Ludum Dare 46 Entry: Tree Sim

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.77
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.37
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.00
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.12
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.69
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.77
patchwork.pngMy Entry to Ludum Dare 46 is a little tree growing toy. No real way to grow a tree wrong, make sure to give it lots of love :D

If you grow a particularly nice tree be sure to share!

Here are some of mine:

Comments64

Sacrface19 Apr 2020, 18:02
These are awesome!
cateye19 Apr 2020, 18:24
thats seriously cool. never thought of anything like that. nice job!
Owl_Skip19 Apr 2020, 18:47
You are a beautiful man, with a beautiful impenetrable game. I feel like a complete dolt playing it and thoroughly enjoyed every moment! One question...How can I grow a proper tree? Owl
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor19 Apr 2020, 18:56
@owl-skip did you make sure the temperature and light levels are listed as good? Also don't water or feed the plant too much. If a seed is difficult to grow you can always start again :)
SSStormy
SSStormy19 Apr 2020, 20:51
Solid visuals and tree growth!

Wasn't quite sure how the various paramaters affected growth patterns.

Here's one I thought was pretty:
TrKo19 Apr 2020, 20:58
I like this game, beautiful!
causalpigeon
causalpigeon19 Apr 2020, 21:27
I love how you took a game that doesn't seem like it would be that enjoyable and made it realy quinte and by far the best looking game this jam and one of the coolest. Only thing i would change is the buttons and stats since i don't feel like they feel off.
MAJK_FL19 Apr 2020, 21:54
Amazing idea! These random trees are awesome!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor19 Apr 2020, 21:59
@causalpigeon thanks for the kind words :) The buttons would be better as icons and the stats as visual indicators. I wasn't too confident in my art skills to do so...

@majk-fl yeah, procedural generation is great :D
Soupsauce19 Apr 2020, 22:13
I love your game! I love that you can sing to the plant. Made me smile! :)
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor19 Apr 2020, 22:31
@soupsauce thanks you :smiley: the singing is the best/worst part :P did you try giving the plant a name?
fakefrogsonly
fakefrogsonly19 Apr 2020, 22:37
So cool! Love the singing, very calming! The tree looks pretty too :D
Wilson Taylor
Wilson Taylor19 Apr 2020, 22:38
This is so cool! I like how the players able to infuse their own luck and personality into it!
jonah
jonah19 Apr 2020, 22:53
I enjoyed watering the plant, singing to it and giving it a great name (Tree). 👍
oxlox19 Apr 2020, 23:24
Really nice game! It took me a few minutes to catch on to what I needed to do, but I really love games like this.
Furfel19 Apr 2020, 23:26
Amazing stuff! And I can even take a photo :heart:. And those names :laughing:
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor19 Apr 2020, 23:38
@oxlox oh hey you got it running in widescreen mode, I never tested to see if that worked, awesome.

@furfel thanks :smile: make sure to treasure it whatever the name :P
Ciber_Turtle
Ciber_Turtle19 Apr 2020, 23:58
Wow this game is surprisingly fun!
zimny11
zimny1119 Apr 2020, 23:58
What a lovely game! Really relaxing.
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor20 Apr 2020, 00:05
@ciber-turtle glad to hear it. I always find procedurally generated things fun to play with.

@zimny11 thank you, hope the singing wasn't too offkey.
WZQXRYS
WZQXRYS20 Apr 2020, 00:33
Cute game man i love it
cannedveg
cannedveg20 Apr 2020, 00:35
This is super relaxing! I just grew 3 trees without even realising! Also very impressive technically!
madbookstudios
madbookstudios20 Apr 2020, 00:50
Yo this game is so serene and chill. Love the aesthetic too, so clean and crisp!
dnp20 Apr 2020, 00:56
This game is quite pretty. Don't feel like I have very much control over the tree's growth though.
Ch4oticAU
Ch4oticAU20 Apr 2020, 01:04
So cool :) Really like all the random trees you can get, they look really neat stylistically as well!

Nice work!
Dandala88
Dandala8820 Apr 2020, 06:45
I have wanted to create a game similar to this for a while but I just couldn't work out the details into a game. Nice work! I really liked the idea of singing to the plant and it was implemented well. I would disagree with your statement about the theme @alex-mulkerrin I feel like this fits it quite well. If I were to nitpick I would want a bit more strategy involved but this game feels complete even without it. Thumbs up!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor20 Apr 2020, 06:58
@dandala88 thank you very much :smile: if you want feel free to have a look at the source code on itch.io to see how it works.
Yeah more strategy would be nice to add, I had all kinds of ideas for more activities like pruning, weather effects and choosing different seeds.
west
west20 Apr 2020, 08:51
very interesting i really enjoyed trying to get different type of trees,
not sure what singing did though, did it have an effect?
Furfel20 Apr 2020, 09:40
The tamagotchi of trees. I adore the graphics. Although some soothing music in the background would improve it!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor20 Apr 2020, 10:24
@west as much of an effect as singing to your plants has in the real world :P

