The Machine's Blessing

krebzor 2020-04-21 11:25

I really dont know what to say about the game to be honest.... I want to like this game because of the art itself, the goddess is spectacular and the concept is really nice, kind of sci fi post apocalyptic farming. However I was not able to do anything on the game. I could really read what each metal was on the tab above, since the letters were on top of the UI and it blended all in one, also the description of the field itself was kinda hard to read because of the black letters with black box. I couldnt plant any stuff either, dont know why. It is a nice game and concept but it does need to get the basics on mechanics well. It could also be me too dumb to not get it.... sorry..

nosfer 2020-04-21 11:35

I'm also too dumb for this but the graphics and audio is great :)

solrinn 2020-04-21 12:07

We understand what you mean, we are working on a little tutorial to put on this page for people to know what to do in this game.

good-enough 2020-04-21 12:15

Same.. I enjoyed the experience, but the only thing changed what I was seeing was the next day button and the water trough which made a swooshy noise..

The audio and visuals were great! If you do a post-jam version with working mechanics, I'd love to try it out!

mikonow 2020-04-21 13:02

Hello !

We added a little tutorial on the main post ! :smile: I hope it's clearer now !

Even if it's not perfect, we are really happy to read your feedbacks. We will fix some bugs and submit a corrected version to you as soon as we have a little rest, as my mate said !

I wanted to say... It's my first game jam and it's my first game eveeeeer... I was really nervous and afraid but now i'm very really proud of everybody in this team. We had a lot of fun :heart: Thank you everybody for all your comments ! :two_hearts:

-Noémie V.

jbdev 2020-04-21 18:18

I loved the art style, even though the game was a bit hard to understand. I'll check the tutorial and play again!

bohrmaschine2000 2020-04-21 18:21

Nice Art, and Gameplay

j-c-one-bit-studio 2020-04-21 18:25

I can just repeast what others said. The graphics, the music and the mood is fantastic, but the top UI is barely readable, and even with the tutorial, it is hard to understand what you should be doing. Still, I hope you will work on this further, because it is really a cool concept.

bramreth 2020-04-21 18:25

Your art and music is incredible, you should be really proud I would love to see more of your creations! definitely needs a tutorial though I was very confused and didn't realise I could open that important left tab until I came back to this page

maryush28 2020-04-21 18:35

I'm also a bit confused about what should i do in this game. As mentioned above, it is hard to determine what is interactive and what is not. Illumination of the wheelbarrow or increasing its contour, for example when hovering, would certainly help. Enlarging the cabinet handle would also help, because it is hardly visible. The player's attention is focused on arable fields and mysterious squares on the top bar. The music is really good. Congratulations on creating two tracks! :) The start scene is also visually very pleasing to the eye.

I also don't quite understand what happens to arable fields after some time (after a few days). And what is wheelbarrow for. And I don't know if the settings button should work or not. It doesn't work for me.

Aand another thing - description of those mysterious boxes on top bar is hardly visible.

Besides that, not bad. Probably too big scope (just as in my team project :smile: )

Cheers!

solrinn 2020-04-21 18:56

In fact their is three track, One in the menu and two when cultivating that you can change in the top right of the screen.

empheon 2020-04-21 19:15

As most of the comments say, the game is a bit confusing at first, but some simple things could help improving the comprehension! For example, highlighting the cart when you select food, or adding a clear arrow to the drawer handle so we understand to click there (and make it disappear after the first click). It's also a bit difficult to understand how the fertility/water/oil things affect on the crops. For example, I didn't understand what the "+1 quality" was doing, more the utility of "+3 water" since we have plenty of it (or maybe I'm not using it the way it was meant to be used).

Nevertheless, the music and art are beautiful. For a first game jam you all did a great job so you can be proud of yourself! The overall idea is pretty good! Can't wait to see you guys at the ENJMIN :wink:

5imon 2020-04-21 21:04

Nice! This looks awesome! I still can't find the right balance in gameplay but the graphics, music and overall mood kept me playing. Chapeau - beautiful art!

demontoon 2020-04-22 12:38

Music, visuals and art are wonderfull ! I love the idea but I think the execution could be a bit more clear and simple. Especially concerning the feedbacks, you could try to help us more ! But yeah, the overall experience is great once you understood the rules !

Great job, you can be proud !

fae-exe 2020-04-22 13:33

Hello all! Thank you so very much for your feedbacks and comments, it makes my heart go afflutter. Even though I keep seeing that the design is confusing (not surprising really, I'm a bit used to that), just reading that some people still found fun in the gameplay is pure bliss to me!

And some enjoyed the experience anyway! To see the fruits of my teammates' toil so justly lauded makes me so happy for them!

