Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Tiny Terraformer
By wheffle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 227 | 3.63 | 38 | |
| Fun | 168 | 3.58 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 171 | 3.57 | 37 | |
| Theme | 89 | 4.00 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 621 | 2.75 | 38 | |
| Audio | 391 | 2.82 | 37 | |
| Humor | 528 | 2.19 | 33 | |
| Mood | 375 | 3.25 | 37 |
I liked the game. Takes some time to finish it, but I've still played it several times. It does have a good replay value. Wanted to get more oxygen but the best I could accomplish was 11% with trees at every free space. Guess I have to try more often :D.
Really nice how much content you were able to put into this game with disasters and planet changing mechanics.
Hey thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. I learned how quickly a game like this can get complicated with all the moving parts. It was a doozy balancing the system. I believe trees currently are good at boosting the ecosystem score but not as efficient at producing oxygen (not by design, just how it ended up). I had moments where I doubted the game would be fun or work at all, so I'm happy it's at least playable and enjoyable.
Was able to slip in a small update with a couple more disasters to attempt to keep things interesting.
It can't be stressed enough how good of a job you did at clear communication. Showing where I could build and where I couldn't, the little particle effects showing progress, etc. That made it super easy for me to adjust my playstyle to improve as a player.
I loved managing my base in this game. I always had something to do; either my oxygen was too low, or I had to get my CO2 up, or I had to rescue my plants from those pesky alien insects (cute graphic for those btw). Reminds me a bit of playing Starcraft or Dwarf Fortress in the way that I'm constantly looking around and making improvements to my base. I like your spin on base management, where the objective is not to accumulate power, but to improve the environment around you. I've never played a game like that, it's always the opposite: building an industrial powerhouse and using up all the local resources. The limited amount of space on the planet was an awesome way to add nuance to the gameplay.
I'm not so sure it was necessary to have the player character walk around a circular map. It seemed like the core mechanic would have worked on any sort of map, and in a situation like that where something is not critical to the core gameplay, I would look to the games that have already provided tried and true solutions: for example, RTS games use isometric maps or grid-based maps. You can still impose space limitations on things like that, so it would still work I think.
This is a bit of a personal quibble, but I was a bit frustrated at the fact that I couldn't _do things as fast as I could think of them_ just because I was limited by how fast I could walk to the location I wanted to get to, especially in a real-time game like this. If this game was as tight as Starcraft in that sense, and the time/space/adversarial pressures were more menacing, I would be **so** into this game.
Overall very nice concept! I love it when Ludum Dare games show me something I've never seen before :grinning:
@turncoda Thanks for the feedback! It makes me happy to hear people have enjoyed it.
I agree with you that having a player avatar wasn't entirely necessary for a game like this, although I wouldn't always rule it out as a bad thing to do off the cuff. In this case, gameplay might have benefited from having more of an RTS control style, and the way it turned out was basically leftover prototype code from my original plan for a rather different game. That's the nature of a jam, sometimes you end up with some weird style choices and combinations I guess.
Thanks again for the comment and taking the time to try it! This community continues to be awesome.
Amazing game! I really loved it. It has a very good tutorial, this is often overlooked.
Seeing the cloud forming up in the atmosphere as well as the vegetation growing around is sooo cool :)
The player character was not an issue for me, it really gave a perspective on the size of the world and fit the theme.
I also really enjoy the writing on the score screen. A relaxing experience I advice you to try
(You can see me playing this game for the first time on the vod https://youtu.be/34z-nBWKdEw?t=16m57s )
@Togis thanks for playing it on stream! I was pretty nervous to be watching someone play it live, but it turned out to be a great experience, I got a lot of good feedback from you and other people. I also really appreciate you taking the time to go back and throw down a comment on the game page and link the vid!
Neat exercise in optimization. Was fun trying to figure out the optimal combination of buildings, while also dealing with the various random events that came along. Like others have said, I really enjoyed the visual feedback of the atmosphere and water level, as well as the end game report given by the colonists.
The soundtrack was also really nice, fit the mood really well. Graphics were fine, the animations on the player were particularly nice.
If you're interested, my final setup was something like 3 CO2 generators, 3 H2O generators, like 10 Nitrogen generators and a whole bunch of trees and bushes, which got me a 85% score with a 100% environment strength.
Overall fun game, I can imagine it having a lot more replay value with the addition of different planets that have different conditions for terraforming, and more factors to take into account.
Woo final score 105%! Fun stuff. Sometimes it was difficult to tell where I could and could not place things, but overall great work!
A really charming little game! I afk'd for a minute and bugs ate half my plants but I recovered. Oops!
The music really set the tone and it reminded me of playing sim-earth back when I was a kid. Your attention to detail was really good (clouds forming, plants growing) and while I'm not being called away and there's no pause function, I'll be revisiting it later!
I liked it a ton though so far. One of my highest rated.
@Burgee Yeah, I realize now a pause feature would have been awesome. I figure of all the things I left out, it could have been worse! Thanks for playing it and giving feedback!
Tutorial in a game jam? That's going far and beyond the call of duty right there. Extra points deserved just for that. Great little game, although art is pretty improvable.
That was a great game. I really liked managing my own planet and a final score of 94% on my first try isn't that bad (hopefully). The background music was very subtle though, perhaps make it a bit more engaging. Overall great entry.
I really like the 'secret', with the .png that is created based off of your planet. It was a very nice touch and I'm glad you dedicated some time to it, nice work!
This is an excellent entry, it takes on the theme quite literally but does it well, everything works and there is enough challenge to make it fun. I enjoyed seeing the world transform, and it was great that the end game wasn't just win/lose (loved the review at the end of the game, I got 84%).
The graphics are simple but effective and clear. Audio-wise I would have liked more in the way of sound effects, particularly audio feedback when tasks are complete but I understand the limitations of Ludum Dare all too well.
The tutorial was great, I had absolutely no trouble playing and understanding the game. It was all very clear and well paced.
I was reading the previous comments regarding the player character being necessary or not. On one level I agree that it could work without this, but I personally like the direct control over the little character, it made me feel more connected to the game world and also gave an additional challenge when I was finding insects and fires to put out.
Overall, a very playable entry. Well done!
Fun stuff, but yet another "space" take on the theme. The graphics are overly saturated, but it works in adding visibility in this case. Gameplay could use some tweaking, but for what it is I'd say it's the game's strongest point. Weak audio feedback, like someone already mentioned, but overall I was very happy with it.
It's fun that there needs a little stratogy to play. And you can see the surface changes when as the numbers grow. Random events are fun, too. The tutorial is a little confusing for me at first, when I finished reading all of them there is only 1/3 time left(before which I don't even know the goal of the game). Overall, it's a fun entry. well done!
I really liked this! I very much enjoy optimization games like this one, and it's neat that there are a lot of things to consider and that they all affect each other in one way or another. There are also different random events to make you busy throughout the game, which is cool. Yeah, I wish there would be sound effects, but I enjoyed the music a lot. There are some issues with chord spacing (or whatever it's called) which make the melody sound a bit unnatural (the best way to describe how it should be is "a melody is like a conversation"), but it's not that bad and sounds nice and the choice of the instrument makes the whole experience really moody. Reminds me of the wonderful Minecraft OST. Oh, yeah, and the visual changes to the planet as you change the stats is a really great motivation to keep going. Great entry!
That was very good. I'll keep it to play again.
Tip: Placing SFX might help, though I did enjoy the background music itself. Tip: In particular, it could give more feedback about creatures (adversities) coming up.
Very calming. An excellent first project. Good job!
Great job on your first LD! This was an interesting system to tinker around with, and you had an impressive number of really solid mechanics going on! I enjoyed experimenting around, and once I'd built some stuff, running around trying to keep on top of everything.
The music helped set the right mood, and the graphics were very clear - and no rough spots to report in the controls.
Nice entry!
Really cool game !! We have always have something to do unless I thought, at first, that we most have to wait. I really like the end of the game, with the summary of the game and its consiquencies. Nice entry ;) Keep making games :)
Hey that's a really enjoyable game. I had a peaceful (especially because of the cool music) and interesting moment playing it.
Very relaxing management game, I like the music and managing all the little variables to try and my my colony as good as possible. Ended with a score of 79% which seems pretty good :D
This was a lot of fun. The tutorial was excellent and made me feel competent with the mechanics right away, something that does not happen often with LD games. There were a lot of nice touches, such as seeing lakes/oceans appear, the atmosphere thickening, and so forth. Great job!
This game's got a lot of charm, and I feel like there's a lot going for it. I personally found the first 5 minutes or so to be the most engaging. The concept of building up an atmosphere in order to grow plants and build up an oxygen supply is super novel. Unfortunately given the nature of the game, there wasn't really a motivating force to actually DO all of that. From what I could tell, my character could survive just fine in an oxygen-less world. Growing plants and building a pleasant-looking planet mostly just felt like optional cosmetic goals more than anything else. Because of that, the game felt sort of goal-less after a while.
I would also maybe suggest spending a little more time polishing the tutorial. Having the player auto-advance the text on their own when they need to sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice the player will more often than not skip some text, or forget to advance it for a long time and wonder what they need to do next. Consider having a more guided tutorial that advances instructions as the player completes them. It might make for a smoother experience.
Also, maybe adding some sort of indicator that would tell you what numbers are increasing/decreasing would be nice. Maybe something like a "+1 metal" while you drill or "+1% Atmosphere" as it's generated by your factory thingies. It took me a while to notice the tiny number ticking up as I did stuff, and something like that could go a long way for some nice-feeling feedback for the player.
Sorry if all of these suggestions are coming across as harsh. I actually really like this game and this idea, and I would LOVE to see it improve into a full-fledged product, which is why I figured I'd throw in my two cents to hopefully help improve it. :) I love the cute little art style you got goin' on here. And there's tons of little polish that I really appreciated, such as the little drill bit changing its angle based on the direction of my mouse, and the particle effects accumulating in various places, such as they sky and wherever my drill bit was working. I loved that the planet slowly evolved as I added more stuff to it, and the peaceful music was nice and Minecraft-y, which lent itself to a very peaceful experience. :) I'd love to come back and play this if you decide to make some improvements in the future.
I always like ecosystems!
It's a really cool idea, and its executed quite well too. There are a nice amount of interlinked resources so you have to put thought into making the best planet. I like how it describes the quality of your planet at the end - mine sounded awful (very dry, minimal oxygen, high chance of carbon dioxide poisoning) but it was supposedly technically survivable. planetoid.png
In my defense, I had a lot of moisture until a meteor took out most of my H2O producers near the end. Anyway... The combination of a player character and clicking on stuff was a bit weird. I would suggest focusing solely on the character (automatically interacting with objects you're next to without needing to point the mouse at them) or solely on the mouse controls. The graphics are alright, and I like the little details like the water showing up as you get more moisture. The game could definitely use more audio, though.
Nice! I got 79% on my first playthrough. I wasn't 100% sure what the different percentages meant for Co2 and atmosphere and what not. Like Co2 I think for me was at like 30 or 40 percent, but did this mean it was 60% low or that it was 40% of the entire atmosphere? It did seem weird I needed so many Co2 generators at first and then at the end it said my atmosphere was poisonous, but at least there will be lots of dry ice. :rofl: Great job, game was really fun. One question... is there a point to jumping that I missed? It seemed like maybe it was a feature you planned to do more with but ended up not needing it.
The little details were great, liked the grass and trees growing, stuff floating in the atmostphere, etc. I liked having to fend off the killer plants and dealing with meteors and fires also.
Thanks for the feedback so far everyone! Loved reading your comments.
@palemachine I too wish I had made time to throw in a few sound effects, I think they would have added a lot to the game. But hey, it's a game jam. I'm not a composer so I admit I haphazardly threw the music together, but it's not supposed to be a grand score or a driving tune, just some background piano. The slow pace and gaps between musical sections are intentional, partly in an attempt to stave off letting the music get repetitive to the player. I was partially inspired by the app "TheoTown", the silent portions between the chill songs actually added a lot to the game for me.
@ColeSlaughter All great suggestions. The tutorial was something that I felt needed to be in the game after I realized how mysterious and complex the mechanics are to new players. I didn't think it through a ton, but I think for a game jam it's functional. A more fleshed-out tutorial would definitely be something I would add in if I continued working on it, especially one that doesn't eat up your game time while going through it (for some test players I watched 1/3 to 1/2 of the colony ship arrival time was spent reading the tutorial).
@Veralos Awesome .png upload! I love that people found that. The mechanic with having a player avatar and also pointing and clicking is a hold-over from what my original plan was (a shooter), but a lot of players don't seem to mind. A couple have commented that it seems weird. I think it's sort of like Terraria, so personally I think it's fine. If you take the mouse away, it might get confusing what your avatar is targeting for tasks because of the way the planet gets crowded near the end. If you take the avatar away, then I feel like you take a bit of the charm away as well. Thanks for bringing it up, though, it's something to think about.
@Meaty-McLazerPantz I would have liked to explain the mechanics a bit more to leave out possible ambiguity (with the numbers), or have worked it in such a way to be more intuitive. The tutorial at the end explains what a good % is for most stats, but I understand a lot of people end up skipping it. As far as jumping goes, it's most useful in the event of a volcano-- you'll need to jump over it for a few minutes to move around until it cools off. You can also jump over other hazards (fire, piranha plant) if you need to, although usually you'd probably want to take care of them immediately instead.
I enjoyed it. I wish there was a way to speed up time sometimes. Got a little dull waiting for something to pop up for me to fix or else I sat and watched grass grow.
Really nice game! The idea is really unique and I think you pulled it off exceptionally well! It's really fun to play, if a bit slow, and it's incredibly satisfying to see your little planet grow and develop from a barren rock into a grassy paradise.
My only suggestion for improvement would be the music. I understand that time is short, but if you added in just one more instrument, like a violin or a drum, it would have been far more intersting to listen to. But that's just a small thing, so don't worry about it too much :)
Overall, definitely one of my favourite games this Ludum Dare. **Keep up the good work!**
Got this error when starting a new game:
############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in Vertex Shader compilation ShaderName: shd_lakefill
D3DXCompile failed - result
at gml_Object_obj_lake_Draw_0 ############################################################################################
@rpmoura Oh snap. My best guess is that your rig doesn't support shaders, might need to update or install DirectX. I have only been using shaders for a little bit so I'm not an expert, but try Microsoft's website:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=35
I like it. It's a fun little idea and just all-around fun yo play.
I Played this in Stream Today at Request of the Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekGMbpHGKUE
I really enjoyed this, I think it was a great end to a good stream. Really enjoyed chattering about the thought that obviously went into making this game accurate. Always neat to see a game with thought behind it!
Nice effects and great polish, really like contextual tools and all the different systems with events and disasters.
Good original idea and art. Great job!