petrifiedapple 2020-04-21 10:24
How structured was your organization, with 7 contributors?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → The Consequences of Gardening
By MrKebab, Leo Lemberger, Maus3rSR, jmad, Eqkter, Kalarth and Thorqueor
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 385 | 3.87 | 79 | |
| Fun | 1126 | 3.36 | 77 | |
| Innovation | 1573 | 3.10 | 76 | |
| Theme | 689 | 3.90 | 77 | |
| Graphics | 237 | 4.34 | 80 | |
| Audio | 193 | 3.98 | 78 | |
| Humor | 314 | 3.72 | 79 | |
| Mood | 455 | 3.81 | 79 |
How structured was your organization, with 7 contributors?
See the master answer below !
@petrifiedapple Hi there! I managed the general team, and we subdivided in smaller teams (dev / sound / art / story). We had one brainstorming session with everyone sharing ideas on what the game would be, and went to work. Each dev had specific parts of the code to take care of. We used trello and communication between sub-teams a lot. Was really a matter of having a list of requirements down, one team asking another for this and that, and sticking to it. Most of us had worked together previously, and we all adapted to one another. It actually went pretty smoothly.
tcog.PNG
Small bug at the beginning where a white box was covering some of the objects and I couldn't read it.
Really cool way to approach the theme! Loved the graphics, animation, and audio, they all worked really well together. One thing I'd like to see is a little more UI to let the player know what they're doing, unless the player figuring it out is part of the mystery then this makes sense!
Love the art! So detailed. And the dialogue is very well written and funny. Gert must grow.
The art is so nice and the story is very interesting! Since this is a serial killer story game , I would have liked an ending. I liked the array of characters, and how put-together this game felt. The audio is fantastic and I still have the end audio playing as I write this. :)
Good job folks! I was stuck at a moment but the game is really cool, you can be proud of you! <3
This game is dope, the pixel art is some of the best I've seen in the Jam and story is interesting, too. This is well-put together, but it could really use some polish. The environment doesn't feel very alive, and some of the animations (or lack there of) is pretty jarring. And the selection box is a weird sometimes. Other than that great job 👍🏿
@kc-shiftyyy Thanks for the feedback! :smile: For the lack of animation, as always, I spent faaar too much time on the first few elements, then ended up rushing the rest.
Our polishing backlog on trello has quite a long list of things we wanted to improve, but it'll have to wait for after the ratings.
Interesting story, good art and sounds... Great work ! And congratulations to make that with a team of seven !
Lots of detail for a jam game! Bit weird seeing my guy standing still but playing a walking animation and I noticed a few typos here and there (asking depressed guy if he's "alrigth"). I feel like the dialogue box could have been snappier - maybe removing it's small expand animation might've helped as it just felt a bit slow to see the text appear. A minor gripe but I think an important one in a game where it's the thing you do the most of. Sometimes when you skip text it's position changes from where it was when it was typing out and where it is when it's a complete block of text. (These are SUPER minor things and I'm just pointing them out so you'e aware. But they haven't affected the actual core gameplay for me at all).
Pixel art was *really* nice. As others have mentioned it's curious to see a team of seven! That sounds like my personal idea of hell trying to co-ordinate that in 72 hours! It definitely shows in the amount of quality assets in the game that you were able to spread the duties out to people with a single focus on them.
The music is really nice and sets the mood well. The whole package definitely has old school Sierra type point and click vibes, especially due to the art and the slightly mysterious nature of everything thats going on. I'll reiterate how impressive it is with the depth of content here. Gert feeding on his victim was a nice little move which juxtaposed nicely with the lounge music I was hearing before the horror. I really liked the atmosphere on display.
All in all a really nice package! Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your entry!
@madebychaz Thank you very much for the detailed feedback! We initially set to do the game in 48h and use the last 24 to polish, but it was a bit too ambitious, even more so since we still enjoyed breaks and *almost* regular nights. A few points you mentionned were indeed on our list, with lower priorities, and we ran out of time before getting there. It'll be in the works for later, once ratings are over :)
I am actually honestly surprised to get so many reactions on our number! We coordinated nicely, and it felt very normal. Very lucky to have gathered such cool people together, and that we decided on what idea to go for in just above an hour.
