Ludum Dare #52compo
Grow Golf
See how long you can last by growing a beautiful garden of golf balls!
-- INSTRUCTIONS --
Select a tool at the bottom.
With the club selected, click and drag on the screen to hit the ball.
With a material selected, drag over existing balls to change their type.
A regular ball will plant a seedling when it lands.
A water ball will water seedlings and land tiles. It waters every tile it passes over, and a 3x3 around where it lands.
After enough water a seedling will grow into a new golf ball.
A dirt ball will create new land in empty air. Dirt balls always get destroyed upon landing.
Dirt will dry up and disintegrate if not watered.
If a hole isn't scored in within its stroke limit, or you run out of balls, you lose.
Try to balance watering land and plants, planting new balls, and scoring holes to survive as long as possible!
-- CONTROLS --
Right-click or Shift+click materials to set every ball to that type.
1-4 keys and ZXCV can also be used to switch the selected tool.
Comments135
Were you inspired by any similar games? I rated it highly in innovation since the gameplay was very intriguing and new for me, but I'm curios if this is somehow a genera piece for something I've never heard of before?
It was a little bit hard for me at the very beginning, because i had now idea of a strategy, but the more you play, the more addictive it gets :smiley:
Very well executed as well!
I realy like it but it is too hard for me.
Okay this entry surprises me. The biggest twist is that the board start to disappear and the game changes from a precision game to a chess game.
I thought I could last forever, and in theory I could if not for me accidentally throwing 2 of my balls into the abyss.
Great entry !
Great game. Congrats!
Interesting mix of farming and golf, of all things. The gameplay is easy to get and there is some strategy to it. But I still find the dirt loss to be extremely punishing! Losing the mud balls when they don't hit a gap is quite discouraging but I suppose it makes important.
It's quite satisfying to reach a large number of golf balls where things become *almost* automatic.
- Very creative way to use the theme. Core game mechanic is fun and addictive
- Controls are simple and intuitive.
- Art and sound is very cute- enjoyed it.
- Gameplay and animation is very smooth and intuitive. The game feels very responsive to my actions
- The game is legitimately difficult and interesting.
Suggestions (maybe out the scope of the constraints of LD):
- It was not that obvious to me at first why the water or mud balls might be useful until the field started changing. Maybe prompting earlier that something like this will happen will make it clear.
- There is quite a lot of text that I have to read outside of the game to workout what to do. I think it is likely possible to add some hints-in game without doing a fullblown tutorial, to make it clear who the game works and what the controls are.
- High-score board. Could maybe be some interesting mechanics for multiplayer or coop.
- Would be amazing as a mobile game.
I like it to grow in my mind like this :D
Edit to add: I wish that the soil got darker (at least briefly) when watering. It helps to give a feel for the 3x3 area.
the screen edges prevent some power being used but other than that it was very intuitive - can see myself coming back to this one - make it work on mobile? :pray:
Well done!
- Graphics and animations are very well done! Everything is smooth and nice, color scheme is pleasant.
- Sounds are nice and gets the job done.
- After phase 3 the game become way too complicated, so it's pretty easy to lose interest (and lose the game as well). Difficulty curve is incredibly steep, and it doesn't fit the game well.
- I understand why it's now shown where the ball will land, but I'm think that it would be more fun to show the landing area to make it more tactical then pixel-hunting-skill-game. I understand that it's not how it was supposed to be, but it's just a thought.
- Having some easy-to-understand end goal would be nice, so there's some motivation to continue.
Generally the game is very well made, good job!
An amazing game, strong what the connection with golf is. But each reverse displacement is curious and slightly random, with corresponding follow-up effects depending on the choice of material. Later on, new materials can be unlocked to deal with new challenges in the future, such as square droughts and disappearing squares.
It's just a shame I didn't achieve the effect of flying around like in the game's introduction, but it's still cool/cool.
I had a couple of small issues, like the ball spawning underneath the UI at the bottom where I didn't see it. Apart from that, excellent and creative entry. An unusual interpretation of the theme, but a well justified one.
Gameplay is engaging but definitely somewhat frustrating. It takes a few minutes to understand how to play and figure out the strategy. One does have to go and read the out-of-game instructions to know what to do, which takes a bit of extra effort and always breaks the immersion. Game does get very difficult very quickly as well, and I was surprised at the pace the terrain starts breaking, feeling it was very overwhelming. I don't think there was any need to force short playtimes with that much difficulty, especially since the basic gameplay loop of just throwing the ball around already feels super satisfying and I would have been happy to have more free-form fun with plant management.
Overall a very good game that I feel might have been superb with better balance decisions.
At some point, my browser (Firefox) crashed while playing. I don't know why, though.
I think the terrain breaking should happen more slowly and perhaps in specific areas instead of all over the map.
I'd like to see where you take this, it has a lot of potential!
Nonetheless great!
I think the best one I played so far.
Very original, polished game. Fits the theme really well.
Great job!
My biggest suggestion, though, is to add some sort of shot angle visualizer (dotted line style), so I can have *any* idea where I'm shooting. Other than that, fantastic job; keep it up, man! :clap: :clap: :clap:
5/5
Very fun gameplay as well.
super polished and felt like a complete and balanced game. Visually very nice to look at.
Great job :)
Nicely polished too!
Something about losing all the ground quite quickly made me feel like the game was too hard too quickly, and losing the balls down the gap felt a little sad, so I think this game didn't jive as well with me compared to your other games. In some ways, getting a lot of balls made me want to be less precise, which then kind of conflicted with the increasing challenge and cost of being imprecise.
I ended up in the state with a small block of land left, which seems like a pretty valid strategy and had a few good turns there.
I wonder if there was some other way to ramp up the challenge aside from disappearing tiles that was less punishing. Or maybe some positive outcome from a ball falling off that could offset the outcome of losing balls.
If there was a bonus mode where the ground didn't disappear I feel like I would have fun playing with that, even if it was unbalanced :)
But super polished, as usual!
Very innovative.
Great Work!
*Why the flower sometimes disappear without producing a ball, it overwatered or it just produces only sometimes?*
EDIT: Ah I think I'm getting into the game :D ... 24 holes, 57 strokes
EDIT2: The soil balls are very hard to use as they do nothing when you don't hit the blank space, I think they could repair the soil around the landing place too, the same as water ball.