Beautiful game. I love the sprites and animations, and the sound effects fit very well. I urge you to add more levels post-jam, this already amazing game could be even better!
If you had just realized this a tiny bit earlier and started to wrap up what you had. A little intro and ending would've done the trick. Level amount and mechanics were all juicy enough - even if you had to perhaps cut one level/mechanic.
Overall it looks, sounds, plays and feels good enough to me. Lots of stars shall rain either way.
The only thing I would wish for in a final version would be short hops (jump low for a tap, normal height for a hold) as well as respawning seeds instead of being forced into a level reset.
very peaceful game, makes me feel serene. graphics reminded me of Mother 3, very colorful and simple. could have been a very solid entry if you had started in time!
Great work, its a lovely art style with great animation. Absolutely solid platformer execution; the controls feel good and responsive, jumping and landing are satisfying, nice non-intrusive tutorial elements, rich sound effects and a very fitting soundtrack. Amazing job!
One of the best entries. Love the mechanics, the art, the music. However, I'm sad to say the third level frustrated me to the point of quitting. I couldn't get the second beanstalk to grow in a way I could go up it. I really would have prefered a plant that grows straight up and places leaves sideways in climbable distances, or that the beanstalk will pause in a position where you could reach it if you grew it sideways. If you fix it, I would love to give this another go.
nice, I would've liked to play more but the jerking camera gave me an headache. If you do a post jam where you just center the camera or do more subtle easing I'll be back to finish it. Other than that still a great game! (From what I've seen :))
Amazing game. Not many complaints about this one. Tight innovative mechanics, great artstyle, fitting music. One slight thing that i dont like is the landing sound - its way to bassy, way too loud, way too annoying to hear it all the time.
Wow there's so much to love about this entry. Charming graphics, innovative gameplay and mechanics, nice soundtrack. Shame it ended where it did. Love the addition of the sandbox mode at the end though. Top notch entry!
Wow! This is fantadtic game! Like the graphics and audio in this game. Game mechanic looks very cool level design useing it with interesting puzzles. Nice job, man!
I like it. Very good art style and smooth animations. My only gripe is the jump behaviour, because it's not executed sometimes which causes me falling down pits when I wanted to jump but the character didn't...
I'd love to be able to cancel growing if i realize i've done the wrong thing. I know the short levels kind of achieves this, but it'd be nice to have a way to restart a seed if i know its going wrong (especially for the platform and tunnel seeds).
Fun, looks great. Just wish controlling the bean stalk was a bit easier? Slower? That the tiles were more obvious maybe? Maybe if you could land on the leaves it would avoid the off by one tile reset the level issue. Excellent concept.
Great entry, nice graphics and good mechanics. The only part that bothers me is to have to reset the level if you do something wrong. It cuts the gameflow a lot. Maybe if the player could rollback what he does or if the level design was a bit more adapted (climbing on the green growing beens instead of jumping on it a la Plant Cat), it could help.
this is a very well polished game, well done! the animation was lovely and i really enjoyed the mechanics. i did find the camera movement a little jarring.
I would have continued playing. The game has great atmosphere, and I bet the mechanics would have led to some really cool puzzles if you guys had had the time.
Though, if the game and puzzles got harder, I can imagine being annoyed by having to restart every-time a mistake was made... Maybe some kind of undo mechanic would have been nice?
Overall very polished, and good clean fun. Great entry -- I'll rate it highly.
Just super impressive work. Beautiful art, beautiful music, and an impressive bunch of mechanics. I only wish the beanstalk moved more slowly. Amazing all around!
J
Jwatt19 Dec 2015, 16:12
I wonder what kind of unrealistic expectations you had if you call this "unfinished", it's an order of magnitude more finished than most entries. This actually utilizes the mechanics pretty thoroughly, and as a package stands out from the average game. Real good job all around.
Next time consider that not everyone has a qwerty keyboard, i have a qwertz keyboard, making my fingers hurt because y and z are swapped, would have been nice if y would do the same as z.
Also tried with the tunnel seed if the portal "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out" thing applies, if you will be working on it after jam consider adding this, i can imagine some awesome puzzles with it!
Cute puzzle game about planting seeds to progress. Love the art style. All the plant types had interesting uses. I found the pipe flower to be the most interesting.
Really frustrating to have to restart the level when you grow a platform just a little too high for my jump range. But I like what you're trying to do here with the theme. Nice job.
Beautiful game especially knowing that it was started a day late. The various seed types and levels added a lot to the game and kept me playing until the end. Solid game!
Hey Larry, I don't know if you'd be interested, (or if anyone reading this is) but I speed-ran Enliven in 1:28.069. If you'd like, try beating my time.