This game is very cool and I felt there was a lot going on in a jam game! It's amazing how much art there is and I felt admiring the backgrounds was my favorite part. I was able to play through and feed my Gert :') . The flower animation always freaked me out, which I suppose is the intention, hahah.
I agree with all the feedback from @madebychaz , and it's hard to add more beyond that. The expand animation and sound did bother me a bit as I played through it, but otherwise the dialogue was rather enjoyable even if sad considering where all the characters end up.
Short version of the feedback: 5 of 5!
@madebychaz @lambdaloop
Thank you for such precise feedbacks! I am totally agree with you about the dialog animation. I ran out of time to polish this part unfortunaly however be sure it was in the polish backlog :). The sound designer had asked if he should recreate a sound for the dialog open/close and we just completely forgot about this. We thought it wouldn't be that disturbing and that it could go well with certain characters background lol...
Thank you so much you rock guys.
Really impressive amount of content and polish for a jam! Wonderful art and sound!
A minor issue. The sound of opening and closing the dialog window started to get really grating after a while. and the animation felt like it slowed down moving through the dialog. I am a little sensitive to audio stuff though, so this might just be me.
I'm a simple man. I see a well made point-and-click adventure, I five-star everything. And in this case, is absolutely deserved in every category. Congratulations on making this awesome game! :D
Really nice artworks, musics and sounds too are great ! But it would be great if we could ... pass dialogue that we had already read... (don not clic that woman in the bar second time !!!) I don't know what to think about the scenario. I couldn't get any empathy for that psychopath giving to eat innocent people to his abomination x) (My purr-efferred cat-racter was Ghosty :p) Are there multiple endings ? cause the water-can didn't seems to be useful at all. If yes, then I'll go back test another round. If not, the game is a bit short after all. Wish I could see more. But again, wonderful artwork and music (I liked the hidden add for @eqkter :p )
Wow - how did you manage to get THAT much content out in just 72 hours?! I see that you had a lot of people involved but that ususally creates more problems in communication and thus 10 times the people is never 10 times the output. I am deeply impressed by the consistency of the world, everything feels like it was created by one person alone. A really great achievement!
The graphics are just amazing, great pixel art. Everything is easily recognizable even without the texts. Also the fact that all alive things have idle animations. This gives the world so much more depth. It really feels alive, like a real, pixelated world.
I like how you worked around the lack of time but the game still feels very polished. The characters just sliding back and forth instead of walking, the dialog box faces still pencil drawings, the people who get eaten just become one generic shadow of a shape in the dying animation. I noticed all these but they don't interfere with the overall feel of the game. Really good prioritization of things I feel.
The background music, sound effects, speech noise and the two songs on the headphones - your audio department did an amazing job as well. And yes, that Eqkter track is really nice.
I like the controls, nothing fancy, just one button and a very classic adventure game mechanic that I immediately understand.
The story is interesting, I looked at everything in the world (except I did not find some easteregg) and I must say the writing was done very well. An adventure game stands or falls with its texts. I have seen LD games with endless robot-like texts that nobody would ever say like that. I have seen the opposite, not enough information to get through the game. But yours just works. It does not feel clumsily written, it has something interesting to say all the time. This starts with your intro screen. What could have been "This is our game. You must feed humans to the plant..." (which always makes me go: "Oh really - this is a game, huh? Nice immersion!") is a snappy story that leads you into this other world.
The progression is fun, not a hard puzzle. Hard puzzles in adventure games are terrible. I solved everything the standard adventure game way - grab everything I can and talk to everybody in a loop until somthing new happens. Old formula that works well on your game. This might sound like a con but is a big pro. I can play and enjoy your game without getting bored or frustrated. I finished it in 15-20 minutes (I guess, did not look at the clock, maybe I was so immersed that it really took longer than that) which I feel is the right time for the size of your world. It can be hard to find the right balance between a game that is over to quickly and the player thinks - wait I have still stuff to explore - and a game that drags on for too long and the player gets bored to death. You found the perfect balance of this.
