The Last Garden was inspired by The Woodland Trust and a conversation I had with them at EGX 2021. Fast forward a few weeks and I was given a brief to create either a documentary or an educational game in Virtual Reality. My experience with The Woodland Trust seemed like the perfect use case for a Virtual Reality experience – putting on a VR headset at a convention and learning their message through an immersive and engaging experience.
Narrative and Quests
The main aim of The Last Garden was to teach players about UK wildlife through a combination of storytelling and engaging gameplay. Specifically, players follow the journey of Spiky the Hedgehog as he sets up to hibernate for the winter. The game’s narrator guides the player through the various missions – each of which is based on recommended actions to prepare one’s garden for hedgehog habitation – whilst also providing relative information that may be useful to remember in players' own gardens. For example, in a section where the narrator tells the player that slug pellets are lethal to hedgehogs, he will also tell the player that hedgehogs are slug predators and this will help control any slug-related issues.
The key aim with the gameplay was that missions primarily focused on actions that players could replicate in their own gardens, such as making ‘hedgehog highways’ or planting vegetation that will attract hedgehog prey. Generally, the game is made up of shorter segments, but this is done so in a way that aims to help the player gain lasting knowledge.
Research and Planning
This project relied on myself ensuring that the information and statistics given were completely accurate. The first step in the planning stage was to research all of the necessary information and build my own documentation for reference. With the project being inspired by The Woodland Trust, I used their page to find the relevant information – such as only 13% of the UK being covered by the Woodland as of 2022 – and then retrieved other information from an article on Gardeners' World, verifying their information with other sources.
This reference documentation then guided me in writing the game’s script. I grouped the information into categories that seemed logical from a level design perspective so that, for example, players weren’t learning about hedgehog highways once they were away from the fence and already inside the garden.
Throughout this project the production, development and everything in-between were handled solely by myself (although I worked with a voice actor for the narration). However, I would present to, receive feedback from, and give feedback to peers. As this project was part of a University module, I would also receive feedback from – and discuss ideas with – a project supervisor but was mainly working autonomously.
The screenshots below are not my property and belong to The Woodland Trust and Gardeners' World, respectively.
Project Development
Having only developed non-VR games before this, developing for VR was a very different – although enjoyable – experience.
I decided to develop the game by building the mechanics first, fixing any bugs as they appeared, and then adding music, sounds and environment art once the gameplay was working correctly. This not only meant that I could focus on getting the gameplay and missions first, but it then meant that I could spend dedicated time focusing on the art and sound decisions.
Analysing some of the game’s playtest was instrumental to fixing bugs. I found one bug that seemed quite peculiar where, sometimes, a player could not pick something up after placing it down. What was happening was that the object the player was placing down was being replaced by an object that was fixed in place. When this happened, the VR hand would assume that it was still holding an object that had now been destroyed. To fix this, I had to edit the Oculus framework’s code in order to force the hand to drop the object before it was destroyed.
Part of this game’s development took place over the Christmas period and, for fun, I decided to add a party hat to Spiky during this time. Playtesters loved this and felt it added even more to the ‘cuteness factor’ of the game, helping the players connect with it more. Subsequently, I implemented more hats and made them optional collectibles that could be gained through side objectives. My personal favourite objective involved watering a patch of dirt within an area of flowers; once the flower grows, the hat appears for Spiky to collect.
What I’ve learnt
Virtual Reality was a brilliant medium to create a narrative experience with. If the experience is crafted correctly, the player feels truly and totally immersed. I had one playtester take off the VR headset in a quiet, dimly lit living room saying that the change in environment almost felt ‘overwhelming’.
The ability for the player to physically interact with the environment by moving their head and hands unlocks a lot of potential from an interactive narrative perspective – getting the player to look at things, pick things up or move things really helps connect the ‘interactive’ with the ‘narrative’.
With this game being based on real information, my research process was significantly different. Although I did research other games with similar playstyles – such as ‘Moss’ by Polyarc – the biggest research focus was on providing accurate information for the players. I do, however, believe that I can now use these research methods to help carry out deeper, richer research for traditional games.