Type: Solo
Project Length: 3 Weeks
Skills:
Tools:
What was the goal?
This was an assignment for an economics class, where the goal was to redo or add an economy system to an existing game. Being one of my favourite games, and one with a very robust economy, I decided to revamp the economy of Stardew Valley. My goal was to enhance the current player progression, as I found the current one resulted in a very slow early-game, leading into a very big jump in the late game where the player has no incentive to interact with other facets of the game, other than what is most profitable to them.
What was the output?
I ended up designing a dynamic supply and demand economy system, where the player selling more items causes the prices of those items to drop, while letting the market starve causes the items to be in demand again and go back up. The prices would also get affected by seasonal changes, like summer crops selling for more when it isn't summer, and yearly changes to different industries.
I also designed many different ways the economy would be communicated to the player, like in game TV shows and newsletters, and created concepts for each! Each design decision I took was based on the design pillar of making the player diversify their sources of income, which is what the dynamic prices for every item achieves.
Takeaways
Designing this system taught me a lot about game economies, as well as adhering to design pillars. I feel like each design decision I made with the system all helped my system achieve the goal I wanted with it, and solved the problems I saw with the design. It also helped me refresh my Excel skills.
