benbonk 2020-04-23 23:31
I loved the graphics. A little confusing at first but nice idea.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Me: Tree!
By groggi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1394 | 3.42 | 41 | |
| Fun | 1534 | 3.16 | 41 | |
| Innovation | 221 | 3.88 | 41 | |
| Theme | 408 | 4.05 | 41 | |
| Graphics | 1263 | 3.60 | 41 | |
| Mood | 1146 | 3.43 | 41 |
I loved the graphics. A little confusing at first but nice idea.
Pretty interesting take on the concept. I found that the tree ended up either generating energy really fast and eating water really fast, or after the leaves died, the water generated really fast and energy generated really slowly. I think that really rapid change of state makes it really easy to start doing really well, just to have it all taken away for seemingly no reason.
Anyways, I like the idea and I think with some more balancing, and perhaps a bit more interesting gameplay underground for getting the water, you could have a pretty fun sort of idle game, for the types that enjoy them. Just as a quick idea, maybe you would be forced to micro-manage the flow of the water too, so the bigger the tree was, the more of your attention it'd take, and there'd be a more engaging aspect to the gameplay.
@benbonk Thank you! Appreciate your feedback!
@offz Thank you so much for your detailed feedback and ideas. Yes, definately the balancing is way off and the gameplay needs more variety. :) I will try and imrpove on things in the near future and post a link on an improved version.
This was really cute and relaxing. Some calming music would be nice. It felt really good how in the beginning you're really struggling, but eventually you gain a foothold and things start going better. Having to warp the tree to get as much sun as possible and reaching down to find water pockets was also is neat.
I'm guessing you wanted to do more with the game than what you were able to do, but I think you should be more positive about how it turned out. It's actually a really nice idle game. You should do what you can to get it in front of more people!
Cool idea! I hope you finish it! I played a bit but was confused as to the energy part and collecting more. Definitely more to add, but a good start!
very interesting. Was tricky at first but once my tree hit a critical mass I was able to grow it very quickly. eventually it got so big i had slow down issues in the browser
Original and fun to play. The beginning is hard and slow, but at some point it got really easy. I played the game until it started lagging badly.
@scott-steffes Thank you for your feedback and kind words!
@emperor-eagle @pee-thief @loveapplegames Thanks to you all for playing the game! I definately have to tackle the performance for when the tree gets bigger.
Nice idea, i love this kind of "experimental" jam entries. But it was a bit to long to wait for energy at the start.
nice! really good concept! i'd like to play more but it's pretty intensive on the cpu xD
the art is simple but it's great. will you implement sound? tree.png
some thoughts i had on the game, i don't know exactly how did you make it, but here is how i would aproach the system
you may optimize rendering by getting rid of all the update methods, maybe a custom event system? i work with that strategy when having loads of objects
here is a video that helped me https://youtu.be/gx0Lt4tCDE0
i supose you could leave just the sprite renderer for the leaves and roots, and manage the stats on a single instance of your game manager,
that implements the update for calculating stats and/or playing animations on the leafs i don't know but i hope it helps
thank you for your game!
Wow, nice entry! Liked the concept and played it two times, because I couldn't find the right balance between root and leafs.
If you finally get that right balance, I think it is really strong. Liked the details of the branches and roots getting thicker ;)
I like this game, it's innovative and it's fun! although I have to admit it's really slow in the beggnings [both the post jam and the offical version for me], I think two things you could have done to make this a bit better is
1st. Make it so that the water has a purpose other then removing leaves. Maybe [I admit this would have taken more work but] you could have had something like a rock-paper-scissors system, where there are 3 elements, Energy, Water, and something else, maybe sun or something, and you get Water by spending energy, you would get energy by spending sun, and you would get sun by spending water or something. Writing it out loud it doesn't really seem like a good idea but basically what I'm trying to say is it would be nice if you could use water to expand your tree!
2nd. Another Idea is that you could make it so that depending on the size of your tree, you would spend less/more energy on creating a new branch. So for example at the start you would need only 3 energy to create a new branch, and as your tree grew, so would that number, so when your tree is bigger it would require 10 energy to create a new branch or something like that.
All in all I think this game has a ton of potential, and could be made into something awesome! you would just need to carefully balance the variables so that it's not too slow at the start but it's not too fast either.
I enjoyed this. I think it works as a micro experience. you don't need to explain the systems to people--discovering how it works is part of the mood. I would work on tuning more of the little embedded tradeoffs, and perhaps make the trees more emergently unique and "shareable" by players.
I generally liked it, cool attempt to create something like this and works really nice. However, seeing costs of branching before making it could be cool
@blackmoodgames it's not an unity game, lol
Really liked the idea and it looks really nice! I had two problems though. The first is that it's really unbalanced. It took me many, many tries until I was able to not die after growing three times. And when that happened, my progress went exponential! I was getting over 100 water and energy per second in a matter of seconds and that was fun :)
My second problem was the performance. I'm not sure what's going on, but after a few dozens of "nodes" the whole thing started lagging so bad it pretty much grinded to a halt. And I couldn't play anymore... There must be something really wrong with your implementation. I might take a look into the source code to see what's going on, if you'd want :)
Also I think the post-jam version is more broken than the jam version :P
trees.png
Well we had a very similar idea but we ended up with different aproaches! I really liked trying to keep the balance between water and energy. Love the color palette too, keep polishing it.
