Pip Pepper Park Planner

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Pip Pepper Park Planner is a cozy park-building strategy game in which you play as Pip, a little bird with a big job: designing a public park for a variety of animals to enjoy.

Design and build your own public park, home to a variety of animals with different needs for the park. Explore and customize the design of the park. Use logical deduction to determine how you can make the park safe, inclusive and accessible for all the animals that intend to use the park. Does a perfect solution exist?

🚧 Full Game Credits:

• Anzal Baig (Game Design, Narrative Direction, Writing).
• Jose Luis Pacheco Boscán (Programming, 2D Art, UI/UX Design). 

✨The initial version of this game was developed with ♥ to participate in Just Play Game Jam: A Game Jam for Justice hosted by Cinereach, Anima Interactive and Dreamspace.

🏆 After being selected as a  finalist, on march 9th, 2024, the game was selected as the Grand Prize Winner of the game jam.  Being honored with an additional Design Achievement and participating at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2024' s Creative Industries Expo (Booth 1037) in Austin, Texas from March 10-13th. 

🎯 Demo: This initial demo (now available on Itch.io and on Steam) currently serves as an early Demo of our project.  After the wonderful reception by the public with our early game jam version, the development team is currently developing Pip Pepper Park Planner further as a full upcoming commercial game. 

🖥️⌨️ 🖱️ PC (With Mouse & Keyboard):

• WASD / Arrow Keys to move Pip.
• Mouse movement to change camera direction.
• X key to interact with objects (action button).
• C key to exit dialogue interaction sequences  (exit button).
• Z key to chirp and show the current progress with a planning tables counter (Helper button).
• Space  key to Jump.
• Esc key to pause the game.

While in Selection Sequence (in Planning Tables):

• X key (action button) to confirm and/or undo selected prop.
• C key (exit selection sequence).

💻🎮 PC (With Gamepad):

• Right Joystick moves camera.
• Left Joystick moves Pip.
• Top button is the helper button.
• Bottom button is the jump.
• Left button is the action button (used to interact with NPCs and Planning tables).
• Right button is the exit button.
• Start/Home button to pause the game.

 While in Selection Sequence (in Planning Tables):

• Left button to confirm / undo selected prop.
• DPAD arrows to change props in selection sequence.
• Right button to exit selection sequence.

PS: For Xbox based gamepads, the mentioned "Top, Bottom, Left and Right" buttons correspond to "Y,A,X,B" respectively. For Playstation based gamepads, they correspond to the "AOXO" or "Triangle, Cross, Square, Circle" respectively.

📱 Mobile:

• Mobile Controls are shown on-screen. Tap the screen to advance the dialogue interactions.

Why did we develop this game?  -  #publicspacesare4all!

Designing community spaces that are inclusive to all is important, but doing so in a just and equitable way requires work and community participation. We appreciate this is not easy or straightforward, and through this game we hope to introduce some of the competing interests which can play a role in this process. To create this conflict, we have used principles from moral philosophy to create a world with competing ideologies of justice. We hope this will allow the player to reflect and think critically about their views on community and spatial justice.

We want to empower the player to be decision makers in the game, and through this appreciate the importance of public participation in the creation of public places.

Some of the questions we hope players will ask while playing this game include:

• Is the most just option the one which serves the greatest number of people? Or the one which protects the most vulnerable? 
• How are our physical and public spaces designed to affect our behavior and thought?
• How can these ideas of justice translate into the physical and public spaces of the communities we live in?
• How can we use community planning to make our public places safe, sustainable and accessible for all?

We were inspired by concepts within design and architecture which intersect with ideas of justice. These include architecture designs which aim to alter public behavior (hostile architecture) and the idea that buildings should be designed based solely on their purpose and function (functionalism in architecture). We contrast these urban concepts with ideas of rewilding, heritage and cultural conservation. Our goal is to place the player in the middle of this complex landscape, and allow them to explore these approaches in a specific and interactive context.

By making animals part of the community in our game, we want to question the often anthropocentric focus these discussions have through reframing and empathy. The game also intends to make players reflect, understand, respect the value of diversity, with differences in needs and interests. Lastly, we hope that players will learn about the needs of different animals, and get a glimpse into considering the needs of wildlife when thinking about how land can be used and developed.

Through this game, we engage with UN SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. In particular, we engage with Targets 11.3: Inclusive and sustainable participation, 11.4: Protecting the world's cultural and natural heritage, 11.7: Provide access to safe and inclusive green and public spaces. 

Theme of the Just Play Jam: Storytelling for Justice.

Main theme lenses covered (from the Just Play Toolkit 2023):
Community, Ecology, Spiritual, Technology.

🚧🐤🦌🐁🦑🚧

Thank you for playing our game! We hope you have fun playing it as much as we did creating it! - Jose & Anzal

Some of the references we considered in our creative process:

• "Hostile Architecture": How Public Spaces Keep the Public Out.
• The growth of hostile architecture: how developments in urban design are exacerbating social injustice.
• UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 11.7 : Provide access to safe and inclusive green and public spaces.
• Sandel Michael J. 2009. Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Third-Party assets used in the Game:

Starter Assets - ThirdPerson, Modular Fences Pack, Quirky Series - FREE Animals Pack, Construction Signs Set, Safety Helmet,  Hats Pack URP, Low-Poly Park, DOTWeen, Free Stylized Skybox, Whiteboard, Low Poly Houses Free Pack, Low Poly Park, Low Poly Houses Free Pack, Mix and Jam's Animated TMPro, Button, 3D Cartoon Road Warning Signs, 9t5 Low Poly Playground, Low Poly Environment Park, Book, Low Poly cap, Simple Street Props, Speakers, TreeHouse Overworked, Construction equipment, Construction Vehicles, Tennis racket, Free BGM 1 (Make you fun!), Free BGM 2 (Mining by moonlight - Kevin Macleod), Free BGM 3 (hapiraki mirakuru fouchun).