Ludum Dare #45compo

Flourish

by corrade

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.72

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.11

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.49

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.29

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.50

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.77

A short ordeal involving raising a plant.

There's a crashing bug in the HTML version that happens when entering the game from the main menu after restarting and/or rapidly toggling the manual (or something like that).

Below is the manual for the game, which you can access in-game too.

Raise your plant!

Controls

LMB: Hold left-click & move your mouse to generate wind. Wind can move clouds, rain and pests!

RMB: Right-click on a cloud to release its rain (cooldown).

Space: Press space with your cursor on a cloud to drop lightning (cooldown).

R: Restart.

M: Toggle the manual/pause.

Resources

Moisture: Bring down rain to water your plant.

Health: You'll lose health from pests & poor moisture/sunlight levels. If your health reaches zero, you lose!

Sunlight: Sunlight in moderation! Stay in the middle zone. Block the sun with your clouds to lower sunlight.

Pests

Aphid: Fast but cowardly. Aphids will flee if met with wind or rain.

Caterpillar: Resilient. Release rain in front of them to loosen their footing.

*

Tags: #2d, #hand-drawn, #nature

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Audacity, Godot

Comments37

Bagenzo7 Oct 2019, 00:58

WOW! The art is incredible! The gameplay is great and this is a good take on the theme. I really love this!

Corradeauthor7 Oct 2019, 01:42

Thanks! As a side note, I've just increased the volume of the game globally. If it's too quiet/loud please let me know.

Josh Aaron Miller7 Oct 2019, 01:42

Very hard! Good game.

blobo7 Oct 2019, 02:02

Stellar work! oh, my poor poor plant. Never stood a chance. Those bugs are ruthless!

Tero Pulkkinen7 Oct 2019, 04:19

nice art

tic7 Oct 2019, 06:51

Great game, and really hard too ! I feel like the cooldown on the lightning is too long, but it might just be that I'm bad at this game :)

AppoxGames7 Oct 2019, 06:53

Lovely design but i could not figure out what to do. I made it rain but the insects kept killing me. Eitherway goodjob, was an interesting idea. It has almost the same concept as the game i created.
Great minds think alike :D

geoff.nagy7 Oct 2019, 06:58

This is a beautiful game! Controls are not too complex, which is nice. The game is hard, though! Those pesky insects keep eating my plant!

congusbongus7 Oct 2019, 06:58

This is a very interesting game! The art is also very good. Unfortunately I must have been seeing a bug where the lightning never recharges!

cirno7 Oct 2019, 07:13

The graphics is awesome. The game itself perfectly fits the theme and watching the plant growing is fun. This game is a bit hard for me though, I cannot control the wind to remove pests quickly. But I really enjoy it and played (died) dozens of times.

Tadeas Paule7 Oct 2019, 08:37

Beautiful. So hard though! One suggestion; I only figured out after 2 restarts that too much sunlight rapidly drains your health. Well, "duh", and you even mention it in the manual to keep it in the middle zone, but a graphical indicator (or a sound, like a sizzling), would be great!

SuryaPrakash7 Oct 2019, 09:06

The artwork is too good and the event managing was also done to it's apex.

mortalfosca7 Oct 2019, 09:18

Artwork is stunning!! never expected this much from a compo game. Bravo!

On side note: I believe there is a bug with some insects (when there are more than 1 and very close to each other) not fleeing when in contact with water.Other than that, flawless!

Corradeauthor7 Oct 2019, 10:29

Thanks for all the feedback! Difficulty is something I'll keep in mind moving forward. I've had this issue before so it really shouldn't have popped up again. >:|

@congusbongus The lightning takes a whole minute to recharge. Was it still down after that long?

@tadeas-paule Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree and wanted to add an indicator but didn't follow through with it (regrettably).

@mortalfosca Thanks for pointing it out, that's something I should've accounted for.

Adrien Dittrick7 Oct 2019, 10:30

really nice art :)
I felt like playing cloud tennis until some bugs ate my plant.

Marcin J7 Oct 2019, 16:07

Easily the best looking game I've seen so far. It took me a few tries to understand the mechanics and controlls properly. I think the game would greatly benefit from a simple tutorial or action/key prompts.

