Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → A Tree
By ditam
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2208 | 2.98 | 32 | |
| Fun | 2472 | 2.33 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 817 | 3.48 | 32 | |
| Theme | 604 | 3.95 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 1803 | 3.15 | 32 | |
| Humor | 1988 | 1.88 | 24 | |
| Mood | 2168 | 2.70 | 26 |
You have finished it and it works. Great achievement. The game did not give me fun. It is clear the system is complex and there are rules. Upgrades is a good idea. It would be better to have the tree on one screen. Good job.
Thank you for your honest feedback @davidpeterworks! :D I can absolutely see how the game might not be too much fun to play, but I hope it will find its audience.
Interesting little game to gave me a little perspective about trees. Don't shed your leaves in the winter if you don't have enough carbohydrates to grow them in the spring XD. Congrats getting it up and running and thanks for making it available in the browser. :)
I like the idea and it's clear you put a lot of effort into the systems behind this resource management game. However it is all very cryptic, with the only hints you get in the upgrade screen but those aren't enough. The game also doesn't provide enough feedback to what's going on. Something like a notification when your roots died would be very helpful.
On the first go I shed my leaves in the first month, not realizing what I had done I just carried on until I noticed that I was not able to buy anything 😅 did not do to bad that play through to be honest, got more than a year. My second attempt went a lot worse. This taught me something about plants that is applicable to my room plants: don't give them too much attention, they will die if you over water them :stuck_out_tongue: intricate game, seems cool, but there is so much information right into your face. Would love to see this more broken down. You could just introduce a couple of systems at a time or something. Keep it up!
game seems promising, I like the idea. for me it's just not clear enough what each part of the tree or upgrade is going to do. And at some point I didn't have almost any Carbo but I had a lot of everything else, but still, I couldn't buy anything, I spend several months, tree was evolving I was getting more resources but I was kind of stuck without being able to grow leaves or do anything, maybe some balancing would solve this problem. Well done
Interesting little game. i'm not sure I understand what everything did. But I'd say it's a nice learning opportunity !
Nice game, I survived a lot of years (23) and then the humans killed me (>.>)
I lost a couple of times before I got some of the rules, the concept its nice and I think with a lot more feedback and balance it could be fun or at least interesting, right now its too caotic to undestand.
PD: I want some way to fight the humans, or at least something to know how atractive I am to them and a way to look worse :P
As a game it doesn't work that well (the first few turns it can die easily, then it becomes god) but I learned a bit about trees, which is nice
I couldn't do much in the game.Gameplay is vague. Dropped the leaves???
Nice game can be improved i loved the graphics a lot but u should keep going keep improving.
I would be helpful to have a tutorial. I didn't really understood how to get proteins, and when I dropped the leaves, I couldnt get it anymore. In a second try it became better, but still a bit vague. good ocncept anyway, good job!
Really liked the idea, although I guess that at the current development stage, general understanding of your tree condition is not there yet and it needs some quality of life improvement.
Please, keep it up with the concept and improve on this!
I grew too big too fast and humans wanted me! damn! i feel like i learnt things while playing this which is great considering i was having fun while doing so. really nice game.
Thanks everyone for your comments.
@matt2728 I'm happy about that new perspective :) Thanks for the kind words.
@tomathor I agree with some of your complaints. On one hand, I intentionally wanted to keep some mechanics unclear initially, so that the player is forced to explore the options and read the descriptions. However, the lack of feedback for the general mechanics and game state is not really benefiting anyone, I'll try to improve that with one of my post-jam updates.
@lamasaurus Thanks for the feedback. Introducing systems gradually is an interesting idea, but it would be a large departure from the current setup, so you're unlikely to see it even in future updates :) Maybe for an other game though!
@sharbelfs Thank you! I'll try to come up with something for the carbohydrate "deadlock" you've experienced, but it might have to be a new game mechanic. Balancing the costs and hidden gameplay values in general is a huge task that I could have spent an extra 24 hours on easily.
@jangamesdev Actually, that game ending was only enabled by a batch of bugfixes I released an hour or so before your comment, so you were probably the first one to ever achieve it, congrats! :) If you want to avoid the humans, for now I suggest just skip buying any one of the trunk upgrades - they don't have an effect in the current game version, and those pesky humans will only bother you if you're fully upgraded.
@brachistosauro I definitely see where you're coming from. I was struggling a bit to come up with fun game mechanics, but I was committed to trying to stick to real world concepts inspired by actual tree biology, so I'm glad that you've learned something :)
@delunado As I explain one comment above, I intentionally tried keeping some mechanics vague, to force players to learn a bit about the basic workings of a tree. I hope it didn't make for too frustrating an experience. Thanks for playing!
BTW if anyone's looking for a different take on a similar concept (managing a tree's resources), check out @fizzget's unique game "Reforest" - he commented here a couple slots above.
It was a bit unclear at first how to get the resources I needed, but once I figured it out it was a nice little puzzle. It would be nice not to switch back to the leaves when moving time forward.