The team is working hard on a fix for the UI, which is admittedly unclear, on a little tutorial, various bugfixes and tiny features that they couldn't get to work before, and to try to make the little tooltips readable. The short background that was written during the jam and some moody tooltips for the crops might find their way into the game too, but only if the devs can find some time for that, which is not a given (they're already very hard at work).

Indeed, the gameplay might be a little much for a game of this scope, and especially with the troubles we encountered trying to display the relevant information clearly. It would need some form of progression to make it easier to get accustommed to the various systems, easing into the concepts, a bunch of streamlining and balancing... I think complex systems are fine, learning curves are fine, but this all need to be taken into account to really make the player's experience as enjoyable as possible. Still, it's proof of concept for a tiny bit of something larger, that I thought could be fun and interesting.

(I'm a bit sad for now that we could not get the crop laboratory-atelier into the game, but one day, I may get to repurpose some of those ideas to torture some other team. I can only hope they'll be as wonderful as this one.)

As you noted, the balance on the ressource systems and crops yields are kind of wonky, and needed a lot more tuning to really get right - especially after so many gameplay features had to be parred down and put into the garbage can, which threw a bunch of design elements out of the metaphorical window and the balance with it. But time was like oil between our fingers. I have not a great grasp of scope and achievability yet. I do very much lack experience and efficiency in, let's say, practical game design - but isn't it very much the point of doing these jams, I believe?

A lack of foresight on my part wanted to take the game in one direction, but the constraints of practicality in the design took it in an other, and I'm pretty happy that we could collectively make that shift of focus work - some tokyo drift-like turn it was - and still have some elements of the intended experience delivered through other means than the ones intended.

Again, I thank you kindly for your returns and feedbacks. They are duly noted. I wish you all a wonderful day, and success in what you do! Please be kind to others and yourselves.

oscarglo 2020-04-22 17:00

Gorgeous graphics and environment. Sadly the game is very confusing, but I can see you put much time and effort into many mechanics. Maybe the project was a bit too ambitious. I hope you'll update it, I'm sure I'll enjoy it even more!

Edit: Wait, that's some nice singing, I didn't get to hear it at first!

mikonow 2020-04-24 14:30

Hello everyone !

After your first feedbacks, we managed to correct our game. We have fixed some bugs on the v1.1 but there is no tutorial yet. It's coming on the v1.2 ! With more bug fix.

Feel free to test it and give us your new comments! But, please, do not rate this version v1.1. We did in more than 72 hours.

petitebarre de séparation.png

[**PATCH NOTE v1.1**]

_Added features_ - Crops now become BLESSED when planted in BLESSED soil. - Products special effects have been implemented. - Products now exist in BLESSED form. - Products are BLESSED when harvested from BLESSED crops. - Products can be turned into crops using the hoe. - BLESSED products turn into BLESSED crops. - Crops info in the drawer-dossier now display the crop's quality. - BLESSED crops now output BLESSED products.

*UI fixes & updates* - The crops drawer-dossier is now more visible. - The track switch has been turned into a radio! ♫ - Clicking on a harvested product highlights the WHEELBARROW, the hoe and the soil tiles. - Products names have been updated.

*Bug fixes* - Tiles now correctly become PURE when crops are planted on them. - BLESSED earth or planted tiles can no longer become BLESSED when OIL leaks. - FERTILITY and QUALITY now correctly affects the crops' output

*Balance changes* - OIL leaks adjusted from 50% to 20%

petite barre de séparation2.png

Thank you for all your support <3 ! ❁☢❀☢✿

@krebzor @nosfer @good-enough @jbdev @bohrmaschine2000 @j-c-one-bit-studio @bramreth @maryush28 @empheon @oscarglo @5imon @demontoon

alchemic 2020-05-09 04:40

The artwork and music is beautiful, and the idea behind the gameplay is very interesting. However, it is also very confusing. It took me a while to understand the gameplay, and I had to read some of the comments here to figure everything out. I still don't understand what the metals do, except the last two which seem to heal and fertilize. The descriptions of the metals are difficult to read, and even after reading them, they aren't very clear about what they do.

After I read some of the comments here, I tried to play the 1.1 version. It is much better. The addition of the highlighting and the hoe are very useful. I still don't know what the metals do. I couldn't figure out how to get "pure" crops again, and my entire field became "blessed", which I soon realized was a problem.

Also, I encountered several glitches (also in 1.1) where I couldn't click on the circles to water/oil plants. And sometimes I wasn't able to click on inventory items until the next day.

I don't really get why the drawer must be clicked to be seen. I know it obscures the view of the statue, which is very beautiful, but I quickly started leaving the drawer open all the time.

I can tell that this has some potential, but there needs to be some major improvements to the UI first. The confusing UI really drags down this otherwise very beautiful game.