Team blog: Why we’re making a Kinder World 🌿

Kinder World is a mobile game of houseplants, healing and practicing kindness. ❤️ The game is currently at 114% funded on Kickstarter, so i’m sitting down to write about where the concept came from, and why it’s so important to us.

(Originally posted as an update for Kickstarter backers, cross-posted here.)

— — —
After an incredible first few days on Kickstarter, we wanted to share our reasons and thoughts on creating a kindness-focused game. Make yourself a cup of tea, maybe grab a biscuit, and enjoy a cozy read!

So let’s talk about our ‘why’.

To be direct with you, the goal behind Kinder World is in the name itself: To create a kinder world. ❤️

Big dreams, right? Honestly, we don’t mean this in a lofty or abstract way. Kinder World is designed with wellbeing in mind — yours and ours. It’s important to us that Kinder World actually helps you feel better, and helps us through creating it. There’s something comforting about working on a project where the core pillar we come back to is ‘kindness’. Whenever we design something new for the game, it always comes back to the question: is this in line with our values around kindness? If not, then we change it. Being able to count on this foundation has been valuable especially throughout the past year.

We can honestly say it has been the most fulfilling and joyful work we’ve ever done, and Kinder World players are the absolute best community we have ever served. Thank you so much for showing up with so much love! ❤️

Here are some of the thoughts that led us to where we are today:

Our daily habits drive who we are and what we achieve in our lifetime, and an increase in global kindness is required to survive the challenges ahead.

Imagine doing one kind thing for yourself, and one kind thing for others every day, as a habit.

How different would you be as a person after six months? A year?

How different would the world be if we learn to show daily kindness to others?

This is why we’re making Kinder World, a game that helps you build that self-kindness habit.

Why is a kindness-focused game important?

So many of us (especially my fellow millennials and zoomers) are crying out for ways to just feel a small crumb of relaxation (see: the emergence of ASMR and lo-fi music subcultures), and the rise of wholesome games speaks to that desire. The power fantasy is no longer relevant to many of us; we aren’t looking for emotional rewards that our parents might traditionally associate with games, like mastery, competition or destruction. Instead, we long to feel safe and connected.

We started working on Kinder World because we know just how powerful (and often difficult) it really is to be kind to ourselves. As a team, we’ve always wanted to create relaxing and helpful games, and it’s taken a long time to figure out which exact thing we wanted to focus on. Is it self-care? Is it education for better mental health? So we spent a lot of time and effort researching the area that a game could help the most, and thought about kindness as the intangible, important thing that we’re often lacking in the world.

We put together a hypothesis: the most interesting thing that game design can offer this challenge is a space or experience that helps you to be kind to yourself in a community setting, with the bigger goal of improving the world to be a kinder place.

With your help, we’re creating Kinder World to be a relaxing, mindful moment in your day — like a perfect cup of tea, surrounded by lovely plants in real life. This small feeling of safety, gentleness and connection has a real impact on you — and in turn, the way you treat yourself and others contributes to our vision of a kinder world. We all have things that we are healing from, and feeling like you have companions on that journey is a wonderful thing.

By backing Kinder World, playing the demo and contributing to the community, you are making an impact. Communities are different from friendships, and when living through a pandemic it can be really hard to feel like a part of a kind community. We decided that if we could build a genuine community that reflected our values and were excited by the game, that was our guiding star.

And you did it. We shared the smallest glimpses of the game, our small demo, and folks showed up in the hundreds. Suddenly there was over a thousand people in the Kinder World Discord, practicing gratitude and sharing kind wishes. The community were kind to each other automatically, connected by a desire to be kinder to themselves and have a place to encourage each other. We were floored, and it was clear that we had to make Kinder World a reality.

Every time someone backs us, or shares messages of support and self-kindness in the community, it strengthens our belief that kindness is the core of humanity, and we’re all capable of being kind to each other.

If Kinder World can give you a little spot of brightness and peace in your day, then we’re already pleased. 💚 (Plus; if Samy the samoyed has made you smile, then Mandy is already celebrating!).

Our small team shares a deep passion and belief in the power of small kind moments, so that’s why we’re making a mobile game focused on houseplants, healing and practicing kindness.

So thank you for making Kinder World a reality.

❤️Lauren, Christina and Mandy

Ps. Want to talk about your own self-kindness goals, add kind wishes for us to send to players, or chat with us about houseplants? Join the Kinder World Community Discord, or connect with us on Twitter and Instagram! Please support us on Kickstarter to help us smash those stretch goals!