@furfel thank you for liking my very programmer art graphics :smiley: Sadly the only music I could make would be as bad as the singing :sweat_smile:
pke1029
pke102920 Apr 2020, 11:56
Beautiful game. If you dont mind me asking, how you do the simulation?
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor20 Apr 2020, 12:35
@pke1029 thanks :smile: I'd be more than happy to explain how the whole thing works. The plant is made up of branches each with a leaf at its tip. When a branch matures it then has a chance to create up to two child branches from its leaf end.

Of course if your more interested in how the sim decides if the plant grows or not its really rather simple; some water and plant food but not too much, and good heat and light settings.

Please go ahead and read the source code, I hope you find it manageable :D
Ramo
Ramo20 Apr 2020, 15:00
This is really enjoyable, with more surprises than I would have thought. I loved the simplicity of the interface. The fact that it's both overly serious and not serious at all makes it very cool and fun. Also, these programmer graphics sure are looking nice. It reminded me of Electroplankton in a way, and this thought made me wish for a little more sound!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor20 Apr 2020, 15:18
@ramo thanks, Electroplankton is new to me so I'll be sure to check it out. I'm glad the game strikes such a good balance of seriousness for you :D
Sarrixx
Sarrixx20 Apr 2020, 15:59
Very cool little sim, super chill. Kudos! Took me a bit to figure out that you can't overload the seed with water or nutrients.
Vawer
Vawer21 Apr 2020, 06:09
Simple concept but I really enjoyed watching the growing animation. Looks really cool, although it toook me a while to understand how to get the tree to grow. Here is one of my trees!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor21 Apr 2020, 07:54
@vawer Thank you :smile: the growing animation is one of the best parts. Thanks for the tree too!
INCD021
INCD02121 Apr 2020, 11:02
@alex-mulkerrin Very nice :smile: An animated L-system looks so good :thumbsup:
It reminds me of my LD45 Game L-Flowers. Nice work!
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor21 Apr 2020, 12:12
@incd021 thank you very much :) I had a look at L-Flowers and thought it was a neat application of L-Systems too.
ChloeOfArroyo21 Apr 2020, 15:57
It may not want to grow even if growing = true, but it is my baby and i will sing to it and love it
Rhiz
Rhiz21 Apr 2020, 17:18
I always love procedural plant growing games.

It seems like my plants always reach their maximum size before they even outgrow their first pot.

If you were to keep adding to it, I'd be interested to see how pruning might affect your growth model.

The singing is really cute and a nice touch.

Here is Ash:
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor21 Apr 2020, 17:57
@rhiz thank you :smile: pruning is something I thought about adding. I would need to work out a lot of collision boxes to do that, which would mean calculating a hitbox based on all the parent lengths and angles... Perhaps that can be a project for another time :P
Ash looks lovely, really nice colours.
Raphaeltan
Raphaeltan21 Apr 2020, 18:19
nice prcedural generation :O
J_C - One Bit Studio
J_C - One Bit Studio24 Apr 2020, 16:43
Very creative idea. My only gripe is that it was not easy to figure out how does the plant reacts to the different controls.
JonasPK24 Apr 2020, 16:52
I am a big fan of procedural tools like this, and a big fan of my wonky Lindsay
Alkis24 Apr 2020, 17:05
Very nice game and amazing way of handle the theme. My only "problem" was that i couldn't quite understand how the plant reacts to the different actions.
Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrinauthor24 Apr 2020, 18:33
@j-c-one-bit-studio @alkis yes the game would have benefited from having nicer feedback on plant state, as it stood it only had debug-like text. I would have preferred to have meters showing heat and light tolerance for example.

@jonaspk Lindsay is clearly a plant that grows by her own rules! :smile:
Elemental Zeal Game Studios
Elemental Zeal Game Studios25 Apr 2020, 14:26
Quite an interesting entry. I really liked the variety you could get with the plants, and procedural generation is always fun.

With some improvements to the UI and a slower process it could be a fun pocket plant game for mobile :)
kjscott
kjscott28 Apr 2020, 08:13
Nice and relaxing simulation, was beautiful to see the plant growing. If only I could do more with it!
Guille1 May 2020, 20:00
I love the idea! The game`s art was simple but amazing! The game was pretty intuitive. I am not exactly how the game relates to the game jam`s theme. Never the less good job, and keep it up! Also The game idea is unique and interesting.
dimesto52
dimesto527 May 2020, 01:32
interesting although I don't fully understand how it all works

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