A touching (grass) story

Disclaimer: This game has been created within 7 days during the Questpresso Game-Jam 2025. As it is the case with Game-Jams, we had to change and partially scrap many things originally planed. Since we wanted to show both the ideal result as well as the final result, the first part of this page will give an insight into the ideal and planned version of the game including concepts for the world building and more. The second part will be a reflection on the game we created, what went well and what didn't. There are no AI-generated assets or texts in this game. Instructions:

C - open camera (please press "C" after the initial dialog in order to use the camera and make sure the bugs work without any bugs)

F - zoom

Enter - take photo

Tab - open book

LMB - interact

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Imagine you could capture the beauty encapsulated within every frame of a Studio Ghibli movie.

„A touching (grass) story" combines the beautiful aesthetic of Ghibli with the engaging gameplay formula of games like Pokémon Snap or Season: A letter to the future.

During the warm summer months you visit your dad in the quiet village he grew up in. He hands you his old camera and notebook and tells stories about ancient bug creatures that have protected this region for ages . The garden right in front of his house is alluringly beautiful, inviting you to capture its beauty and its secrets with the old polaroid camera he gave you.

Can you find the ways to lure out those mysterious bug creatures to complete your dad's old notebook?

Gameplay:

In „A touching (grass) story" you will explore a beautiful garden with a wide array of mysterious bugs to photograph in a captivating first-person perspective. Every bug has its own habitat and individual conditions under which they show themselves to you. While figuring out ways to get them in front of your lens, you uncover parts of you fathers past and the secrets the land holds.

Main Features: 

- Non-linear and curiosity driven gameplay.

- Uncover the past: Piece by piece you'll find out about your dads past, the garden itself and the bug creatures themselves.

- Engaging puzzles: By exploring the garden you'll uncover ways to progress in your quest to photograph every bug creature.

- Highly interactive: Through a photography-centered gameplay approach everything in the game world becomes yours to discover and capture.

Reflecting on the final game:

In this section we want to reflect on the final result and the development process. We managed to implement many of the core gameplay features , that is photographing bug creatures within a garden landscape with different conditions that have to be met to do so. 

Creating a notebook where photos could be stored turned out easier than expected and poses a nice quality of life feature. A primary concern regarding the first person perspective and the 3D art-style has been the landscape around the garden itself, which also turned out surprisingly well, giving the game a nice sense of scale and immersion.  The mechanic of taking photos itself also feels very good, though could have used a little more time in order to polish the camera asset and fix some bugs (pun very much intended). 

An area we struggled with in general due to the time-restrains were the assets themselves and especially the implementation of the puzzle features. For example, it was planed that the player is able to pick up certain objects and place them at specific points in the map (including hints in the writing) to uncover some of the bugs. Those varied in complexity and should have resulted in the world changing due to player action. The implementation of the writing and text in general had to be cut in major ways. We include a text document within the ZIP folder you find the game in that contains all of the original writing including descriptions of where it was supposed to be placed.

Another huge cut had to been made regarding the graphics and the art style. While we originally opted for a strongly toon-shaded, water-color art style inspired by Studio Ghibli movies, we ultimately opted for a simpler, low-poly art style since we didn't have the time to figure out an efficient way of implementing a shader. Now the game features a nostalgic PS2 aesthetic...

Despite the cuts that had to been made we are very happy with the final game and had a lot of fun putting it together. From the brainstorming of the idea to the last polishes, working together on that project has been enriching in a multitude of ways.

Biggest regret though: Too many missed opportunities for „bug"-puns.

Credits:

Andreh Samaan: Code and technical implementation

Jonas Heinke: Code and  technical implementation

Leon Noel Micheel: World-building, Structure  and Writing

Lukas Krieg: World-building, Map  and 3D-assets

Additional Textures:    https://www.flickr.com/groups/1695332@N23/pool/rubyblossom/

UI:     https://alonix.itch.io/book-ui

3D-assets:   POLYGON - Farm Pack by Synty Studios