#### Some more explanation about the gameplay since the game lacks lots of information
##### The top bar - your current health (the heart on the left side) - don't let it drop to 0, eat fruits to restore some health - the fruit in the center indicates your current amount of fruits
##### The bottom bar buttons do the following - strength upgrades (on the left side) make the planting and harvesting go faster. Cost: 1 fruit + 3 extra fruits per level - the fruit button (in the middle) lets you consume one fruit to restore some health - the plant button (on the right side) adds another type of plants to your pool (it will pick a type at random when you plant), which can be planted faster, grow faster and can be harvested faster. Cost: 1 fruit + 3 extra fruits per level
##### What reduces your health - Any kind of labor intensive task (planting / harvesting) - Health depletes over time
##### The goal Survive the loop of planting, harvesting and feeding on the fruits of your labor as long as possible!
Pretty fun game although I felt like my health drained away a little to fast. Your graphics, music, and general sound effects where all really nice. I especially like the custom cursor you have in the game. I do wish there where some more instructions on what each tool did so I didn't have to just guess at certain points. Fortunately with only three tools I was able to work it out.
Very moody but I didn't get the theme or what the objective was. Didn't crash and had solid responses to all the things I randomly flailed at. The Dark Souls of Harvest Moon. Not bad at all.
Hehe you made it pretty difficult. I do like tycoon games but I thought some more visual indicators and instructions would help me to grasp the idea. Nice graphics and audio which make a nice mood. The custom cursor is really cool as people have pointed out already. The flavour text is nice, I like that it gives you the option to fight for your life and then say nope haha. Great first entry into a Ludum Dare!
Thank you all very much for the reviews! I'm super glad you liked the style and the music!
Aaaaand I absolutely agree that it's very unclear what the buttons do and what the goal is right now xD I ran out of time there :P I'll definitely focus more on that next time, lesson learned (hopefully).
Solid entry. If you don't mind me asking, what did you use to make the music? It was pretty good and set the mood of the game:) I was also a bit confused with the buttons. But this sort of happens with all the compo games, where we have to rush them and UI goodies like tooltips are mostly an afterthought.
@kamen-kitanov Thanks a lot! Haha I definitely had the 'uh oh I only got one hour left and the main game loop is not working yet' moment :D But I did a bad job in terms of not even thinking about all of that. It would maybe be easier replacing the icons with actual text or just add some description underneath the buttons, even though it doesn't look great..
Sure :D I use "Figure" by Propellerhead (Reason Studios) on my phone (iOS, not sure if it also exists on android or if there even is a PC version) to create the basic parts and then put them together using GarageBand. I absolutely love the simplicity and accessibility of Figure and it still has some power to tweak stuff. In case you own a tablet: I think Reason Studios also has even more powerful and fancier tools there.
Mood is set really well. It blends nicely with the art and the music playing. The UI took a little bit to get, but that's understandable for the short amount of time we are allowed in a compo jam! Really solid entry, I'm very impressed!
I feel dumb but it took me a while to realize that I have to click on the patch, then wait til the tree grows, and only then collect harvest from it. I'm also having trouble figuring out the "speeds" of each development, so not sure what's the optimal start - plant one tree, plant two? :sweat_smile:
Once I understood the core mechanic and interface it got smoother. I like the click gameplay and keeping an eye on all your numbers turning it into a balancing act. Nice music too!
@madbookstudios Thank you very much! I'm glad you like the mood! The UI definitely is a problem right now xD I added some description to this page in the hopes it would at least help getting into it :fingers_crossed: :)
@eldar please don't feel dumb, the game really has minimal description at best xD I should maybe stick to numbers instead of these obfuscated progress bars next time.. I wanted to get by with as little text as possible, that was probably a mistake for a game like this for a game jam :D I'd say it is best to plant one tree and while you wait for it to grow plant a second one (since that part works without the player's involvement) - but there might be someone proving me wrong here :P Thanks for playing and the review!
@binaryprinciple Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked the gameplay once you got used to it :)
Very atmospheric, and a great experience. I mostly just sort of poked around for a bit until things happened, which is probably what I'd do in an actual farming environment, to be honest. So it's clearly deeply realistic.
As someone who knows the struggle of balancing a compo entry, well done! If it had a high score system it would be nice to try against others! It's easy to catch (even tho I failed miserably with a couple of strats - 1 seed, 2 seed, 3 seed, all seed, etc) xD. Solid entry! Good work!
I appreciate the mood overall, and I really like the palette you use for the art :) I didn't understand what I was suppose to do on my first try though.
@hadryel Thank you very much :D The struggle is real :P A high score system / leaderboard sounds like a great idea, I originally wanted to add one, but in the end I barely got the game working so I had to scrap that :D
@discoreunion Thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked the mood and colors :) Yeah the game lacks a lot in descriptions and hints so that's definitely something I want to try a different route for the nex time, thanks for the feedback!
