ptracy.com

creative direction | branding | user experience

Designed, developed, and produced a free-to-play, arcade-like, defense wave shooter game in Unity. I was the sole creator of all aspects of the game with the exception of the music and select sound effects. Launched on September 13, 2020, Machine Gun Gardener features increasingly chaotic battles against hungry farm animals as players progress through timed levels. Players earn weapon and ability upgrades by completing trackable challenges to help protect their crops in this cartoonishly fun farm defense game.

• Use a variety of weapons to save your gardens
• Pick up munitions and bonuses
• Earn upgrades by unlocking achievements
• Defeat a horde of undead animals
• Controller and keyboard support

My Role

I was responsible for all aspects of game design including:

• Core Gameplay Loop
• Branding & Identity
• Marketing
• UI/UX Design
• Level Design
• Modeling, Texturing and Animation
• Music & SFX
• Coding & Development
• Partnerships
• Publishing

Core Gameplay Loop

Machine Gun Gardener’s core gameplay revolves around four basic mechanics:

1. Defending Gardens - The game starts with four gardens to protect. Enemies will try to reduce the health of your gardens by reaching the center and devouring it over time. The higher concentration of enemies to a garden, the faster the rate of damage. When any of the four garden’s health reaches 0%, the game is over.
2. Acquiring Power-UPs - Most Defeated enemies drop power-ups that can help the player temporarily turn the tide as more enemies spawn at increasingly faster rates. Power-ups range from slowing down time to limited time rapid fire.
3. Completing Challenges - As well as defending your gardens, their are hidden challenges and secrets throughout the game. Challenges can be viewed and tracked from the pause menu. Players who complete challenges will receive an in-game alert, unlocking a permanent skill upgrade as a reward.
4. Upgrading Skills - Upgrades range from faster weapon cooldown times, more overall speed, quicker healing, unlimited special weapon use, to starting the game with additional bombs and defensive units.
5. Game Modes - As players unlock upgrades, they will be able to progress further in the two available modes: Garden Defense and Horde. While Horde Mode can be completed and is considered the end of the game, Garden Defense offers endless waves of enemies, gradually increasing in numbers for maximum chaos.

Branding & Identity

I set out to create a bright, fun, colorful identity that was memorable but also gave a voice to the adorably wacky and playful nature of the game.

Marketing

The goal was to get the word out that I was making a game. I did this by setting up a separate studio account to genuinely engage early and often with as many indie game developers as possible to grow an audience. Instagram was my primary starting point because I was already following indie game content on my personal account and was most familiar with the platform, posting format, and techniques expected of creators in that space.
Strategy:

• Create a separate Instagram account specifically for game development
• Follow only other game developers who shared the same passion for game development
• Comment by leaving encouraging words or constructive feedback on posts and content that speak to you
• @Mention other developer’s accounts in your Stories & Reels by calling out great work
• Play everyone’s games
• Reach out and comment on their game page as well
• Post about your progress, lifestyle (as a game dev), and tutorials you learn along the way
• Advertise by placing your ad at the end of each tutorial
• Design trailers, ket art and supporting assets to display on your social sites and game pages

UI/UX Design

Level Design

Originally intended as a browser-based game, optimization was naturally a huge factor in development. To streamline performance, levels containing stationary objects were textured to look like they were lit including the ground and trees. These objects did not require lighting computation or shadows to be calculated as they were all either permanently drawn into the ground texture, or sides of objects were textured to look shaded. This leaves the player weapon and enemies to be dynamically lit and cast shadows. As enemy spawn numbers increase by the minute, lighting and shadow calculations increase exponentially, making it imperative to optimize everywhere else.

Modeling, Texturing and Animation

Music & SFX

I sourced royalty-free sound effects from FreeSound.org and music from the YouTube Audio Library. To record custom foley, I used my iPhone running the QuickVoice app. Audacity was my free go-to program for editing audio.

Coding & Development

To build Machine Gun Gardener, I used the Unity game engine along with Visual Studio Code, and scripts written in C#.

I employed a variety of systems to manage levels, characters, and data throughout the gameplay experience.

I learned how to implement third party SDKs to deploy leaderboards, achievement badges, and monetizeation via rewarded video ads across the Newgrounds and CrazyGames networks.

Partnerships

On October 6th, 2022, Machine Gun Gardener was featured in Super Raregame's Mix Tape Volume 4. A hand-curated selection of 30 games from grassroots indie developers, featured on a USB shaped like a tape cassette, for plug 'n' play use on any Windows PC or laptop.

Publishing

In less than four years since launch (September 2020 to July 2024), Machine Gun Gardner has been played over 222K times, with an average rating of 8.71/10 from over 7K voters, 164 comments, a click-thru rate of 0.48%, and has been downloaded over 1.2K times across Itch.io, Newgrounds, and CrazyGames.

• Itch.io
• Newgrounds
• Crazy Games