Over time, I have developed a small portfolio of serious games. Let's make a list.

I just released version 0.7 of Food Chain Farm, my casual space ecosystem sim. Get it while its hot!

So let's talk about this release. What's new in this release? What have I learned along the way? And when will the game be finally done?

What's new?

It's fair to say that this is a pretty big release. I even took a 3-month sabbatical to work on the game.So what's new in Food Chain Farm 0.7?

First of all, I've added a story. I wanted to motivate the player, to set a goal that you can engage with emotionally. So I've written some lore, and it goes as follows. You are Xlorp, a young alien boy, and you have to take care of a marooned interplanetary colonist, a rescued human. Being an alien, your biochemistry is very different from humans, and therefore you have to figure out everything from scratch. You have to build a supporting ecosystem. You'll start to grow some plants to generate oxygen, and some simple vegetables as food. Over time you learn to make better and more tasty food, and improve life quality for your human pet.

Secondly, I wanted to some sort of progression system in the game, a way to upgrade your systems and unlock new possibilities over time. So I've added this in the form of the pet store. Zed, the store owner, advices you on how to best take care of your human. If Zed sees that your human is doing well and you can handle the responsibility, then he will sell you some useful pet care amenities. Perhaps some livestock, or some kitchen appliances to produce better quality food. Zed is a helpful and knowledgeable being that really supports you while you're trying to figure things out.

For the third addition, we have to dive more deeply into the science. I wanted to make the game system more complex, so there is more to explore and discover. Previous editions of food chain farm have focused only on the carbon cycle, now I've also added a nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen is an important compound for life, no living cell can be made without it. Nitrogen is all around us - the air we breathe is almost 80% Nitrogen. Yet most of this nitrogen is not in a form that plants can consume. Dealing with that is an interesting challenge.

Outgrowing the classroom

So just a bit of background: I started work on Food Chain Farm a few years ago, in collaboration with my sister who teaches biology in high school. At the time, my goal was to create a game to teach biological concepts in a fun and visually interesting way. Carbon cycle, photosynthesis, food chains, all of that can be quite abstract sometimes, but I wanted to make it really come to life. This has been quite successful. The game has been used in classrooms over half a dozen times, and another classroom session on the nitrogen cycle is on the schedule. (If you're a teacher reading this and you want to try it in your classroom, contact me).

But, I've come to realize something about games for the classroom. They can get away with being less fun, because:

1. You have a captive audience.
2. "More fun than regular class" is a low bar. Students appreciate anything that breaks the rut.
3. The game needs to be entertaining for only one hour. By contrast, a store-bought game needs to be entertaining for a dozen hours, to feel like you got your money's worth.

And that is also why the label "Educational game" has so many negative connotations. Marketing is very different for educational games. Educational games are sold to teachers and parents. They need to showcase educational value. The kids, who get these "fun" games hoisted upon them, learn to associate "educational game" with "boring, forced experience". In other words, if you target parents and teachers, educational is good. If you target gamers, educational is best left out.

And here's the rub. I'm gamer at heart and it stings to think people will think less of Food Chain Farm due to the educational label. I want to prove that games can be both fun and educational at the same time. That the educational aspects of a game don't make it less fun. And the only way to prove that, actually prove that, is to make a commercially viable game - competing in the real world against games that are definitely fun.

So, no more "educational", at least not in the marketing materials. Instead, I'm going with the phrase "science-based game". It's a real game, designed for having fun. However, grounded in science. Like my favorite book, "The Martian", by Andy Weir. This book is, at the highest level, a gripping tale of perseverance and inventiveness in the face of almost certain doom. If you come away learning something about how to grow potatoes on mars using rocket fuel, then all the better, but that's really just a side-effect. I've not "given up" on making games for the classroom. But I realize that I can't be sure that the game is fun, unless I can also sell it as a regular game.

Future plans

Let's be clear here - the game is not done! What we have at the moment, you may call an "Early Access Demo". I'm releasing as a way to gauge reactions, and to show my plans. But there are definitely rough edges, and I have so many ideas for improvements. Here are some ideas I'm considering for a future update:

• Saving and loading. Currently there is no way to save progress, if you close the game you have to start over. This is something I intend to fix.
• Bio-plastics for building pipes and tubes (you no longer get them for free)
• Blowing up asteroids with explosives to get extra resources and discover secrets. Many explosives are based on nitrate, which ties nicely into the nitrogen cycle.

What else should I add? Let me know! And if you want to stay updated on future releases, subscribe to the newsletter or join us on Discord!

Just a couple of weeks ago I released version 0.5 of Food Chain Farm! This release has been a year in the making and has a ton of new stuff. Today, I want to dive deeper into one aspect: the improved art style.

The game has a lot of graphics, more than any other game I've done before. Dozens of plants, animals, resources and other objects, all drawn in detailed vector graphics. And it's a huge challenge for me. I've always been programmer first, graphical artist second (and music is even further down the list...). For most games I worked on in the past, I've either limited myself to a small amount of pixel art, or I've outsourced the artwork to a partner. They say you need to put in 10000 hours to become really good, and I'm afraid I haven't put those hours in yet...

And there are so many beautiful indie games out there. It's hard not to feel discouraged when there are so much awesomeness to compare with. Nevertheless, I'm going to stick with it. I'll be the first to admit that this art style is a work in progress. But with the 0.5 release, for the first time I'm happy with the direction things are going.

