Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Keep Vlad Alive
By zimny11
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 701 | 3.25 | 36 | |
| Fun | 723 | 3.04 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 693 | 3.08 | 36 | |
| Theme | 283 | 3.92 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 481 | 3.51 | 36 | |
| Audio | 484 | 3.10 | 35 | |
| Humor | 353 | 3.12 | 35 | |
| Mood | 203 | 3.64 | 34 |
Who doesn't love a good time as Minion 8362? Personally a childhood favourite of mine. Kidding aside I really like the concept here. I couldn't really seem to get a balance going between planting the blood crops, keeping vlad alive, and having enough blood to grow new ones. But I can see where the fun certainly ramps up in this. Thank you for letting us play this!
This is really good -- the music fits your theme well, and the pixel art is great.
I'd highly recommend adding some explanation of the controls to this page. There were two things I found very confusing, and I only worked through them after a lot of random clicking:
1) On the story page I thought "Right Button" meant "Right *Mouse* Button", not "Right Arrow Key"
2) In the game itself, I don't think it's obvious that you can click the seed bag
I think it's a really original idea, although I had a hard time being any good at it.
Also, wanted to let you know that playing the web version I got stuck on the "story" option. I tried everything I could think of, and couldn't get off that screen. I wonder if right clicks don't work in the web player maybe?
EDIT
OK I figured out from other comments how to play it (I also thought you meant right-click in Story mode, and also did not realize I could click the bean bag).
A tutorial would have been nice. If you don't have time to put one in the game, it'd help a lot to at least put up some instructions here or on the itch page.
Interesting mix of mechanics with the way the different plants have to be organized. A solid little farming simulator. Music got pretty repetitive, but fit the mood.
I love farming games! The pixel art is really clean, and the UI interaction all feels really good. The little + symbols to buy more bags took me a couple of tries to find, but after that, I figured out the tools pretty quickly. I was unable to sustain Vlad on any of my attempts, however. My blood mushrooms always fell behind my production - if there is a secret to it, I did not discover it =( But as I said... I love farming games. I'll be back to play this one again when I have more time.
Had a hard time figuring out how to buy more blood mushrooms but eventually found out that you actually need blood to buy more mushrooms. Great concept!
Took me a minute to figure out how to play I would really recommend even just a basic tutorial either the itchio page here on the ludum dare site. Gameplay wise I really like your idea and think it actually plays really well. The only major gripe I have is that I wish I was able to buy mushroom seeds with any tool equiped. The number of times I went to buy seeds and couldn't because I still had the scyth selected was really to high and its a pain to have to switch between tools and the hand.
@dylan-pineo @pennycook @josh-riley @caseyh @jason-woerner @mrfluffysheep @theseusinabottle Thank you very much for feedback. This was my first Ludum Dare, so any constructive criticism is welcome. Certainly a better tutorial could be useful. @theseusinabottle You can use the 1, 2, 3 keys to switch between the tools, I forget mention it somewhere but I forgot :/
A puzzler farming game, lovely :D I thought the animations were really neat and the concept of a vegetarian vampire amusing :thumbsup:
@alex-mulkerrin Thanks for the review!
Great job, I really liked the idea!! Keeping a vampire alive is not something you do everyday haha. I also liked the concept of a blood farmer, it sounds like a weird profesion to have in a vampire army, but vlad's got eat.
The music and art worked really well together! One thing that would have been nice is some instructions inside the game :)
Here are some notes from my experience with the game: * Press right button, instead of right arrow key. (which you already adressed) * Really nice that it has a story * The get more seeds button almost felt like a part of the bone art, not as a UI element. Maybe make it more visible (different color or position). * Clicking multiple times with the bucket seems to reset the animation and possibly stop the shrooms from growing. * I like how the shrooms can spoil if left for too long. * Maybe start the game off with a full bar. Thanks for making this! Hope the feedback is helpful.
it could do with some instructions, art style is nice
Enjoyed artwork a lot, everything fits together very nicely! Some UI things weren't clear, took some clicking around to figure out how to buy more seeds.
Fun little growing game. As mentioned above, it was not obvious how to buy more seeds at first, and one other thing about that is that it was hard to tell how much blood I was going to lose by buying. It was really hard to judge at what point I should buy bloodkins for that reason.
I like the story part of it, but I needed to look here first for some additional instructions (I watered my plants too much) :) the sound is good and the art fitting. Minion6364 out :)
the music and sfx are representing the mood of the game. Maybe a little bit higher bar would help at the start. That little bar makes it harder to play. I see lots of godot game this year. Maybe it is time to learn godot engine for me. Thank you for the source code...
