Lawn Mowing Simulator – Retrospective #7 – Maintenance!

Time to look back at Lawn Mowing Simulator and one of its key features – Maintenance!

Regardless of whether you mow with precision and care or take a… different approach… maintaining your equipment is something that everybody will have to face (to varying degrees!)

So what were the main influences in the LMS implementation of maintenance, and what can we expect from LMS2? As usual, Game Director, Rick Payne is on hand!

Q: We’ve talked about quite a few LMS features in the past few months, but maintenance is a topic that impacts everybody, regardless of their playstyle. I’m guessing that the intention is to encourage players to be a bit more careful in their work, or they’ll end up with higher maintenance fees (and we’ve already talked about collision damage) – but in terms of wear and tear, how did you approach this in the first game?

Rick: Maintenance of equipment is a core part of the real-world routine of a lawncare professional, so we knew early on that it had to become a part of LMS1. But the game isn’t about being a mechanic and servicing equipment – LMS1 is about cutting the grass with other aspects of the game there to support that.

We looked at maintenance as being needed, but also needing to be boiled down to quick interactions that didn’t take the player away from the cutting for too long.

Mowers, like any piece of complex machinery, start to deteriorate through repeated use, fuel gets used up, blades get blunted or damaged. These were the core maintenance aspects we decided on, along with mower damage through collisions.

Some wear and tear is unavoidable, some like collisions… well depending on the player this can be avoided.

Q: So what is the purpose of the feature?

Rick: It’s a couple of things. It’s a part of the economy in the game, and while maintenance costs are generally pretty low for the early-game equipment, it starts to scale up as you buy more expensive equipment.

Importantly, though, it’s not just a passive ‘money sink’ – the player has some agency in the maintenance costs. As you mentioned, we do want to encourage and reward players for taking more care over their work and, I guess, roleplaying as a professional. So if you are careful and you avoid things like collisions or engine overload, your maintenance costs will be lower as a result.

That said, it’s not us telling players how they “should” be playing the game – if you want to speed around and that’s where the fun is for you, no problem. But we’re just trying to mirror what real-life consequences might be in that case!

Q: What about LMS2, then? Any plans to change the fundamental concept or are you pretty happy with how it worked the first time around?

Rick: Game developers are never 100% happy with things. So in LMS2 the systems will remain largely the same, but with subtle tweaks to make them more user friendly.

Aspects like mower damage are being considered in a system we are working on that allows the player to set their own challenge level. So if a player absolutely hates vehicle damage, they could turn it off. But you’ll have to wait until closer to release to find out exactly what we’ve decided to go with!

Just a reminder that we’re still very early in development, so everything is subject to change before we get to release! And don’t forget, if there’s something from the original game you’d like us to talk about, let us know!

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