Where did the idea for a space botany farming sim come from? We’d like to show you the first steps we took - early concepting!

First things first, here’s the game’s current key features:

• Creating unique plants with systematic plant breeding
• Researching plants thoroughly in the lab or discovering their traits the old fashioned way
• Trading with friendly aliens
• Upgrading and customizing your farm
• Experimenting freely (without worrying about making mistakes!)
• A charming “space cottagecore” aesthetic

But how did we get here?

The team first met up in late September, to talk in broad terms about what we all wanted from the project and start discussing game ideas. Nothing was even a little bit set at this stage so we had fun throwing around all sorts of ideas.
We kept on coming up with new ideas and exploring our favourites until early October, when we felt we were ready to make a decision. The team wrote all our favourite ideas down in one big spreadsheet, pitched them to each other and ranked them. As you may have guessed, Space Botanist won out!

Now we had a general idea of what game we were making, we started researching, working on concept art and brainstorming possible mechanics…

After a lot of research, concepting and discussion, we finalized the important features and identified the core gameplay loop.

Then we took all our scattered, chaotic pages of notes and transformed them into a nice, tidy concept document!

And that’s how we got here!

What’s next? Well, now we’re working on art tests, so check out our next post to see our concept art! Or, if you want to get to know the team behind the game a little better, take a look at our last post!

- Niamh