Plantcore started in February 2012 as a very simple 2 player game where you had to plant some seeds and then destroy the plants of your opponent. The scope of this little project was perfect for the break after the first semester of my computer-science studium. I could finish it and learned very much about Java and games programming:

But this was only the first step on the way to a much bigger goal. I fantasized many hours about this great game I wanted to make. It should be a combination of my favourite games like Spelunky, Terraria and Clonk. And there should be a big ecosystem with many different plants and animals which fight each other and of course it would be a really, really great game and maybe even the next Minecraft. So I used a lot of my free time to work toward this vision. Even the time in a surf-camp on the Atlantic was used to create design-documents..

Half a year later I had developed many new objects, systems and another little 2 player game that showcased creatures which I called “flying unicorn-snakes”. But the development took longer than I had planned and in January 2013 I realized that I had to change my plans. The completion of my dream game would have taken years at this speed and so I abandoned it and transformed it into a short puzzle platformer. This was probably a good decision because the commitment to a project that takes multiple years is a huge burden and I had great fun with the creation of the puzzles and the map. But after the world was basically complete (June 2013), I lost slowly the motivation to work on the game, although there were still a lot of things to do (like controller support, sounds, music, better graphics, better level design and bug-fixing). In spite of wanting to sell the game at the end of October, I worked only 5-10 hours a month on it. So I decided to cut many features, ignore some bugs and make the game completely free. I really like Plantcore, but I’m tired of working on it and I don’t want to sell an “unfinished” game.

If you want to get notified on the game’s release (end of October) follow me on Twitter or like Plantcore on Facebook.