Sprout

by astoeth
co-authored: @herryfabien
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.83
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.59
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.06
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.91
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.13
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.60
Life just appeared on one planet and you absolutely don't want that to propagate everywhere. You have at your disposal an arsenal of meteors and other black holes to try to delay it as much as possible, but life domination seems to be inevitable...

There is a post jam version that can be downloaded that give more visibility to the plant and more ressources so it's easier to play with the different option you have

Credits:

Music: Dark Fantasy Studio - You are better off dead

Sound Effects : https://opengameart.org/ https://universal-soundbank.com/

Fonts : https://www.dafont.com/comfortaa.font https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rubik+Moonrocks
Tools: Unity

Comments13

nosleepjf
nosleepjf5 Apr 2022, 23:50
its hard to recognize the life at the start of the game, and to know what you are trying to destroy. I was about to give up when i finally noticed the little dots. then i was like "holy crap this is so cool!! Look at them colonizing the planets like little spores!!" I fired some asteroids at them and immediately felt guilty! I really like the theme of destroying life rather than preserving it. And i loved watching the projectiles arc around planets, so freaking cool!
Stefan Laimer
Stefan Laimer6 Apr 2022, 20:46
Nice little game! As already mentioned it's a bit hard to know what you're aiming at in the beginning. Also one annoying thing is that you fire the currently selected meteor, when you click to select a different one. But other than that, it's a pretty good game. Well done!
HerryFabien7 Apr 2022, 17:08
@nosleepjf @stefan-laimer Yeah life start from nothing so it take some time for it to start which can be confusing. After further testing there is a few change that could have improved the experience ^^
lbrande8 Apr 2022, 10:03
Very cool mechanics! Had a bit of trouble with the buttons not working properly in fullscreen while the life was too hard to see when not in fullscreen.
Steffo
Steffo9 Apr 2022, 00:38
Cool idea, but resource recharge is too slow; spamming small meteors (which ignore the cost) is a lot more fun than waiting a long time for your "mana" to recharge!
Aka Black Dog9 Apr 2022, 13:01
really great idea but
its really hard to see what you're supposed to hit
and sometimes you end up shooting when trying to select a weapon
HerryFabien14 Apr 2022, 20:49
@steffo Yeah one of the thing we saw play testing it a bit after the jam
LDJam user 236545
LDJam user 23654517 Apr 2022, 16:59
Similar thoughts to a lot of others - difficulty in knowing what I was supposed to aim at, and the recharging of energy wasn't fun to wait on.

What _was_ really fun is that there's a bug with the "multiple small meteors" that doesn't check your energy level, and will let you go negative. Spamming that was actually a ton of fun. If you continue working on this game, it would be cool to be able to spend resources on faster energy regeneration.

The gravity mechanic was neat as well!
Rbn
Rbn17 Apr 2022, 20:05
Cool game! Love the concept. The music is badass also B) Maybe I want to 'spam' more the meteors and stuff. The recharging is too long in my opinion.
Rashcan
Rashcan18 Apr 2022, 06:33
Really cool how "life" spreads in this game! Would you mind sharing how that was made?
HerryFabien18 Apr 2022, 22:24
@rbn Yeah it's litteraly a single variable change! Might put a more balanced version to download next to the jam version
@rashcan I didn't do it but from what i understand/remember we have a one dimensional array simulating the life level of each section (growing on each Update and spreading to it's neigbours) as well as a general life level (used to make structure ect). Then for each point of a texture we calculate it's "section" that correspond to a entry in the array and it's "position"/distance from the center. We then draw the life of the corresponding entry.
We added random surface level and plant level to hide a bit the roundness of each planet.
The setting of each pixel is a bit low because it's done with the CPU ! You might see the update of life on planet moving up if you look closely ^^
HerryFabien19 Apr 2022, 00:13
@nosleepjf @stefan-laimer @steffo @aka-black-dog @andrewkennedy @rbn I uploaded a post jam version : No more abillity when you clic on button , x3 to ressources generation , x2 to the height of life and finally life level start at more then the minimum on the starting points. Sadly it was only a few variable change :S
This is available to download and resolve most of the problem cited making the game probably WAY more enjoyable
Astoethauthor19 Apr 2022, 17:51
@rashcan If you want to look at the code, I just added the sources to itch.io

The part that manage the life is mainly in Assets/Scripts/PlanetLifeManager.cs
As Fabien said, it's mainly an array that contain a life level for each subregion of the planet in wich the "simulation" is done and we then have a texture that set each of its pixel's color accordingly to the data of the related subregion, its distance to the center and some reference textures (all the planet is drawn this way).

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