and you will need to mow over them to get rid of them. There are 4 phases to these plants.

Phase 1 (Right):    Seedling, these will fall to a random spot on the lawn and plant itself. The seeds are intangible in this phase, and they are there to indicate that a weed is about to be planted. This allows the player to plan their route when mowing the lawn.

 

Phase 2 (Left):     Sprout, the seed has been planted and can now be mowed. When mowed they give 10 points. We wanted to give more points the earlier you mowed to incentivise the player to plan out a route as they are playing.

Phase 3:        Gun, the seed and grown into a flower that will shoot pollen at the player. If the player is hit by the pollen they will be slowed down and all of the lights on their dash will start flashing. These give 5 points when mowed.

Phase 4:         Fully Grown, the plant has fully grown and bores new seeds. In this phase, the plant will no longer produce pollen, and poses no threat to the player. However, when mowed the seeds will shoot off in three directions and plant themselves into new weeds. These give 2 points when mowed.

Controls

You move around the mower using WASD or the arrow keys. Space bar puts the mower into overdrive. This causes the mower to go twice as fast but consume fuel. You can see if you are sped up by looking at the turtle or rabbit icons in the upper right by the fuel gauge. Fuel has a delay before it will start to recharge, so you can't just hold down the turbo button the whole time. 

Art

Artstyle

The game is full color with a limited palette. Pixel sprites should not contain more than 6 colors.

UI

The UI takes inspiration from the dashboard of a lawn mower. You have gauges and meters that display things like the fuel and the quality of your lawn.

Remaining Fuel and Speed

Lawn Quality and Score

Flashing Lights When Damaged

You can also see at the bottom of the UI panel an odometer inspired score bar.

Warning lights flash when the player is hit by pollen.

Download

Download
DivorcedDad.zip 28 MB
Download
Mowing Game Design Doc.pdf 104 kB

Install instructions

Download and upzip the downloaded file. Open the exe and play away!

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