A puzzle game about... Growing Sakura. You have a hexagonal field and a few sakura buds on it. Clicking on the buds you make sakura branches to grow. The branches grow according to specefic rules, that sometimes makes the game is very difficult. The goal is to cover all hexes of the field.
To play run "bin/GS.exe" (for Windows) and either "bin/GS-x86" or "bin/GS-x86_64" (for Linux)
If it don't want to run on Windows - try to install OpenAL and VCRedist2008 from "_CommonRedist" folder.
On Linux you may need to install OpenAL and libMPG123.
Your progress will be saved automatically in the "save.txt" file. Sorry, it saves only which levels were solved, not solutions.
HOW TO PLAY (the best is to click the HELP button in the game)
You have a hexagonal field and a few buds on it. Click on the root bud makes 3 branches. Click on the branch bud by the left mouse button makes "Y" fork. Click on the branch bud by the right mouse button makes "I" fork. Branches don't grow if the corresponding hex is already occupied. Hint: clicking the buds in the right order is very important. The goal is to cover all the hexes.
There are 40 levels. Some of them are really HARD. Also I'm not sure about quality of the last levels. I had not so many time to carefully check them.
Hey folks, what do you think about big remake of this game for PC and mobile? Please write your thoughts in the comments.
Enjoy!
Updates: Dec 19 2015. Built the game additionally for Linux and uploaded it onto Itch.io
At first I thought it's a trivially simple game, but once you realize how hard and unpredictable it can become, it turns out to be a clever and unique puzzle. Great one!
I'm not a fan of puzzle games so I quit it on 5th level but I won't criticize it with my personal choices because the game looks beautiful. I like the fact that I could undo anytime and how the flowers blossomed when I win. Puzzle mechanics are in place I guess. You nailed it I'd say. Why not a mobile game from this?
I'm not sure that I fully took in the instructions and the concepts. However the levels a was able to beat was very fun. I like the look and the sound of the game as well. Great stuff.
Awesome game! One of my favorites :) The gfx look nice, especialy the win-animation. The sounds are fitting and have some kind of "eastern"/japanese sound :) It was a nice experience to play the game!
It took me some time to get used to the controls, but once I did I really enjoyed your game.
Did you used some mathematical property of hexes to design your levels or just kind of threw them out and checked if they where solvable. I'm asking because I did this thing where I would look for a side and encircle as much as possible(maybe branching in once or twice), then either repeat or work it from the inside to the outside and finally fill whatever remained(here's an example http://imgur.com/0rFyrzH). At the same time there were other levels that I simply couldn't crack that way and took me more tinkering.
I'm not sure if there's an underlaying principle, it's a good heuristic or it was just coincidence(plus some perception bias from my part hehe).
Seriously though great game, great puzzles, great graphics, great everything ^_^ I really enjoyed this. And I've added it to my play later folder so I can try to beat all the levels.
2orion_black: For the most puzzles I just tried to solve random configurations by C++ solver written for this game. And then for solvable ones further developed it to finish state making small changes and handled the level by hand.
I think levels may be more complex and cannot be solved by simple strategy. But the current levels do not illustrate all possible variety because they were made in just one day.
Yeah it's definitely a game that i could see on mobile devices. It's pretty fun to play and different from typical logic games. Gameplay is entertaining and difficulty curve is just right.
Fantastic puzzle!! I definitely think you should make a polished version of this - I can see people really enjoying it on mobile and PC. I'm amazed that you have 40 levels!
Looks very good and is fun to play, if only for a short while. It can become mildly frustrating if you get backed into a corner a lot. Got through the first 3 relatively easily. A simple mechanic done well, and that's not super easy.
I couldn't get the game to work. I'm running Windows 10 and ran Bin/GS.exe. The game loaded, but the only button that worked was the Level 1 link! Clicking the filled hexagon didn't do anything (left and right click), and neither did clicking the help.
I don't see anyone else here commenting with a problem so maybe I did something wrong :( It's too bad, because I wanted to play! It looks like a unique puzzle game.
