Project GROW TYCOON

GROW TYCOON is a web-based strategic base-building game based around establishing and building an illegal marijuana-growing operation in a fictional county in North California. Players will build bases to produce wealth which will be used in a both an NPC- and player-driven economy.

Work will begin on GROW TYCOON not long after I complete my current project, the web-based gamebook engine WOTAN.

CONCEPTS

Grow Tycoon is a turn-based base-building game, where players control indoor illegal cannabis-growing operations. The game map will be split into zones, which will be represented as a city block, with a thick layer of rural/forestland on outside edges representing the country outside of town.

There are two levels of bases planned which players can own and build: the afore-mentioned "indoor op" and a rural outdoor operation which will provide bigger yields but introduce some form of PVP. Both types of settlements will be subject to "attack" by game-controlled bots, i.e. the Police.

The outdoor farm bases will exist in the semi-wilderness area behind the player houses. These are planned to be more complex and difficult to manage than the house bases which will be where players start the game. Much of this will come from the fact that they will be open for PVP gameplay and be able to produce much larger yields. However, at their later stages the houses will be able to become highly specialized and produce low yields of extremely high quality marijuana. So at the highest levels of play, there will be an element of choice of quality vs. quantity.

I have no plans to make houses available for PVP, as I want to encourage PVE as well, and creating this dichotomy will allow players with both preferences to have a good time.

Each game turn will last seven real minutes (do the math to find the joke) and will be a CRON-based world-event, as is typical.

I am planning that all equipment to start and upgrade the grow operations will come from NPC stores, however there will be a (hopefully) vibrant player-driven economy in the form of the seed auction house. The main impetus of the game will derive from the hybridizing of strains of cannabis. All settlement growth will be shaped by what strains are available and it will be driven by the desire for newer and better strains. I haven't decided yet on whether to create a player economy for the end product of marijuana, as it I foresee it having no benefit to the settlement other than generating revenue.

Strains will be given preference by players based on game constraints; some strains may be favored for being more weather tolerant, some may produce bigger cannabis buds, some better for hash or even some strains could be favored for specific therapeutic (i.e. medicinal) properties. The list will continue to grow and shrink until I come up with a core set of game mechanics.

At this time, because this project is not planned to be started until 2011, I plan on writing it to take advantage of HTML 5 and the interaction between canvas and javascript. The fundamental game will be created in PHP with a MySQL InnoDB database structure.