Really an awsome game, 5/5, great job you all!
@wegpast Thank you very much for this feedback. Yes I could put an effort to add a way to escape the whole dialogue. I'm sad you got trapped by this handsome blond woman ;P
We was accustomed to dialogues so it got out of our mind, sorry !
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Thanl you for the ratings guys ! <3
I can only imagine how funny it was to create this game and all the artwork behind it! Definitely a very nice and well thought entry for this Ludum Dare! The room itself is an artwork on its own! Congratulations!
This game is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of point and click adventures like this. The sounds for communication prompts is actually really cool. It was a little hard to figure out how to use items from my inventory and I ran into a couple bugs with things not letting me inspect them and had to reload the location in order for it to work. Overall this was excellent and I appreciate all the hard work that went into this. The fact that this much content was made in 72 hours is mind boggling. The humor and atmosphere of this game is great as well... would definitely look forward to a full-featured release of this concept.
Congratulations on a great piece of work!
@david-bohan Thank you for playing it! Yes we got this bug rarely ("things not letting me inspect them") and do not know where it comes from actually but we will investigate on it. I think we will polish and correct these bugs after the ratings! I hope :-)
Incredible game, honestly. The artwork is astounding and the sound design is great too. I'm getting huge Little Shop of Horrors vibes from it and I love it! The amount of work that must have gone into the art and animation is mind boggling for a game jam submission, really well done!
I'm playing the web version and I cannot figure out how to use the inventory.
Looks great, I like the story idea, but how to you use the inventory system?
@heiach @jake-marks Hi there! Thank you for trying the game. The inventory system so far isn't useable per se, the right dialog will trigger as long as you have the object on you.
Ah ha, thank you. I got there in the end, after many minutes of failing to drag items around!
Great Game and Very Solid concept, I loved the pixel art graphics and how polished the game is Amazingly Done!
Lovely art and story.
I finished it ! So much fun, it remember me Monkey Island and Day of Tentacles !
The gameplay works well, even if is missing a dialog system and real usage of object, the game is fun to play, it's really a good start.
Well done !
Great job! Obviously there's a lot there and it's super impressive to even organise a team like that! Loved the music and sound design, and the mood was perfect.
This was an interesting one, the graphics are amazing and I like how you took the point and click path, game is really polished, nice graphics, fitting audio, though I'm not a fan of the dark themes, but overall a really amazing game!
Nice! Quite ambitious project for a jam game. Congrats on mainly pulling it off...
The story was kinda cool but it really lacked depth. Obviously this is something well out of scope for a jam though. Like the whole hand thing was barely mentioned in the actual game. The lack of deeper introduction to the protagonist and his motivations made him very unlikeable made the whole story feel bland. After a bit, it was very predictable too. The idea was there but really would have required some meat around the bones. I would have also split the intro text to be fed one line at a time. Wells of text are never too fun.
I really liked the art. The only annoyance in that department really was the ugly yellow squares around the objects on highlight. If they had the same kind of shaped outline as the characters it would have been several times better. The UI should scale with the screen size too, it was borderline unplayable on full screen...
gertmenu.png
Well the font was kinda boring too...
The pick up menu also had this very annoying bug where if the item was still behind the take/inspect button, it would glitch out and just reopen the menu instead.
gertreopen.gif
And speaking of items, didn't like the fact that the items either were complete red herrings or just used themselves automatically. It removed that tiny bit on actual interactivity the game could have had. The puzzles weren't that complicated anyway that one wouldn't be able to solve them quite easily but would have made it feel more like a game. Of course this would introduce quite a huge task of more narration for trying to use different items on wrong spots but would have more organically given more places to add some more clever quips the game already had a few of.
