DevLog #3 Expanding Your ‘Lot For Steam Next Fest

Greetings Gardeners!

Steam Next Fest is here 🥳 what an exciting year already for gamers (and gardeners). That means it’s time to pick up a spade and dig into the Planted! Demo currently live.

Play with up to 3 other players (or bots) to take on two maps, the Allotment, and the Stadium. For more details check out our previous Dev Log, complete with tutorial!

For those of you wanting to level up your cabbage patch, we’ve got some helpful tips to ensure your producing top notch produce.

Back to Basics

First things first, you’re going to need a shovel and get to digging. Pick a spot to start making some suitable soil and start growing (or pinch a spot in a rival garden).

Once you’ve dug a nice spot, you’ll need something to plant. Grab a bag of seeds and start slamming those veggies into the ground! Wrestle your opponents for the sparse amounts of water around, and be sure to chuck the watering can back into a nearby pond to refill. No watering can? Find a water balloon or bottle to make do!

Water will help grow your veg from measly melons to mighty ones. Make sure the planted ground is fully watered to ensure your ‘lot is healthy so the veg will grow to its maximum watered size. You’ll know when your veg is ready when it begins to pulsate out of the ground.

The last step to making truly magnificent goods is to add fertilizer. Pick up the purple container marked with a very happy sunflower and start spreading it all over your lovely crops. You’ll soon start to see your crops expanding even further past their previous limits until they’re almost bursting out of the ground!

Pro tip: if you’re struggle to grab seeds or want a head start on the competition, you can pre-water and fertilize your soil ahead of planting any veg! Simply pop the veg into the ground and it’ll start growing immediately.

Score!

You’re probably wondering “with all these wonderful options, when’s the best time to sell my goods?” Well we’ve got you covered.

Here’s a full breakdown of how the scoring system works:

Each map has an assigned Low, Medium, and High valued vegetables for you to grow. For example, Carrots on the Allotment are only a Medium value veg. Low Value vegetables have no bonus multiplier, Medium has a 1.5x multiplier, and High has a 4x multiplier.

Vegetables are also scored based on size. All tiers of veg have a minimum point value of 5 right out of the bag, however, watering them grows their worth exponentially!

You can improve these scores further by Super Sizing the produce with fertilizer. And, just to be stylish, there is also a Range modifier, so start practicing those trick shots.

There are more points to be had from sabotaging your competition, whether that's stealing their produce or by hitting them with power up items.

There will be challenges that arise where it’s not about selling the biggest, but the most! Quantity beats quality in this scenario where you'll need to plant, steal, and sell as many as possible. Winning the challenge grants a whopping 200 points on top of the items sold during.

And if you want to keep up to date on future playtests or just want somewhere to plant some memes? Turnip to the DIscord and become part of the Planted! Lottie!