Released April 2011 on Facebook, by Playdom / Disney
After shipping City of Wonder, I joined a team challenged with bringing the popular Hidden Object genre of casual games to Facebook. We exceeded all expectations with Gardens of Time, a massive critical and commercial success for Playdom that proved the validity of the genre on social networks.
My contributions to Gardens of Time were varied. I helped redesign the core loop of the game (specifically, the relationship between completing hidden object scenes and decorating your garden), massaged a great deal of the user experience with the help of an excellent UI designer, and crafted some innovative social features which I’m proud to say that our competitors saw fit to copy. I also wrote the first ten chapters of the game’s story — a soap opera-esque tale of corruption and romance across time and space.
Gardens of Time peaked at just over 4 million daily active users (then a new record for Playdom), and an astonishing 17M monthly active users. The title was also honored by receiving the “Best Social Network Game” award at the 2011 GDC Online Choice Awards. I’m incredibly proud of this game, and all of Studio 24 for making it as incredible as it is.
Roles: game designer, user experience designer, writer
Press:
- Gardens of Time is what a Facebook HOG should look like, GameZebo
- “This Year’s Most Popular Facebook Game Wasn’t Made by Zynga”, Kotaku
- Gardens of Time named best social game at GDC Online, GameZebo
Systems Flow:
