michaelsonbritt 2017-12-09 22:31
The collect-expand-collect reward cycle works well here, the upgrade system makes sense and I like how the monsters upgrade as your character progresses. It's a solid foundation of a game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Hesperidian Trees
By jlauper
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1098 | 2.65 | 21 | |
| Fun | 955 | 2.78 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 1035 | 2.52 | 21 | |
| Theme | 955 | 2.86 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 1030 | 2.28 | 21 | |
| Audio | 705 | 1.75 | 18 | |
| Humor | 919 | 2.05 | 21 | |
| Mood | 1039 | 2.39 | 21 |
The collect-expand-collect reward cycle works well here, the upgrade system makes sense and I like how the monsters upgrade as your character progresses. It's a solid foundation of a game.
I see what you were trying to do with this game, however I feel an implementation details got in the way of it truly fitting the theme. Namely, the later monsters, while they do more damage, moved slowly enough that I could simply avoid them. It got to the point where I managed to fill the entire screen with trees, and harvest them without taking a single bit of damage, which contrasts with the initial monsters which were fast and I had to deal with. The upgrades therefore only really helped in the initial stages where you couldn't avoid the monsters.
There was a bug I did notice with the menus: If you pause w/ Esc on the upgrade menu, then unpause, the game will resume while you stay in the menu.
I do think that if the monsters weighting and difficulty was changed it'd fit the theme a whole lot better.
This launches on a mac but it is just a white box with no game.
It would be nice if the screen had indications of the existing controls, since there are menus and hidden features.
I like a lot of this game. The core concept is strong and everything works well together. Currently, it is simply too easy!
I ran into two potential problems: First of all, at one point, when I was planting trees, my computer started making error noises -- and I'm guessing this means that I was planting seeds where I couldn't. Later, while planting seeds, the game simply froze. Perhaps I had too many trees.
Also, if there was audio aside from the aforementioned error noises (you left the voting category open), I didn't hear it.
The economy needs improving, e = instant health back, but it gets to a point where you can just walk round your grove of 80000 trees spamming space and f to simultaneously plant one and harvest like 100. By the end I was basically invincible and could one hit kill everything, and those orcs are so slow that I was completely in control of the action economy, I didn't even have to confront them until I was like the level 99 last boss of the multiverse.
I played it until it crashed from having too many trees lol. Decent entry, need to work on your balancing though :P
Once I figured out the main premise of the game, it became a bit too easy. I think a bit of balancing could go a long way to trying to get just the right level of difficulty - maybe have the enemies scale up over the course of the game?
Like others said, it's easy to break the game - that said, it is fun enough that we bothered to try it, haha! I like the main loop of the game, and while I completely forgot there was an upgrade option, the enemies were always easy enough to kill, or too slow to even have to deal with.
Also, I didn't reach the point where the game crashes due to too many trees, because strangely I got a Java exception and everything stopped working, which I initially thought was me accidentally hitting the pause button. The exception was a ConcurrentModificationException at dungrove.Spawner.draw(Spawner.java:46).
Sorry, can't let a quality review, don't have enough time, just want to help to get out of danger zone. Overall i think game is good, keep going. Happy Holidays.
The screen was really tiny for me and the immediate goal is not too obvious. I felt like the game mainly became a clickathon to kill enemies but not sure if that's what I was supposed to do and it was really hard to see. Sorry, wish I could provide more feedback but not sure what the aim for the game was :(
The idea of mixing gardening / harvesting / fighting is interresting. But there still are many rough edges in the game.
You very good point though, is that you all important system systems implemented : planting, growing, harvesting, monster generation, upgrades, fighting... that's an impressive list for a jam. Good job !