As an example, let's look at how one item in the game has evolved over the past years:

The apple tree has been in the game right from release 0.1, back in 2018, and I put it together quickly in Inkscape, from basic geometric shapes. The foliage is just the union of bunch of circles, the trunk was drawn as a polygon using the mouse. Inkscape makes it easy to adjust the curve of a given line, so I made the sides of the stem curve inwards. The apple itself is a modified circle, with a green-red-white radial gradient to give it a nice shine. I added a short brown line for the stem of the fruit. To top it all off I gave the foliage a gradient as well, as a cheap way to give it some highlights and shadow.

This was always meant to be a placeholder, to get going quickly - it was never the intention that this would make it into the final game. But coming up with a better version took longer than I thought.

I've experimented with various methods e.g. using a Wacom tablet, using the 'trace sketch' function in Inkscape, with mixed results. In the end I settled on a much simpler process: I first sketch on paper, I scan it, and then trace the sketch with the mouse, in Inkscape. The result looks like this.

For inspiration and examples, I use images from the internet of course. But in this case I could actually take inspiration directly from my environment. I live next to a small orchard, and there is this nice old apple tree right in front of my house. The trees tend to be pruned to a flat wide shape (I guess it's easier to pick apples that way) and end up with crooked, gnarly looking branches. It's something that I tried to mimic in this sketch.

The sketching phase is important. I've learned that I'm much better at coming up with ideas on paper first. Sketching digitally doesn't work well for me. And over time, my sketches have developed in a certain way. I'm making them more elaborate, trying to add more character, but at the same time I make them looser, more playful. I spend less effort making the sketches very precise. I don't worry about the exact lines until I digitize the sketch in Inkscape.

To see what I mean, take a look at this bunny character. I started with a few quick sketches. These were drawn after photos and have realistic proportions.

Compared to, say, a cow or a pig, bunnies have a relatively small, narrow face. And, of course, large ears. By giving the head a more exaggerated shape, narrow at the eye level, and oversized ears, the essence of the character becomes more rabbity. I switched to a frontal perspective, this is a common theme for all animals in the game.

I've tried to become less rigid, using more round curves instead of straight lines, even for things that ought to be straight. Take a look at the new oven drawing for example. Here I exaggerated the roundness of the countertop and the brick sides.

Below you see some sources of inspiration. The picture on the left is from Anton Pieck. This Dutch artist is known for a romantic style, with old fashioned candy shops, life-worn houses and snow-covered Christmas villages. His paintings put a lot of detail in building materials, making them atmospheric and full of character. I grew up with this art style - he was the original designer for the Efteling theme park, where I visited frequently as a kid. The image on the right is from the game Oxygen Not Included (ONI). I love this game for the art style. Everything is full of character. Ladders, pipes, walls and floors - things that really should be straight - are higgledy-piggledy. ONI takes creative liberties to give it a unique character. By the way, ONI has more things in common with Food Chain Farm - more on that in a later post.

Also, to get more practice (to get those 10000 hours if you will), I've been  taking some live model drawing classes. The pictures below were taken during a socially distanced drawing class this summer. Drawing live models is great sketching practice. You have to be quick - the model can hold a pose only for so long. One common warm-up exercise is to draw a succession of poses in two minutes. It seems impossible at first, but you really get better with practice.

Of course, for the game, I can change proportions for a more cartoony appearance. Here are some sketches I'm working on, for a future version of the game.

Have a look for yourself, Food Chain Farm 0.5 can be downloaded from itch.io!

We tested Food Chain Farm for the 3rd time in a classroom setting, with great results. So, how does that actually work in practice?

We use a modified version of the game. The first three "levels" are really just simulations. Students have to watch clouds of oxygen and carbon dioxide move between farm animals and answer about 20 questions on paper. Starting with a questionnaire might seem like a boring way to present a game, but it works well. Not all students are natural gamers, and this way they can think about biology before they have to think about which buttons to click.

The first few questions are extremely simple and are designed to make the students just observe what is happening on the screen:

Question: Which two resources are produced by the tree? (Answer: Oxygen and Apples)

Further on, it gets a bit tougher and students are supposed to link what they see with what they've learned before.

Question: Which process takes place in the tree (Answer: Photosynthesis)

Question: which cycle is simulated in this game. The carbon cycle, or the nitrogen cycle? (Answer: the carbon cycle)

But then we get to the more interesting part. Further questions do not have a single simple answer. They are designed to make the students think critically, and are a great starting point for classroom discussion.

Question: the tree converts inorganic substances into food, which the cow consumes and converts again into milk and inorganic substances. However after a while, the truck is full of milk and the cycle stops. Why does it stop? (Answer: If milk stays in the truck, then resources are taken away from the cycle. The cycle is actually incomplete, and must break down eventually)

After the questionnaire is done (after half an hour), students are free to play the regular game as far as they can get. They continue to play and build at their own pace. For an extra challenge, all scores are tracked and projected on a central screen.

This is a game is about concepts like photosynthesis, carbon cycle, trophic levels,  producers, consumers, herbivores, carnivores, assimilation, dissimilation, food, and energy. But the game doesn't explain these concepts. I wouldn't recommend giving the game to new arrivals without instruction, and expect them to be able to take a biology test afterwards. What the game does do very well however, is use what was already taught, and reinforce it, visualize it, provide a fresh perspective on it. The novel presentation keeps students engaged.

I'm looking for more volunteers to test the game in a biology classroom. After three tries I'm very confident that I can provide something that is both engaging and educational. The question list can be adjusted to the level of the students to a very large extent. If you are a biology teacher, or know one, please leave a comment or send me a tweet.

Do you just want to play the game? Food Chain Farm can be downloaded here. Version 0.2 is out now and 0.3 is coming soon!