Here are some tips:
-In level one, skip the first two and last leaf sprout, also at the end were you use the flower to boost yourself up, jump immediately after planting it. (The game spawns a static, invisible platform before the sprouting animation is over)
- In level two, pretty much play as normal, but try falling closer to the end of the level. The loading zone is actually slightly taller than the log, so you can land on top of it.
-In level three, after acquiring the first seed, build stairs until you reach the second seed, then start to build a ladder. (It's okay if you make a step un-climbable) Now jump to the second platform, second seed in hand, and plant it. At this point, if you created any un-climbable step in the ladder, intersect the current vine with the old one at the step in question, and finish the ladder.
-In the third level, blow up the first barrier, and then run to the red seed. This next part is important, do NOT pick up the flower, it will only slow you down. To avoid it, stand on the very right of the stump, and jump up and as far right as possible. Now jump to the platform with the second barrier and plant the seed. Make one relatively small step, and then go up and above the barrier to the right. Connect with the bomb platform, and finish the stage as normal.
-And for the last level, the only real trick is that when you pick up the first portal plant, just hold the right button.
If you read all that cutos to you, and I hope you find some cool glitches/exploits.
Really nice game! I enjoyed the graphics and sound.
The camera movement was a bit weird. Also, when I tried to put a seed down with the X key in a bad place, a white "X" popped up, which was confusing at first. I thought I had to keep pressing X.
What a special game. First off the art and sound are really nice and pleasant, it's a world that I want to be in. The game mechanics are so clever! The effects of the seeds are incredibly clever and cause for some great puzzles. I also love the way the game controls. There is so much potential with this idea and I would love to see a full game made. This is so impressive, especially since you guys started a day late! I am so impressed. Amazing job! :D
Wow, this is an awesome entry! Even if it is considered "incomplete" I think it does a great job introducing the mechanics and providing some interesting puzzles to solve. I would definitely play more levels of this.
My only critique of the gameplay is that I wish that the "bridge" plant would grow slightly slower, or perhaps that the jump was just slightly higher -- I found myself creating steps for the bridge that were just slightly too high to jump onto, and needing to reset a couple of times due to this.
Overall an awesome job, I quite like the art/animation and the music. Congrats!
Very nice! Even though you started late, it's quite a well polished game :) Took me a second to understand the 'make platforms' seed, but figuring it out was part of the fun.
Great, very polished entry! very lovely little platformer, the only downside is the lack of being able to undo beanstalk planting. Also took me forever to figure out how beanstalks worked in the first place
This was great, the introduction of the various plants worked really well for me and I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of it. The graphics were nice and all the platforming worked well, great entry!
That was absolutely beautiful. The soundtrack was AMAZING. The levels were awesome, and the mechanics were great. One of the top 3 entries I've played as of yet.
Very inventive puzzle platformer. It took me a little while to figure out that you could control the vine plant, and aside from accidentally making the vines too tall most of the mechanics were good fun to use. It's quite easy to jump out of the level in the last area though using the starting flower, which was a little frustrating but not too bad.
I loved your art style and I felt the music added quite a lot to the game, although some of the sound effects were a little loud/bassy. I like your animations, they add quite a lot to the game's cutesy feel!
Just incredible artwork/animations, and the overall sound design fits together really well. Only real issue I had: I wish I could recycle plants if I misplaced them. Always having to restart the level when I mess up was a tiny bit annoying.
Very nice mood and mechanics. Love your animations too. Sadly, I could not get past the third level, getting the seeds to grow properly was too error prone and tedious.
It's a good game, and it definitely has the potential to be a great game with just a little tuning to the mechanics and level design.
Certain aspects of it felt extremely unforgiving to me - the rapid movement of the growing vine combined with the extremely short jump height was especially aggravating. Something about the constant restarting led to a sense of frustration that didn't really fit with the mellow atmosphere of the game. Maybe a checkpoint system would help?
Still, it's a really solid entry and the balance issues are understandable given the time constraints.
Awesome pixel art, great music, and cool game mechanics, I love it! Though it's a bit too hard for me, especially the beanstakes are growing too fast. The growing theme is moderately used, but there are definitely more than two buttons. One of the best games of LD34!
I really liked this game! The puzzles were neat and the controls were good, the graphics were really good too! Great job, I hope you finish it later! :)
Comments106
I like the concept using the seeds as helpers to reach some places.
Cool art, controls and mechanics. sooo good : )
Overall it looks, sounds, plays and feels good enough to me. Lots of stars shall rain either way.