BanJaxe7 Oct 2019, 18:43

Beautiful hand drawn artstyle, nice mood. Took me a few trys to get the hang of it at first. I never survived very long, but I kept replaying so that's a good sign. I died to losing health mainly. Lovely short tricky survival game.

Fupi7 Oct 2019, 18:47

The game is surprisingly chaotic and difficult! I love it! I just couldn't get the Aphids to go away using wind, as the manual said.

Nick Lives7 Oct 2019, 18:53

Very fun concept indirectly controlling the clouds with wind! The controls are a bit unwieldy at times, at least in the HTML5 version, since the wind seems to get "stuck" going in a certain direction since it's easy to have the mouse leave the screen when dragging. The art and mood are beautiful though!

simXple7 Oct 2019, 23:21

The art is so beautiful, I love the whole concept. Literally nothing to critzice.

khaotom8 Oct 2019, 04:34

R.I.P. every plant I cared for. :smile_cat: Very beautiful art and interesting take on nurturing plants.

justinooncx8 Oct 2019, 05:53

Who knew a game about gardening and sunlight and flowers could be so nerve-racking? A challenging game, to be sure, having to juggle multiple resources at a time! Took a while to get used to how winds work, after being swarmed by a thousand aphids... Lightning cooldown seems to be super long, too, as I never seen in recharge the few times I used it. Then again, the flower never survived for too long... Great job on this entry!

velvetlobster8 Oct 2019, 07:28

Insects would always be my doom ... i feel like into the wild

toasteater8 Oct 2019, 07:59

The graphics are very well drawn. The wind control feels natural and generates a nice mood. Removing the pests can be a little challenging, but very nice game overall!

SuperLee8 Oct 2019, 10:31

Great artwork and atmosphere creating, hope I have the same art abality as yours.

Odeyalko8 Oct 2019, 13:26

beautiful game, liked the sound

Feingehacktes9 Oct 2019, 12:25

beautiful. But I can't manage to win. Maybe an element to show the lightning cooldown would help

p-r9 Oct 2019, 12:28

Lovely.

gisam9 Oct 2019, 12:33

Very relaxing game, fit the theme.

jharler9 Oct 2019, 12:53

I love the visuals here and the sound effects were superb. This was a very interesting concept as well. Great work!

Nocity9 Oct 2019, 13:14

Nice art and sound. I think this game should hint at the controls at the beginning so you don't need to read the manual to have a first try. Aside from that really beautiful and interesting.

Zoya Volkova9 Oct 2019, 13:32

Good job!
Artstyle is very sweet and innocent. Very cute interpretation of the theme!
Also, agree on the insect issue. There are too many insects for lightning per minute.
Maybe another Mechanik for insects? dunno
Overall, great job!

Harksa9 Oct 2019, 13:32

Well the art style is definitely nice, but the difficulty was a little too much for me to handle and I couldn't manage to win the game after 3 attemps (way too many bugs at the same time)

But hey, with some more balance, the game can be really amazing ! So keep up the good work !!

squimmy10 Oct 2019, 13:28

The artwork is beautiful and the aesthetic cohesion of the game is top-notch. The audio, visuals, and gameplay all work together very well.

I'm usually of the opinion that music plays a big role in building the mood and feeling of a game, but the ambient background noise you've added seems to do that job just fine.

It's particularly refreshing to see a nice, slow-paced game about creating life, and not another frantic action game based around destroying things.

Hcursino11 Oct 2019, 05:42

The only thing I would add to this game would be a cool down indicator so I could measure better when to use my lightening because, brother!, those bugs are hungry. That flower must be delicious because it felt like a plague or something. A really fast paced game for a game about growing a flower. I was surprised, really fun! Good job :D

mAnimal15 Oct 2019, 17:23

Very nice art, I love the animations of the insects. The sounds of the environment is realy like I m in nature. This realy rise up my mood.

Kirbloid22 Oct 2019, 15:59

I really loved the art and theme here! Really impressive and quite cozy to play. Definitive 5 in mood for me.