Creating My Own Video Game
I grew up with dirt under my nails and stories in my head.
Afternoons I’d write down every fern, beetle or mushroom I could find in the garden.
Nights I’d draw the same plants with goofy faces and give them secret lives (not well by the way, I’m no artist).
Those two habits, loving real nature and making up worlds, never felt far apart.
Then one day I saw a video of people making games and thought, “maybe a game could put those things together.”
The Concept: A Martian Greenhouse Adventure
The idea is simple: you are in charge of a greenhouse on Mars.
Your job is to grow food so the colonists don’t starve.
Sounds cool, right?
But Mars isn’t a park. Dust storms roll in without warning, darkening solar panels.
Temperatures swing from hot to freezing fast enough to melt ice in a second.
Water is a luxury, and you have to recycle every drop.
Because of that you have to plan ahead.
Build a wind‑breaker before the next storm, put heaters on the seed trays, and make sure the water filters keep running.
If you forget one thing the crops die.
The garden also grows as you do.
You think you’re just planting lettuce, but the greenhouse will become a whole ecosystem.
You’ll unlock new seeds, learn how to cross‑breed tougher plants and finally get a dome that looks more like an Earth forest than a cold lab.
Some people describe it as “Clash of Clans meets a science museum on Mars.”
It’s a mix of building stuff and figuring out the best way to keep plants alive when the sky is red.
The Real‑Life Component: Growing Plants at Home
The game isn’t only about pixels.
When you hit big milestones (like building a second habitat or surviving three storms in a row) you get an actual packet of seeds in the mail!
Picture this: you just saved a virtual carrot from a dust storm, then later you open a box with real carrot seeds on your kitchen counter.
Those seeds aren’t just a cute reward.
They’re meant to push you out of the chair and into the garden.
Plant the basil you earned, watch it sprout under a lamp and realize the same rules you used on Mars apply here: water right, light right, nutrients right.
In that way the game tries to teach you a real skill.
Instead of just clicking “harvest,” you actually learn how to water, how soil works and why temperature matters.
It may sound like a marketing gimmick but the hope is that people end up caring more about plants after they see a living sprout they earned.
Challenges and Learning the Ropes
Making a game by myself isn’t easy.
First I had to learn how to code, how to design menus and how to draw every plant in 3‑D.
I hired an artist from Fiverr…three models for each leaf type…because I needed anything that looked different when it was healthy versus wilting.
Balancing realism with fun took a lot of trial and error.
A seed can’t grow from zero to full size in five seconds or it feels fake; but if it takes weeks the player loses interest.
So I set growth times that feel quick yet still reward good planning.
The progression system needed work too.
Every new greenhouse module costs stuff like Martian rock dust, recycled water or synthetic fertilizer.
When you finally unlock the seed‑collector you can gather pollen, trade it or use it to make hybrid plants that survive colder nights.
I also added a “plant death” timer so you can’t just forget a bed and let it rot forever.
Your crops will get sick or dry out if you don’t check on them often enough.
Random dust storms shake things up; sometimes you have to shut down power for a few minutes or cover the windows with emergency shields.
Testing all that took forever, I ran the game many times, changed numbers, watched where I got stuck and tried again.
Now the biggest work left is polishing UI buttons, fixing weird physics bugs when a robot arm moves a pot, and adding soft background sounds.
What’s Next?
Right now I’m tweaking how cross‑pollination works.
I want players to be able to mix two plant types and get realistic offspring…maybe a tomato that tolerates extra cold because it inherited genes from a hardy lettuce?
At the same time I’m setting up the seed‑shipping side of things.
That means contacting seed companies, building an automatic email that tells you when your package is on the way and making the in‑game notification feel exciting instead of just “You earned seeds.”
The whole point is two‑fold: make a game that’s deep enough to keep nerdy strategists hooked, and get people outside their screens planting real herbs on a windowsill.
If someone is watching their digital lettuce under Olympus Mons while also feel useful to water a real basil sprout – that’s the win.
So keep your eyes peeled for updates, and maybe start clearing a spot on your desk for a pot.
When the mail comes with those tiny green promises, you’ll see that even on the harshest planet life can find a way, if we give it intention and care.
Updated September 3rd 2025: I’ve had to table this project until I can get enough money to hire a proper developer.
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