Also, the Logs/Console don't seem to display any errors...
2BoxedMeatRevolution It's possible that the game works with fps much less than 60 on Win10. The game detects clicks checking mouse button state on two consecutive frames; for low fps you may make the click between frames and the game won't detect it. Try to press mouse buttons slowly (hold and release it with some delay).
From my side I'll try to fix the problem if I find an access to a Win10 machine.
Very well done. The game's difficult from the start, and, unlike what I'd expect from abstracted mechanics, actually feels a bit like I'm growing a plant.
The game's definitely difficult from the start, and might benefit from a slightly gentler curve up front (first 4-6 levels) - something simple to introduce the mechanics and mode of thinking you'd need for the rest of the game. The first level is good for this, but it might've been good to keep a tutorialish feel going until level 4.
That said, the save feature does allow the player to put the game down for a while and pick it back up with a fresh mind, which is excellent for this genre.
As far as I've played it, the game seems well designed and certainly feels very smooth to play.
I'm only about half way through, but I'd better vote now in case I don't finish it before the voting period runs out! It's really wonderful. Clever rules and excellent puzzle design. Some nice hard puzzles. It's impressive how many levels you designed. (I understand you used a solver to speed up the level design - it's a clever way to make lots of content in a short amount of time.) Very nice presentation too. A most enjoyable and memorable game, well done.
Surprisingly fun game. Still can't believe you made 40 levels - excellent work! Only issue I had was that the controls were slightly annoying when trying to go down a path.
I love hexagonal grid and puzzle game, so this is great ! I don't see yet how to solve hard levels, but I will come back to this. Keep up the good work
Comments46
+ Very interesting and original concept
+ Cool art and sound
+ Hard to solve
+ Simple and elegant
Con:
- A bit hard to understand at the begging, but didn't take long to get it
Obs:
o Loved the puzzles!
Awesome work!
Your game is awesome as always =) LoA is still my favourite though.
The gfx look nice, especialy the win-animation. The sounds are fitting and have some kind of "eastern"/japanese sound :)
It was a nice experience to play the game!
Did you used some mathematical property of hexes to design your levels or just kind of threw them out and checked if they where solvable. I'm asking because I did this thing where I would look for a side and encircle as much as possible(maybe branching in once or twice), then either repeat or work it from the inside to the outside and finally fill whatever remained(here's an example http://imgur.com/0rFyrzH). At the same time there were other levels that I simply couldn't crack that way and took me more tinkering.
I'm not sure if there's an underlaying principle, it's a good heuristic or it was just coincidence(plus some perception bias from my part hehe).
At any rate, a remake sounds like a good idea.
Seriously though great game, great puzzles, great graphics, great everything ^_^ I really enjoyed this. And I've added it to my play later folder so I can try to beat all the levels.
I think levels may be more complex and cannot be solved by simple strategy. But the current levels do not illustrate all possible variety because they were made in just one day.
I didn't always get how the thing will split. An indicator would've been great but well, we all know that the time was fairly limited.
I don't see anyone else here commenting with a problem so maybe I did something wrong :( It's too bad, because I wanted to play! It looks like a unique puzzle game.
Also, the Logs/Console don't seem to display any errors...
From my side I'll try to fix the problem if I find an access to a Win10 machine.
The game's definitely difficult from the start, and might benefit from a slightly gentler curve up front (first 4-6 levels) - something simple to introduce the mechanics and mode of thinking you'd need for the rest of the game. The first level is good for this, but it might've been good to keep a tutorialish feel going until level 4.
That said, the save feature does allow the player to put the game down for a while and pick it back up with a fresh mind, which is excellent for this genre.
As far as I've played it, the game seems well designed and certainly feels very smooth to play.
Well done!
This game was tough but fair. I really enjoyed it!
I played your game along with several others from this jam and 'reviewed' them here: https://n8r8.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/n8-r8s-8-ludum-dare-34-part-1/