FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD32 → Garden State

Garden State

By cbear_wallis

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Mood224.18
Coolness356
Graphics1174.17
Humor1523.60
Overall1813.63
Innovation2503.50
Fun4853.11
Theme7483.03

Comments

pix3m 2015-04-21 07:02

It's an interesting game design, though I had to mess around to figure out how this game worked. I think this game might be worth expanding with a larger map, I think :)

Also, 420 fertilize it

bradur 2015-04-21 07:23

Beautiful game! After a few tries, I finally managed to get rid of the "evil" dirt. Here's my garden: http://i.imgur.com/1d9YUhV.png . Also, it seems like all the plants went to pun school...

awestsecurity 2015-04-21 13:40

Cute game. Music was perfect. Sometimes the plant speech bubbles just got in the way and I'm still not sure what the last plant did.

benbateman 2015-04-21 13:48

I found it incredibly relaxing. The visuals are really cute.

Feedback: Sometimes the speech bubbles get in the way, but the puns make up for that.

mentalblockgaming 2015-04-21 13:51

Very relaxing zen game. I think I would have liked a little more guidance on what a win condition and a lose condition was rather than just being left to play.

Perfect music choice.

The cute little interjections from the plants were confusing at first, but still cute. I also love the look of them, and the gently swaying grass.

I had a little bit of difficulty placing plants due to the cursor being above the tile I wanted to use. Even with the shading placement help, I still couldn't land the purple plant til my 5th attempt.

I didn't really understand the counter system with the plant costs, or how you earned points back. I actually thought I lost once I covered all the dirt, despite aiming for that goal. It might be a bit clearer to add some sort of 'win' screen.

In terms of polish, you could add a rollover effect on buttons. I also found it a little jarring that the music restarted when you restarted the game.

Good job!

kabutakogames 2015-04-21 15:18

A really strong entry, though the difficulty kept me from getting too addicted

nihilocrat 2015-04-21 17:28

I like how the plants talk randomly, I don't think I've played a puzzle game like that.

mrroboman 2015-04-21 20:10

Ugh, my computer's eight years old and my graphics card is, too! Couldn't play this delightful looking game :(

incredible-ape 2015-04-21 20:20

Really liked the soft lighting and colors combined with the music. Even without the challenge, the game was nice to play. Very pleasant. A nice relaxing moment after a stressful game jam.

mikkellevisen 2015-04-21 20:28

I had a good time playing this cozy, humorous, relaxing and puzzly game. I found myself enjoying the company of the cute and funny plants quite a bit.

The music, sounds, juicy animations and speech bubbles makes it feel like a complete game.

robotic-brain 2015-04-21 21:30

I didn't really understand what exactly makes you "lose".

However it's a nice relaxing game. Good music choice!

cbear_wallis 2015-04-21 21:38

@Robotic-Brain there is no lose or win :) you may not like certain endings though lol

impossibleleaf 2015-04-22 02:41

This is an adorable game. I'm a huge fan of the color choice and the overall feel of it. The mechanics are intuitive yet vague enough to keep me wondering if I've made the right choices, but in the end, I have something to enjoy so much.

ryumaru 2015-04-22 04:57

On my first map I just messed around, and the pesky bad dirt didn't really do much. On all my other attempts, it absolutely wrecked me. Definitely an experience where the sum is better than the parts ( and the parts are good to begin with!)

dunin 2015-04-23 13:21

cute but strange...

criticalmammal 2015-04-23 13:59

Awe I really liked this. It's very serene and peaceful, and I really enjoyed playing around with it to kind of figure out how certain things worked.

The whole atmosphere of the game is superb. The animations for the art assets blended very nicely with calming music and just give the whole thing a flow that feels great.

It took me probably two or so rounds (maybe 3?) to start to figure out why exactly the rounds ended. But I liked the overall presentation of the mechanics and how everything is learned by interacting with it and observing behaviors. I read your post-mortem post and I think you were really able to recover and make something engaging and different by cutting out the notion of specific player goals. For a small scale game like this it's wonderful to just be able to unwind and enjoy the mechanics with no other clutter getting in the way. It feels... pure, I suppose is a good way to phrase it.

The talking plants were a nice touch too, though I found they tended to talk a bit too much. Often times their dialogue would overlap over each other and sometimes with multiple speech bubbles present it would detract from the rest of the experience. So I think maybe spacing them out a bit more would have been nice.

Oh this is nit-picky, but I also noticed what you call the "brambles", the darker squares... when they act on their turn I noticed their animations could have been slightly smoother when they seem to "exit" and move to another square. They disappear instantly, and it could have been nice to have them shrink out in the same way the "grow" in to their final position.

Also I found sometimes when dragging a plant over to a specific tile it wouldn't register as I expected sometimes. It wasn't a huge deal, but sometimes I would have to re-drag the plant of my choice over a tile more than once to get it to go to the tile I expected.

Fantastic entry overall though, it's a little bite-sized bit of relaxing joy. These peaceful zen-like games can be interesting to see because of how tense game jams typically are. Interesting how, from so much stress things that are so calming can be created.

cbear_wallis 2015-04-23 16:26

Thank you @CriticalMammal ^_^ I appreciate the detailed and in-depth critique

roguenoodle 2015-04-24 09:26

"You can't plant anymore if you haven't botany"

Not sure whether to rate you up or down for that one ;) (up, of course!) Very cute & very relaxing. I think there's a great puzzle game in here too if you explored it more (sort of a Threes/Triple Town/Road not Taken kind of thing

crowbeak 2015-04-25 07:42

It's really hard to understand the rules that govern how everything works, but the mood it sets is fantastic.

grywhttl 2015-05-02 12:35

Don't really know what was going on, but enjoyed it! Loved the puns.