Really like the mood, music and artwork - creates a great haunting atmosphere. The balance feels a little harsh - I feel like I couldn't keep pace with the health bar. But I enjoyed playing it - it was a fun challenge to survive as long as possible.
@thesedatedprince Thanks a lot! I'm glad you like the mood/art/music side of the game :)
Unfortunately I didn't have time for many iterations on the balancing and numbers so it's not really a part I'm proud of xD I'm happy to hear that you were still able to enjoy it!
Very nice idea and i liked the simple art style. I found the life drained a little quickly for me to fee like I wasn having much of a difference. I also didn't understand how to use the first button on the left!
Really fun! I was confused at the start, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and I have to say your music is amazing, It really gives me a darkish feel despite the simple graphics! Good job yo!
@louiejams Thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked those parts! That fits previous feedback and my fears perfectly xD It's not very balanced and it's not very clear what you should/can do.
@thedoctoroftime Thanks you very much! It makes me happy that you liked the feel and the music :)
I like the concept, and I think it'd make a fun idle/clicker game. However, I think you need to work on the difficulty curve. It seemed extremely unlikely that I'd ever have enough fruits to be able to sacrifice 3 for a strength upgrade without dying because my health drains too fast (and you seem to lose health when you harvest!).
Maybe make it so that when your health reaches zero, the player automatically consumes 1 fruit, and you only die if you run out of fruits. Then, you can add a worker mechanic that lets you have more red bars at once, but requires more fruits. So over time, the player must try to hire more workers to increase food production to stay alive, like a farming-themed idle/clicker game.
@ale Thanks a lot for the review and the ideas! I like the 'additional worker', it would almost make this a real clicker game then :P I'll definitely consider this if I keep working on the game!
I sadly have to agree with others - it felt a bit too hard from the get go, but I could see great potential for the game and how easily it could be even expanded upon! O:
Graphics, music, and gameplay worked well together here and created a very nice mood. It was tough to eke out a living and survive, I really did feel trapped in the loop! Nice work. The feeling of being close to death all the time prevented me from relaxing and exploring the system, but it did achieve the brutal feeling of barely scraping by that I think you were aiming for. Each fruit was hard-won and yet sustained me for such a short time that I never felt satiated.
I did get really confused trying to play at first, but once I came back to read your complete instructions it was much clearer.
@pkenney Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked the mood and the grinding experience and that the instructions were helpful :P I definitely need to put in hover tooltips or other tutorial/explaining elements if I continue to work on this..
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Though after a while I could basically survive forever.
Thank you all very much for the reviews! I'm super glad you liked the style and the music!
Aaaaand I absolutely agree that it's very unclear what the buttons do and what the goal is right now xD I ran out of time there :P I'll definitely focus more on that next time, lesson learned (hopefully).
I was also a bit confused with the buttons. But this sort of happens with all the compo games, where we have to rush them and UI goodies like tooltips are mostly an afterthought.
Haha I definitely had the 'uh oh I only got one hour left and the main game loop is not working yet' moment :D But I did a bad job in terms of not even thinking about all of that. It would maybe be easier replacing the icons with actual text or just add some description underneath the buttons, even though it doesn't look great..
Sure :D I use "Figure" by Propellerhead (Reason Studios) on my phone (iOS, not sure if it also exists on android or if there even is a PC version) to create the basic parts and then put them together using GarageBand. I absolutely love the simplicity and accessibility of Figure and it still has some power to tweak stuff. In case you own a tablet: I think Reason Studios also has even more powerful and fancier tools there.
I hope that information is useful to you!
@eldar please don't feel dumb, the game really has minimal description at best xD I should maybe stick to numbers instead of these obfuscated progress bars next time.. I wanted to get by with as little text as possible, that was probably a mistake for a game like this for a game jam :D
I'd say it is best to plant one tree and while you wait for it to grow plant a second one (since that part works without the player's involvement) - but there might be someone proving me wrong here :P
Thanks for playing and the review!
@binaryprinciple Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked the gameplay once you got used to it :)
Haha that sounds about right :D
@discoreunion Thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked the mood and colors :) Yeah the game lacks a lot in descriptions and hints so that's definitely something I want to try a different route for the nex time, thanks for the feedback!
Unfortunately I didn't have time for many iterations on the balancing and numbers so it's not really a part I'm proud of xD I'm happy to hear that you were still able to enjoy it!
@thedoctoroftime Thanks you very much! It makes me happy that you liked the feel and the music :)
Maybe make it so that when your health reaches zero, the player automatically consumes 1 fruit, and you only die if you run out of fruits. Then, you can add a worker mechanic that lets you have more red bars at once, but requires more fruits. So over time, the player must try to hire more workers to increase food production to stay alive, like a farming-themed idle/clicker game.
Music and graphics were great. Nice job!
easily it could be even expanded upon! O:
I did get really confused trying to play at first, but once I came back to read your complete instructions it was much clearer.