Well done!
I immediately started dying each time, there's something here I'm not seeing. The graphics were nice. The GUI was alright, but I don't see a reason that the upgrades needs to be a popup menu, a separate place on the screen would have worked.
@raphiell Thanks! Yeah, I agree that switching back to the branches when starting a new month is annoying. I originally added that because the branches were supposed to be the visual indicator of how the last month went (leaf health, weather etc), but I didn't have time for any of those things in the 72 hours. Maybe it will make more sense in on of the post-jam versions ;)
@shaolin-dave Well, what made you die? The death messages are trying to be helpful, ie. if you are turned out of the ground by winds, you probably didn't have strong enough (perennial) roots, and if you run out of water you just mismanaged your resources. I'm sure the game could use some balancing though, I hope it wasn't too frustrating!
As for the upgrades menu, note that there are different upgrades available for each section (this might be not obvious at a glance, as I'm keeping the popup open when switching views), so it sort of belongs to the current section. It could be a separate view somewhere, but then it would have needed to fit 3 times as much information.
Feels like i learned something about growing and sustaining healthy tree. At beginning i was just clicking whatever came to my mind, but i realised i need to be wise on take different things into the account in order for tree not to die. A visual feedback to everything i spend resources on would be nice thou. With breanches etc i wasn't sure if i reallu "build" something. Great small game! I liked it.
I do like the angle this game takes on the theme. Instead of being an active reflex based game about keeping danger away, it puts the focus on how long a tree can live based on how it grows. It took a few attempts to see what would kill me, but found the best strategy was to focus on the roots, and buy the upgrades as I could. The roots directly supplied water, and I died once from running out of it. I was surprised that running out of a resource was a game over condition, but it does make sense contextually. The game does seem to boil down to making sure roots are bought every couple of months to keep up the supply lines. I did get a chuckle when the best ending seems to be being such a good tree that humans chop it down.
Having some more explanation of the systems would help the player make better decisions. I have a good idea that the green icon is nutrients but I am still not certain. I can see easy replay value in this game, changing the stats based on tree species and environment if you wanted to branch out a bit with this game. Speaking of my optimal run had me never buying branches, leaves, or a trunk, so having half the game not needed seems weird. Nice work!
I love how this dives deep into the biology of trees and uses accurate terminology. Clearly well-researched. The UI is also quite nice - clean and easy to use. Though I was able to be successful (as far as I could tell) on my second try (7+ years with all upgrades purchased), I still feel like I had very little understanding of how the tree was working. For example, I never shed the leaves and was unsure what benefit that might have. I could have used a little more insight into some of the values that were not clearly displayed, such as the stability of the tree, and the effect each part of the tree was having.
I can only imagine how hard it was to make such a system in such short period of time! Well done and congratulations. The only thing you could add is a small tutorial in the beginning otherwise great work!
@ulcius thanks! We are on the same page -- the original plans included visual feedback for all actions as well as the general health of the tree, but I had to cut corners heavily to make the deadline :) These are some of my top priority items though, however, for an eventual post-jam update, if I ever get around to it.
@toppervideogames Different tree species and environments are on the long-term roadmap, but there's many things to cover between now and then. Thanks for the detailed feedback! I know that anyone reaching the "humans" ending put an honest effort into playing the game, which I really appreciate.
@bmacintosh At points I felt like I'm wasting precious development time learning about tree biology, so it's very nice to see that aspect appreciated, thanks! Sadly, shedding leaves is currently not balanced well, but the core idea is that the more leaves you have, the more water you lose via evaporation, so in the winter months it's better to not keep them. However, with the current rates and costs, this is rarely the case.
@savvu Thank you! I tried explaining some concepts in the upgrade panels (in an earlier draft it was actually an "Info & Upgrades" panel), but I also intentionally tried forcing a trial-and-error method for learning the basic mechanics :)
I like the descriptions and had fun with the game! I got a crazy amount of resources and got all the upgrades, but then didn't realize getting too many branches and leave would make me top heavy and make the tree fall over :sweat_smile:. Nice systems. Could be nice to see where the tree needs support, like an overall picture, but what's there I think works well for the jam. Nice job!
Beautiful Simulation. I kept it alive, even though I was short on carbo
Pretty unique mechanics, are you a chemist? 😏 Liked many components of this system, but it's some hard for me to understand all. Also liked the UI. Good job!
Hey, we had similar ideas in our games. My team went the educational rout as well. Your's is a lot easier to play though. Similar to ours, it's a bit hard to understand what to do, or what thing has what effect. Still, I was able to manage to get all the upgrades and seemed to be on a path of surviving forever. If you wanted to check out my entry, you can here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/sim-cell I normally wouldn't link my game in comments, but since you also did an educational game I thought you might like to see it. Be warned, in the HTML version of the game, clicking the "Learn More" button will take you away from the game and lose your progress.