Chao Garden

Last week I mentioned hating the story in Sonic Adventure 2. I also mentioned playing through the entire game.

Not only did I play through the entire game, I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing the game afterwords (note: this is the GameCube version) and it was all because of one thing...

The Chao Garden! Today I'm going to dive right into this part of the game, and figure out why I loved it so much and see what I can take from it to make my games better (the point of every post on this blog.)

I like building things. And building a Chao is right up my alley. I'm a sucker for building up something's stats- like in Tony Hawk- and it's just a great way to keep me motivated.

Here's the thing- the actual competitions are actually really stupid. You don't control it. You just watch these blue things run up and down or fight another blue thing. Now that I think about it, it's not fun.

But here's something I still think is awesome- the evolution of Chao. I like how over time they go into a cocoon thing. In Pokemon, I loved "breeding" the Pokemon. When there was an egg, I would just ride around on a bike until it hatched. I'm a sucker for these kinds of things. The idea that something in a game grows older over time and eventually dies is something I really enjoy.

Aww, there's so cute!

I still haven't figured out why I love this so much! I remember that I loved the atmosphere of the gardens. I got into all of the gardens, and had lots of different types of Chao. I liked just running around and just being there.

Damn! How the hell did I like this crap? I even bought a GBA game so I could get special Chao or something. But I didn't even do anything competitive with Chao! This is so weird.

Well, this blog post is failing. I don't even know why I liked it, so how can I relate this to my games?

Well, I'll try to relate it to my games anyway. What if there were a game where you could raise a Chao-like thing, and then it's a platformer? Or it's like an RPG? The reason why I wouldn't want to play the Chao Garden now is because there is no incentive, nothing that all of the training leads up to, no real competition, or at least nothing good enough.

What about an online Chao Garden-like game? Where you raise _____ and then compete against people online that have other _____s in a ______ competition? If you fill in the blanks, you could have something awesome on your hands.

Well, this is the best I can do for this post. Hope I almost did a good job of almost describing how I feel about this game.

Thanks for reading (really, thank you for getting this far.)