Ludum Dare #52compo
Fallowtide
⚠️ This game requires a display with size of 1920x1080 or greater. ⚠️
*It's not that it looks worse, it's that you probably won't even get it to run and be able to click on things. Sorry!*
Overview
*Life from death, death from life. You've been hired to grow crops for a quaint group of villagers, and while they pay generously, there's something strange happening under the surface.*
Grow and sell crops in this bite-sized farming deck-builder. Keep an eye on the health of the soil; you can't plant crops on the same patch too many times in a row.
The game is not difficult, and there is no lose condition, so relax and enjoy the atmosphere. There is an ending after about 20-25 turns.
About
Made in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 52 compo. All art, music, sound effects, and programming was done in that time. I used some boilerplate code from past Ludum Dare games for things like loading images, managing particle systems, and a barebones "scene" manager.
Engine: Python with pygame
Art: Paint.NET
Music/SFX: Audacity, SFXR, my Casio keyboard
Fonts: Alef, Alagard, Matura, Segoe UI
Special thanks
I made this game "from scratch," but drew inspiration from many places including the following:
Inscryption: I haven't actually played the full release, but I played the jam version during Ludum Dare 43. There's definitely a similar flavor here, and I took some inspiration especially for the card visuals.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: This game had a "sticker" mechanic where the amount of upgrades you applied to your character was limited by the size and geometry of the upgrades. While the original mechanic was not grid-based and was a bit wackier, this was the inspiration for the crop placement/shape mechanic in Fallowtide.
Pokemon Emerald version: Hear me out! The puzzle design in this game is a little similar to the "walking on ice" puzzles found in Pokemon gyms.
DaFluffyPotato: In addition to being a very prominent member of the PyGame community, this guy has consistently good environmental simulations in his 2D games. The way the crops move was partially inspired by the way he handles grass simulations in his platformers.
Fantasy artists: I looked at a number of illustrations of plague doctors for reference (if you Google "fantasy plague doctor," I probably looked at everything on the first page). I particularly liked this illustration by Lucas St. Martin for the glasses, skull pendant, and lighting.
Comments43
@frogman Great feedback on the card visuals! I think I originally had a slightly larger "field," so your cards were covering it up when hovered. I defaulted to the behavior of MtG Arena and similar, but importantly, in most other games you can understand the card fully from just the name (not true here!). That's great feedback if I decide to make a card game again.
The interactive and dynamic puzzle mechanic was really unique, and it really shows off your skill because of how complex the flow is. The transitions from playing a card to showing the crops was smooth and I loved to watch it.
You're doing great work! Keep it up
All around great experience and impressive work for a game jam! 5/5 stars!
!>My favorite moment was discovering how the goat works, and I'm so glad you chose not to explain it to the player beforehand. (Idk why spoilers also look like quotes, but I didn't want to call out the goats for anyone else!)
Great game.
A card game with a geometric component to fitting together hands is a nice idea. A simple idea with a lot of depth, and potential for more. I like games that do "solve this puzzle as well as you can" without just gating progress on getting the correct solution. This sits nicely on the line between puzzle and management.
An incredibly impressive feat in the time! Especially for a compo entry! And built in PyGame too!
The music was adorably gloomy and graphics were great. Mood was wery well transmitted with the music, sounds and the dark imagery. I appreciated the dual meaning of harvest too.
The game didn't get hard at any moment, maybe it was because of my choices or maybe it wasn't made very difficult, or maybe I just got lucky with rngsus. Anyway, it had interesting mechanics. I liked the pieces that were familiar from Blokus Trigon -boardgame.
All in all great job!
> The game is not difficult, and there is no lose condition, so relax and enjoy the atmosphere.
I decided to focus more on the graphics, mood, and story for this one, so the gameplay is intentionally pretty easy and it's not possible to lose. Hopefully it's still interesting enough to keep the player occupied through the end though.
Thanks for playing!
The artwork is phenomenal, I love how the plants sway in the wind.
I see you cited Inscryption as an inspiration - I can definitely feel it! Inscryption is one of my top favorite games, and I like Fallowtide for a lot of the same reasons.
I recorded my gameplay experience in this video,
Fallowtide is at the 39:13 mark:
Here's the VoD so you can jump to your chapter and see it again!
Favorite quote out of context:
> We have to kill seven people. Do you know how long that's going to take?
Such a neatly polished game, looks great, and the atmosphere is excellent. I like that you decided to make it easy enough to make sure that players get to experience the mood and story instead. Feels like a smart call for the compo, and a good basis for developing the game later on. I hope you get around to making a post-jam version with maybe some extended mechanics and some puzzling challenges. Maybe the lore could be extended too?
!> For example, I think the goat could be adjusted to provide some basic mechanic, such as fertilizing tiles, to make it less "on the nose" that sacrificing it is what's needed to progress the story. It felt a bit inelegant that the game forces you to immediately sacrifice it once you get one in your hand.
I use python in my day job, and your games are an inspiration, definitely tempting me to give pygame a go one of these jams.
I agree with everything you said. I do think there's some risk to being less "on the nose" because people may just completely miss it, especially if they're only playing your game for ~5-10 minutes. Of course --- if I had more than 48 hours I probably could have worked in more nuance. It was nice to see a couple streamers play the game, and catch the "aha" moment.
As far as pygame --- it's lots of fun if you like building stuff (mostly) from scratch and prefer Python over other languages. For anything more complex than a game jam game, I'd recommend a "real" engine though.
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Edit: and regarding...
> I like that you decided to make it easy enough to make sure that players get to experience the mood and story instead.
...I know that was one of the chief criticisms of "Fade"... I put so much work into the story and accidentally hid it behind an impossibly difficult game! Definitely played this one on the safer side haha.
Thanks again for playing!
I loved your little breakdown at the end about the mood and story. To be honest, I wasn't about it too much, and mostly made a plague doctor because it looks cool and I'm bad at drawing faces.
Thanks for playing!
https://soundcloud.com/dissonant_void/fallowtide-remake