Matthew Bradley

Beans
The currency in Gliss is Beans. Players begin with a set number of Beans to spend at the Gliss Garden Centre. Players can exchange their Beans for new seeds or fully grown plants. Seeds are much cheaper than fully grown plants but take time and effort to grow. When growing plants from seeds the player has the opportunity to shape the growth and sound whereas pre-bought plants have already established audio.

A few Beans are given every few days to enable garden upkeep. Additional Beans can be earned by growing plants to sell or harvest.

Beat-sensitive plants
While visiting the Garden Centre players will notice some unique seeds available for planting. These seeds grow into plants with customisable rhythms. When the seed has been planted the player taps on the roots to a desired beat. As the plant is growing it will represent the player’s assigned beat. It can then be adjusted in the same way as any other plant.

Growth over time
The most unique feature of Gliss is the way the music develops, or grows, over time. By auto-saving the date and time at the beginning and end of each session the time spent out of the game world can be measured. This value can then be used to calculate the amount of growth for each plant.

Free mode
If players just want to create a piece of music with Gliss they can do so in the free mode where there is no currency or limit on what plants can be acquired.

Record your garden
As your garden grows, so does your music, so in Gliss the life of your garden can be recorded and saved to listen to at a later date.

The online social aspect of Gliss is a major feature. Players will be able to play co-operatively by growing gardens together enabling groups of friends to collaborate on a piece of music.

There is also the ability to upload and share your own gardens, explore other users’ uploaded gardens, gift seeds to your friends, and download new music sample packs.

Gliss uses stylised abstract art direction inspired by Japanese graphic artist Baiyon. It is important that the art is clearly legible on the iPhone’s hand-held screen.

Concepts (click for larger):

Last updated 06.07.2010