There was this funny bug when you trigger something while an animation was still playing...
gertwalk.gif
The repeating conversations were a bad experience. Happened first with the girl and then because of that mashed through the repairman convo and didn't quite understand what made it change. I don't think I had any new items between those two tries either. Should have just added a simple bool flag to keep track if the conversation has already taken place and replace it with a shorter one on repetitions. And of course one that would smoothly transition to the branching plot when you have met the requirement. Also lacked some other permanence like the dude already being gone...
gertnodude.png
The sound work was great! Especially the music. The piece had these noises that I at least associated with Gert making noises while at first chilling at home so it was weird hearing those too everywhere else. Might have just been my brain doing connection where there shouldn't have been any.
Might be a good idea to proof read the whole script at least once before the end of a jam...
gertitalics.png
There also was this invisible butcher shop which I'm guessing was cut out of the game due to scoping issues.
gertbutcher.gif
All in all, good job! :thumbsup:
@antti-haavikko Thank you so much for the amazingly detailed feedback!
When it comes to Kaz, the idea was never really to make him likeable or not. He ended up accepting he had to do this, and just does. And so does the player. I like the idea of people playing through actually disliking him, the game then definitely is a different experience. Very sorry if you felt it was bland! There are actually 2 lines about his hand in the game, for it to stay a detail that would stay a bit obscure.
I totally agree with the wall of text. We sadly were running out of time, and had to put couple things together very quickly, including intro and credits. Same goes for the highlights of objects, it was a work-around since I did not have the time to export each object as a seperate element, neither did the dev for putting everything back together in Unity. Using items was also one of the things we did not manage to put in the game. Butcher shop was left as a hidden "easter egg" - not yet drawn. It's on the list for post-jam polish, though. We'll hopefully be able to fix these issues and make the game like we imagined it. Maybe even adding more to the story.
The only repeating conversation is with the girl at the bar, all other conversations with useful NPCs are different right off the bat if you do have the correct object. Great idea for the shorter version, thanks!
There were several rounds of proofreading. Sadly, there are always some things that fall through the net ._.
Cheers!
O...m...g! Why do I see this masterpiece now after days for the first time. Ok FIRST: Solid 5 Stars for mood, graphics and sound. Yes... I am from the Monkey Island (original) era, but this is really really cool. Thx for creating this! Hope to see more of it? Are you guys working on something?
Haha, freaking love this! I want this to be a full game! :D
Really well done! The graphics and audio were amazing! I was a bit confused as to what I was doing at first, but wow that twist hahaha. To nitpick, I thought the delay between clicking something and text coming up was a bit too long and the sound that played when clicking was a bit annoying. Great game!
@ilikescifi Oh my, thank you so much. It means a lot. Some of us work on projects together from time to time, it's definitely not the last from us! Four of us made [\ kūl† \](https://jmad.itch.io/kult) for another jam, for example - that's the only other story-based and somewhat finished game I have in store for now. We do intend to push Consequences of Gardening further, though! :3
@thedouche This *might* just actually be happening. :wink: We already have ideas for improving and polishing what's already there, and add to it. I'll try to post some news on here, but best to follow the game page if you want to catch a future update!
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I didn't quite answer every single one of you personnally, but thank you so much for all the feedbacks. I am completly overwhelmed. Glad to have such a wonderful first LD experience :purple_heart: Everything said here has been taken into account for the possible future of the game.
@jmad Nice! i also made an pixel game that were about to make a full game out of :D
@jmad Yea! Great to hear. Keep it up!
Absolutely stunning game! :)
Such a great amount of content and effort for a jam game. ^_^
I think this genre only works with witty and interesting dialogues, and you pulled that off very well. I also appreciated the humour. And the two tracks in the store were bangers!