@henrycgs Thank you for your detailed feedback! It really helped! Yes, the two points you mentioned are correct: The jam version is really unbalanced and laggy. :/ I tried to tackle this in my newest version, although its still not perfect. It is really difficult for me to get the balancing right. Needs a lot of testing!
@despdair Thank you for you feedback! I am thinking about expanding the UI a bit further, but for the moment branching is always the same cost, so not much to see there. :)
@acgaudette Thank you for your nice feedback and valuable thoughts!
@sinci1 Thank you for your kind words and ideas! In the newest version I added the new ressource nutrients, since I felt I needed that to get a better balancing. Still work in progress though. I thought about your idea to increase the costs for branching if your tree gets bigger. Definately something I will consider.
@the-martijn Thank you so much!
@blackmoodgames Thank you for your feedback and tips! I improved performance in the newest version, although it is still getting laggy later on. I didnt dive into performance boosting strategies to much but I will in the future!
@infinite Thanks for your thoughts! Actually the slower beginning is intentional, but I see that in the jam version the balancing fot that is still off...
Great game! Gameplay is simple but surprisingly fun, very well balanced. Nice simple visuals, too. It's a bit slow to start at the beginning, but then your tree grows exponentially and it was actually quite addictive! (a bit like in the old snake game or in agar.io where you want your player to grow even bigger...) Anyway congrats! :)
A really cool take on the theme, with a zen feel that I think is very promising. But unfortunately I can't get past the first minutes as no matter what I try it seems I have very low water income. I'm not sure why, as I try to build lots of roots... but water income stays negative and then I lose all leaves and die. But I imagine without the balancing issues, this would be quite a nice game!
Hey, thanks for posting the game for my stream.
I left it running a bit to gain resources while trying another game in true idle-game fashion =P Nice to try and build a functional tree and try to make it look decent, too (or build a crazy tentacle-mess?).
The newer version cranks up complexity a bit, so it may need a bit more introduction (the original version was fairly intuitive I think, but of course only gets so far without new mechanics)
Hi, I really enjoyed the game, though it was rather hard to grasp the how-to-survive-this. :D You should definitely keep on developing post-LD. Great job!
Really pretty style! Nice game, but difficult to get the hang of.
Wow, this game really improved! [I'm not going to update my ratings since it's for the pre-jam version] but wow, this game is even more awesome now! it's much more balanced and polished I'm glad you continued to work on it :D
Very interesting, at first it seems difficult, but when I understood the mechanisms I realized that it is well balanced. It is an interesting use of the theme and the result of growing the tree is very beautiful and relaxing.
The general concept of this is very cool - it's a meditative and nice core gameplay loop. The graphics are simple and beautiful as well. It took me few reloads to really grasp how to play and some simple on-screen instructions would ease the difficulty curve.
it's perhaps a bit too slow in the beginning, and some sound effects and chill music would really help sell the atmosphere more!
Thank you all for your kind words and valuable feedback! I feel proud and motivated for what I have learned and achieved and I hope for all of you that you feel the same and had a good experience this Ludum Dare! Thanks and until next time!! <3
Hey, I made Lay Down Your Roots and I came to check out your game and wow!! You're right, our ideas were similar! But what's crazy is how they were almost _even more similar_. I had considered doing the UI similar to how you did, 2 clicks where the player chooses the exact angle, I ultimately chose against it but I'm not totally happy with what I chose (LDYR screws you over sometimes, maybe that's part of the game? :p). I had also considered the idea of having nutrients as a third resource, but I wasn't really sure how to differentiate it from water.
I love your color choice! And I love that you can play this in a browser, that's perfect for this style of game. Maybe I'm dumb but I'm having trouble getting started. I can't seem to figure out how to start gaining energy. I have 15 leaves but I'm gaining zero energy and then I just die..? I'm a bit confused about that. But from the screenshots it looks like it gets pretty wild in the late game
Also I can very very very faintly hear music when I play. But it's soooo quiet and my volume is cranked all the way up. Is there something wrong on my end or is the music really quiet? It's fine to have quiet BGM but I think it's _too_ quiet. If I had my volume any lower I wouldn't even notice it.
Really cool submission!
Hey @notexplosive, thanks for your feedback! Definately will take it into account. I was cutting down energy production of leaves because before it was too easy to get energy which resulted in gameplay pretty much only below ground. I wanted to encourage people to grow more above ground ;). Maybe it is too much now.
Feels really crazy how similar our ideas where. ;) I'll try to get connected on twitter, maybe we can chat on. See you.