Ludum Dare #48compo
My Little Tree
Grow your little tree. Control the tree's roots to provide it with water and stability and watch the branches grow! Made in the amazing Godot engine which I pretty much learned during this Ludum Dare.
The tree grows by itself based on its roots, you as the player grow the roots. Use *WSAD keys and arrow keys* to control the camera, mouse wheel to zoom. Use the *mouse to drag roots* to grow new ones.
There are 3 "resources" to watch for:
It is gathered by the leaves of the tree and required to grow roots. I did not have time to add any visual feedback but if you can't grow a root, you need to wait for more energy. This is the yellow bar.
Water is required to grow the tree and it is collected by the roots. Grow roots into water tiles to collect them and grow the tree. This is the blue bar.
This is the red bar. It is based on the size of the tree vs. the size of its roots. I did not really utilize this mechanic, but the tree won't grow if the stability is too low. If that's the case, grow more roots!
There is no real goal in the game since I had a hard time coming up with meaningful game mechanics. So, the only goal is to grow a nice, big tree and have fun. Make sure to take a screenshot and post it in the comments!
This has been a great experience. I've never actually finished a game in Godot yet so I've learned a ton of new things about the engine. In the end, I did not really know where to go with the game, I did not have much time and energy for it either. I'm happy with the result, even thought there isn't much of a "game".
If you play the game, try growing the tree as large as possible and post a screenshot! If you do, thank you very much for taking your time, hope you had fun. Cheers!
How to play
The tree grows by itself based on its roots, you as the player grow the roots. Use *WSAD keys and arrow keys* to control the camera, mouse wheel to zoom. Use the *mouse to drag roots* to grow new ones.
There are 3 "resources" to watch for:
Energy
It is gathered by the leaves of the tree and required to grow roots. I did not have time to add any visual feedback but if you can't grow a root, you need to wait for more energy. This is the yellow bar.
Water
Water is required to grow the tree and it is collected by the roots. Grow roots into water tiles to collect them and grow the tree. This is the blue bar.
Stability
This is the red bar. It is based on the size of the tree vs. the size of its roots. I did not really utilize this mechanic, but the tree won't grow if the stability is too low. If that's the case, grow more roots!
Goals
There is no real goal in the game since I had a hard time coming up with meaningful game mechanics. So, the only goal is to grow a nice, big tree and have fun. Make sure to take a screenshot and post it in the comments!
Gallery
Closing thoughts
This has been a great experience. I've never actually finished a game in Godot yet so I've learned a ton of new things about the engine. In the end, I did not really know where to go with the game, I did not have much time and energy for it either. I'm happy with the result, even thought there isn't much of a "game".
If you play the game, try growing the tree as large as possible and post a screenshot! If you do, thank you very much for taking your time, hope you had fun. Cheers!
Genres: simulation
Comments30
@vitor-figueredo I wanted to make an endless ground but I did not know how to quickly do it in Godot and there was not enough time to learn it. Maybe next time. :slight_smile:
Great submission!
Here is my final tree:
An issue I came across is that the roots near the surface can get really big and disjoint from the root line the deeper you go. It can look very weird. Some audio would go a long way as well.
The concept is really cool, keep it up!
- Really elegant, simple game
- I loved the challenge of each node only having a degree clamp to the parent, forcing the player think a bit
- The end result is a work of art
Improvements:
- "Picture" mode that allows players to export screenshots with/without UI to create a keepable snapshot of their art
- I nice ambient background music; probably violin, piano, cello, or flute (or a mix)
- Could be expanded to a very large game with different ground materials that give the parent tree different types of attributes; different deposits require certain attributes to havest; different biomes have challenges to be passed to be able to grow into
- some form of challenge such as root rot that needs to be delt with (could be magical?)
Bugs:
- I didn't run into any
Overall, I like it and it gave me quite satisfied impression!
And thanks for the feedback. :blush:
This game has a real potential, I liked the constraints you made for the roots, making each tree plausible.
As it's a compo game, I understand you didn't have time to put some relaxing music, but this could be a nice touch for a post jam version.
Btw, here's my tree
ps: I had a weird but while trying the windows version.
Интересно и оригинально, мне понравилось ^_^
As for the bug, it appears that you have to download both the EXE and the PCK file when downloading the game. I'm on Mac so I did not know what build is the PCK file used for, it appears that it's for Windows. I'll mark it as such on the Itch page. :slight_smile:
No real complaints, I didn't run into any issues. Possible nice additions would be to hit a button that shows which roots are still able to grow, or show a visualization on the angle available for a root to spread to (when placing a new root).
The textures were fitting, icons made sense, gameplay went smoothly. Great entry, nicely done!
I'm quite happy with how my tree ended up by the end ^-^
Here's my third attempt to write something.