Butterfly Garden

Top Down Resource Gathering Game

Butterfly Garden prototype can be played at: www.josephclaymiller.com/shelf/butterfly.swf

Important note: Flash Player is needed to play this game: (http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer)

Alternate Directions in User Interface
The top down view makes it difficult show depth.  I wondered if I might get a more picturesque feel to the game by using a different view and bitmap images.  Below is a screenshot of that prototype

Side Scrolling Resource Gathering Game

The conclusion I came to was that an isometric view might be best for this game.

The UI is also lacking a health bar indicating the avatar's health which would decrease with time and refill when the player collected food.

Directions in Design

The game would start the player off as an egg from which the player would hatch as a caterpillar and begin collecting the resources available to it. The player's choice of resources to gather would determine which attributes their avatar could unlock in the adult butterfly stage.  As a butterfly, the player can lay eggs which act as save points for the attributes the butterfly has collected.  If the player dies, they can re spawn at an egg they have laid.