Good job!
this is very good game I really like the art and the music. I'm a fan of point and clicks and clicked on just about everything even before even thinking about looking at the map. I think i may have accidentally solved all the puzzles or collection bits before needing to collect things became a stated goal lol. EXCEPT for the lady in the bar, ohmygosh i clicked on her like 3 times. The 3rd time i clicked, i had the key item, but the conversation started out the same and i almost quit lol. Being able to skip repeat dialogue would go a long way in making this feel better. Good game
A pretty cool point&click adventure! :) I loved the idea of feeding an evil plant haha ;) The graphics were prtty and the animation too, I like the artstyle :) I experienced a bug that when I sometimes click on assets I can't pick them up when I click on "Pick up", but rather the box moves to the right and a bit down, for example the wallet, it worked after clicking on it for several times though! Music was sounds were great and added a lot to the mood, I just couldn't use the stuff in my inventory? I tried clicking and dragging but it sadly did nothing. I loved all the little infos you've put on a lot of assets, felt very Point&click-y The controls were okay but I would advise to base them more on other Point&Click games like Monkey Island or Deponia, because I've intuitively made something I know from those games, like clicking on the edge and that also brings me to the map etc, also going around a bit would have been nice :) I managed to bring the IT guy to Gertrude and felt so bad haha because he was so nice (side note: on the other hand, I would have let him repair my PC first and then fed him to Gertrude :PP) I also liked how you added music to be played to the headphones in the shop :)
Cool entry, congratz on finishing your game! :D P.S.: If you want, you could check out our game too, I have a feeling you might like it.. ;))
Really nice game! Didn't manage to bring home the tipsy girl, but I had fun anyway. :) Very good pixel-art, super nice musical ambiance and sound design (especially the R2D2 speech!), congrats!
The art and music is phenomenal. The narrative was enjoyable. Loved the UI for the map. I beat the game twice and found no problems with playing the puzzle out of order. I'll be cryptic here to avoid spoilers, but I was confused why the magnet would trigger a certain event. The other items made sense to me; and I never did find a use for the watering can. I love point-and-click games, and I found yours to be very inspired in its design and storytelling.
@sageware Thank you for playing! :) For it to make more sense, we still need to implement a working inventory, where player has to actually use the items on something to trigger the story. A little hint for that one : Kaz is a bit weird, and would not lie about his computer being broken.
Hello! I defintely clicked on this one for the art! I was excited to find out afterward that it was a point and click game! (My entry was in the vein of, but I didn't quite get the point and click aspect lol). The art as I said looks really nice, pretty well done for a short amount of time! There were a few things that stood out to me, like when you clicked on the npc when walking into the market scene, the player would continue the walking animation on the spot. The fact that I could take the lamp before even talking to the sales man and i think the choice of dialogue sound didnt fit.
But otherwise I loved this and made sure to finish it! Thanks guys, good job!
I've seen a lot of games about plant care in this jam, but this one is definitely unique! The story is very funny and pixel art is amazing, great work! Also in Kaz's room I found an X-Wing and... is that the mask from Crash Team Racing? :D
Haha this is great, I see you guys also had a big team. Hilarious take on the theme! Love the art style (reminds me of Another World). The music and sound design for all the different locations is also perfect. Would have liked to to see more dialog branching options for such a dialog driven game, but other than that I really enjoyed it. Great work!
Great job! Witty dialogue and realistic art.
Just wanted to say your game page on itch is really pretty :)
The guys selling drinks in the bar looks like me and that was a bit unsettling xD
Jokes aside, it's really polished and investing entry, reminds me of "Lone Survivor" very much. Great entry!
Very nice jam game and I simply adored the concept! The story is pretextual but funny and feeding various people to the plant is where the real fun is, of course!
I liked the art and loads of detail and the background music was also nice.
However, the text effects were driving me crazy. Craaaaaaazy :laughing: I feel both the text pop up and the text reveal effect are totally unneeded and somewhat don't fit to the rest of the atmosphere either. And they can really be tiring, especially if you are clicking through the conversation you already read before to get to the continuance of the story. I also think that the text pop in animation is not really needed, but that may be just me ;).
Great job on the game overall! I hope that Gerty will not eat Ghosty!
It's really a nice game, very unique! I couldn't finish the game but I love all the dialogues and the art style i saw! Well done!
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