"Emily Morrison's Garden" is a game about growing plants in an alien-like planet while seasons pass. The center of the disc works like a sundial, announcing the beginning of each new day and when the different plants bloom or die.
This planet is dying and you share its fate, how long will you endure?
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Quick note from the devs.:
"Emily Morrison's Garden" is supposed to be a hard game, requiring you to plan the best strategy while running from one point to the other to complete your tasks in time. It may take two-three plays to fully understand all the mechanics, use the "help interface"! (pressing H while in-game)
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Instructions.:
Best played on fullscreen. Highly recommended to download the desktop versions(web version might take a while to load sounds and music) and press "H" while playing your first game (that will trigger the help interface).
Move around with the arrow keys, plant seeds with "X" and switch your selected plant with "Z".
The planet is dying slowly and everytime you plant a new seed it regenerates. Plants bloom and die on a given season, collect fruits once they have bloomed to get more seeds.
Pay attention to the interface, as it'll let you know when each plant will bloom or die.
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Credits.:
@celer_gut - music and sound design @Ludipe - design and code @ruben_oluwa - art and animation
Neat gameplay idea! It took me a few plays to understand what to do, and even then I can't survive much more than 100 days, but maybe I still need to get the hang of it. The overall design is really beautiful.
Art style is fantastic and the sundial to track the progress of the season is a great touch. Balancing the cultivation of seeds with the planting of them for continued survival makes for fun gameplay especially as your seed count base gets higher and that little bar just keeps ticking down.
Visually this is hands down my favorite of all the entries I've look at so far. It took my a while to get a hang of the gameplay, but once I did I had a lot of fun with it!
Wow... At first it is hard to understand, but it is the only flaw I see, because after a few plays you get it and it becames pretty addictive, the gameplay is really original. Also, I love the idea of the sundial, it is a really nice take on the jam's theme. And the pixel art is stunning, along with the sound it makes a great atmosphere.
Astonishing visuals and high level of polish. You made a good work, guys! The gameplay is pretty complicated, but once you have time to implement more steep difficulty curve, it will be just great.
The game felt very polished and the artstyle was on point. It was pretty hard to get into it though and I still dont entirely feel like I know how to play it..
Really challenging, unique, fun game! I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36 games, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/PNJkv1swd3I
This game is incredibly beautiful and polishing. I like it's unique art-style and quality implementation. The background music is charming. Overall, it's one of the best games I've played this LD. Perfect done, guys!
Great entry, lovely atmosphere and very interesting concept. Had a hard time getting to understand it at first, but greatly enjoyed it. The music is mesmerizing!
One of the great entries here. Excellent graphics, great music, good game design ... but really hard. It does not matter, everything else is to concentrate and want to play more. Please play my game http://goo.gl/DY8rKG
Great game and idea! I had fun with it, it takes a while to understand how to play. A couple of times the game paralized and i had to close and open again.Congratulations to the hole team, everything looks, sounds and runs awesome.
@Sabina Lis : Sorry to hear about that! Glad you enjoyed it anyways, I think it's because of the web version, I must have missed something important in the code :-S
The plant growing and seasons changing are well implemented. The visuals are also top notch. To the bad news then.
At the moment it is pretty much impossible to survive for more than 180 days. The culprit? The planet only regenerates when seeds are planted and the regeneration amount is minuscule. Even with 20+ seeds, constantly planting new trees, I couldn't keep up with the rate of deterioration!
Here are a few suggestions: - Increase the amount of regeneration per plant (tricky, as too much regeneration makes the challenge trivial) - Decrease the deterioration rate of the planet (similar balance problems here, also makes the playtime longer) - Base the well being of the planet on something else than just planting, for instance, planting and blooming, the total number of trees alive at the moment, the total lifetime of the trees, etc.
Simply put, the challenge should come from deciding on which seeds to plant at any given time, not from inevitable attrition. One potential mechanic is randomizing the available seeds every 5-10 seasons or so. The seeds would still have to make sense though.
Talking of making sense, how on earth do you use Anemone Capensis? It takes ages to grow, but cannot be planted before the blooming season or it'll just die!
It took me a while to figure out how to play. It is a bit hard, but I read the dev note. The game itself looks and feel amaizing. Mechanics are very cool. When I have more free time I will definetely play this game again. Great job!
Very pretty. Cool music. Played through 5 times and still don't understand the whole seed/season mechanic, though :/ Would suggest doing a level system or at dry run as a tutorial so we slower folk can learn the game.
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Like ratly, it took me some tries to understand the gameplay I only survived up until day 122, but it's a really challenging and fun game.
I wrote a short post-mortem in case anybody is interested
http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/09/01/emily-morrisons-garden-post-mortem/
I like it's unique art-style and quality implementation.
The background music is charming.
Overall, it's one of the best games I've played this LD.
Perfect done, guys!
At the moment it is pretty much impossible to survive for more than 180 days. The culprit? The planet only regenerates when seeds are planted and the regeneration amount is minuscule. Even with 20+ seeds, constantly planting new trees, I couldn't keep up with the rate of deterioration!
Here are a few suggestions:
- Increase the amount of regeneration per plant (tricky, as too much regeneration makes the challenge trivial)
- Decrease the deterioration rate of the planet (similar balance problems here, also makes the playtime longer)
- Base the well being of the planet on something else than just planting, for instance, planting and blooming, the total number of trees alive at the moment, the total lifetime of the trees, etc.
Simply put, the challenge should come from deciding on which seeds to plant at any given time, not from inevitable attrition. One potential mechanic is randomizing the available seeds every 5-10 seasons or so. The seeds would still have to make sense though.
Talking of making sense, how on earth do you use Anemone Capensis? It takes ages to grow, but cannot be planted before the blooming season or it'll just die!
Apart from these problems, good job!
The game itself looks and feel amaizing. Mechanics are very cool. When I have more free time I will definetely play this game again.
Great job!