The only thing I would wish for in a final version would be short hops (jump low for a tap, normal height for a hold) as well as respawning seeds instead of being forced into a level reset.
also I found a secret lonebot!!! http://i.imgur.com/DOwa3xF.png
However, I'm sad to say the third level frustrated me to the point of quitting.
I couldn't get the second beanstalk to grow in a way I could go up it.
I really would have prefered a plant that grows straight up and places leaves sideways in climbable distances, or that the beanstalk will pause in a position where you could reach it if you grew it sideways.
If you fix it, I would love to give this another go.
love the animations and gameplay
The art, graphics and mood (music and colour choice) really fit well together, great job!
Thanks for your game!
Like the graphics and audio in this game. Game mechanic looks very cool level design useing it with interesting puzzles. Nice job, man!
I'd love to be able to cancel growing if i realize i've done the wrong thing. I know the short levels kind of achieves this, but it'd be nice to have a way to restart a seed if i know its going wrong (especially for the platform and tunnel seeds).
The only part that bothers me is to have to reset the level if you do something wrong. It cuts the gameflow a lot.
Maybe if the player could rollback what he does or if the level design was a bit more adapted (climbing on the green growing beens instead of jumping on it a la Plant Cat), it could help.
Great entry anyway!
There's so many details in the character animation.
Very well done!
i did find the camera movement a little jarring.
Though, if the game and puzzles got harder, I can imagine being annoyed by having to restart every-time a mistake was made... Maybe some kind of undo mechanic would have been nice?
Overall very polished, and good clean fun. Great entry -- I'll rate it highly.
Next time consider that not everyone has a qwerty keyboard, i have a qwertz keyboard, making my fingers hurt because y and z are swapped, would have been nice if y would do the same as z.
Also tried with the tunnel seed if the portal "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out" thing applies, if you will be working on it after jam consider adding this, i can imagine some awesome puzzles with it!
Do wish I didn't have to restart when messing up.
Here are some tips:
-In level one, skip the first two and last leaf sprout, also at the end were you use the flower to boost yourself up, jump immediately after planting it. (The game spawns a static, invisible platform before the sprouting animation is over)
- In level two, pretty much play as normal, but try falling closer to the end of the level. The loading zone is actually slightly taller than the log, so you can land on top of it.
-In level three, after acquiring the first seed, build stairs until you reach the second seed, then start to build a ladder. (It's okay if you make a step un-climbable) Now jump to the second platform, second seed in hand, and plant it. At this point, if you created any un-climbable step in the ladder, intersect the current vine with the old one at the step in question, and finish the ladder.
-In the third level, blow up the first barrier, and then run to the red seed. This next part is important, do NOT pick up the flower, it will only slow you down. To avoid it, stand on the very right of the stump, and jump up and as far right as possible. Now jump to the platform with the second barrier and plant the seed. Make one relatively small step, and then go up and above the barrier to the right. Connect with the bomb platform, and finish the stage as normal.
-And for the last level, the only real trick is that when you pick up the first portal plant, just hold the right button.
If you read all that cutos to you, and I hope you find some cool glitches/exploits.
The camera movement was a bit weird. Also, when I tried to put a seed down with the X key in a bad place, a white "X" popped up, which was confusing at first. I thought I had to keep pressing X.
Nice Job!
Amazing ._.
My only critique of the gameplay is that I wish that the "bridge" plant would grow slightly slower, or perhaps that the jump was just slightly higher -- I found myself creating steps for the bridge that were just slightly too high to jump onto, and needing to reset a couple of times due to this.
Overall an awesome job, I quite like the art/animation and the music. Congrats!
very lovely little platformer, the only downside is the lack of being able to undo beanstalk planting. Also took me forever to figure out how beanstalks worked in the first place
Well... Great game. And very creative, too. Just beautiful.
unbelievably good game
I mean, maybe you just didn't had time to make more levels, but the game core's is there.
It's a fantastic job and one of the best I've seen here.
I loved your art style and I felt the music added quite a lot to the game, although some of the sound effects were a little loud/bassy. I like your animations, they add quite a lot to the game's cutesy feel!
Overall a very polished entry, great job! :)
Only real issue I had: I wish I could recycle plants if I misplaced them. Always having to restart the level when I mess up was a tiny bit annoying.
Certain aspects of it felt extremely unforgiving to me - the rapid movement of the growing vine combined with the extremely short jump height was especially aggravating. Something about the constant restarting led to a sense of frustration that didn't really fit with the mellow atmosphere of the game. Maybe a checkpoint system would help?
Still, it's a really solid entry and the balance issues are understandable given the time constraints.
One of the best games of LD34!