At first I didn't quite understand the game, but then I read the story, was thoroughly amused and understood the game perfectly! Great theme and humor, and nice puzzle/farming mechanics. Nice job!
i like the music it gives ominous vibes which fits the vampire theme, controls are quite easy to understand and pixel art is clean. at first i did not know that story is also the "how to play" so i went straight to the game. the game was challenging and fun at the same time. congrats on the comp/jamp :)
Nice graphics, but I couldn't really feel myself progressing. I enjoyed planting crops and growing them, but it was hard getting the balance right as the blood gauge didn't seem to increase by much. I think if you work on balancing that, it has some good potential!
@adam-clayden Thank you for opinion. I will probably keep working on this idea when Ludum Dare is over. A little balancing, more types of plants, more things to do with plants, etc.
@webox @ioan-pop @artylo @bloodpulpgames @uzpykes @princesschoochoo @bloham @tayfun @singleshoe @reino-angelo Thank you all for your comments and for playing my game!
that was fun, and the music really set the mood.
I loved watching the brainpkins grow. Nice job on the pixel art there!
For health reasons I use a trackball instead of a regular mouse, so it was harder for me to play I think. But even with my reduced mouse agility, the game still sort of devolved into spam-clicking the mouse button. I was just watering constantly. It also was not clear to me whether the seeds were a good investment. My initial reaction was "wait, did I even break even?" I played and loved Stardew Valley, but in that game you don't even have to do the math to figure out that buying seeds is a good investment, because the rate of return is so high it's very perceptible. It's like double or triple your cost basis or something. Then again there are lots of moving parts to that game, so maybe it's not just about the numbers.
Good job overall, loved the art and music, and the intro cutscene was fun to read!
@turncoda Thank you for your comment and feedback! Yes, there are still balancing issues. I wanted to add more features, but there wasn't enough time to do so. I'm glad you liked the music, it's literally the first soundtrack I've ever created in my life :P
The game is really nice! I felt the feeling of stress when trying to manage all of those bloodrooms and brainpkins :smile: You have a nice gameplay which engages players into trying to find the best strategy to produce the most blood possible :wink: Although, if I can give you an advice (and maybe that’s something you could fix even for the jam version), the tutorial says brainpkins produce more juice if there is one bloodshroom in its row or column. What happens if there is more than one? I ask you because I’ve never been sure if this cancels out the bonus, keeps it or increases it ^^
@chorizo Thanks for comment and playing the game!
@sticmac Thanks for playing! Yes, you will get the bonus only if there is exactly one bloodshroom in the column (or row), more than one will cancel the bonus. And thas is the trick, to start by filling the columns, because they are shorter. Here's more or less perfect solution: example.png
Went back and re-played it with the new game balance. Nice work! I did not know about the special 1-per-row bonus, but I did manage to complete the game :D Really fun to come back and see the improvements made.
@zimny11 Thanks for your response! Well I think you should insist more on that in the story ^^ Maybe that’s just me not being a native english speaker, and so, not understanding this as easily as someone who’s one. But I think it would be more understandable if you say the bonus happens if there’s *only* one (or *exactly* one) bloodshroom in column or row in the story part :slight_smile: That’s minor though, your game is still very nice even without this ^^
enjoyable game, i was tempted to give up after filling the meter a couple of times, however someone commented about completing the game so i ploughed on and managed to complete it. learning about how long you can leave things before they rot was interesting and the 1 per row bonus helped. nice game.
Awesome art! And a very fun take on the farming theme, I could honestly see this becoming part of a full-length story game. A tutorial would've been nice sure but those take ages to make so honestly I can't really fault this.
10/10: would plant fictional food to feed a vampire again. :ok_hand:
@jason-woerner @fizzget I am very happy that you wanted to take your time to finish my game! @sticmac English is also not my native language either, so I could probably better phrase the tips :) @digitallimestone I wanted to add better instructions and more features but unfortunately time did not allow for that. Thank you all so very much for kind words!
This was a lot of fun! It was an slow and addictive game, but a lot of pressure was added by the watering system, which I liked a lot! I couldn't tell if I was playing V1.0 or V1.1 (I don't think that balancing changes are allowed after the Compo ends), but I still enjoyed my time, and don't think balancing would have affected my ratings all that much. Overall, great job!
@chaseplays Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I accidentally put in a version in which I changed some values for testing, and if I'm not mistaken, the win was not possible in that version. So I changed thoes values back to intended in version 1.1. In fact, you can fix bugs according to official rules after the deadline: "Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission (a short change log)."
Solid game! I found myself playing longer than I expected!
@danilo-bezerra Thank you for taking the time to play my game!