Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Grove Guardian
By vivianmochi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 4 | 4.37 | 33 | |
| Fun | 22 | 4.21 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 10 | 4.32 | 33 | |
| Theme | 4 | 4.58 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 9 | 4.53 | 33 | |
| Audio | 16 | 4.21 | 33 | |
| Mood | 3 | 4.53 | 33 |
Super fun. Relaxing. Great music, pretty plants. Exploring to find new plants was great. Absolutely loved it. But... I nearly quit after my first few runs because I didn't understand the game. To clarify for the next person: plant on resources.
A little opaque at first, but once I understood it properly I really loved it. Calming with just the right level of mild threat to encourage strategy. Will definitely come back to this!
Fantastic game and even more impressive for being made in just 48 hours :O
I found spamming roots everywhere to work well and then build up lots of trees to acquire sunlight and storage. Only lost a few exploratory root networks before winning on day 16 with a battery of cacti :cactus:
This is an outrageously great game. Amazing premise and execution, beautiful music, extremely engaging gameplay. I played it to completion and plan to play again to try and find all the upgrades. I earnestly want this to be a full-fledged game, i adored every minute of it.
Really cool little game, I didnt quite get what I was supposed to do at night though?
Thanks to everyone for playing and leaving comments! Sorry the game is a little rough around the edges, there are more things I wanted to include!
@alex-mulkerrin 16 days is pretty darn good. Best I got was 21!
@njm-games Nighttime is like a tower defense. The spirits come towards your roots and some of your plants can use stored water as ammo to destroy them. The basic sprout -> tree is pretty good for defense, but as you research at shrines, you'll unlock much more powerful options!
Wow, great game, i like the idea but for me art is best part. It looks really really good! Great job.
I really enjoyed this game! The art is great and fits the atmosphere well. Being able to zoom out would be nice in the later stages to see the whole creation. The progression felt great though and overall it a really well-made game.
Amazing game! I really had fun playing it and discovering new trees. Graphic and sound compilation is amazing, reminds me maybe of "crawl". Congrats!
I'm just gonna say it: this is one of the best Ludum Dare entries I've ever played. You integrated the gorgeous visuals, beautiful music, and incredibly fun gameplay so masterfully that I couldn't help but give you 5 stars in every category, which I'm not even sure I've done before. And honestly, if you had stayed opted in to humor, I would have given you 5 stars for "I am root" alone.
Every element of this game was so well-crafted. The gameplay in the day and night balanced out perfectly (and honestly, finding out that the night phase was a tower-defense was an awesome moment). A lot of games like this end up being too ambitious with all of the mechanics and the presentation is subpar, but this ended up being one of the best-looking and best-sounding games I've played too.
A lot of people are probably going to leave comments saying they didn't understand too much but it seemed nice, but learning to play this game was absolutely delightful. It seemed overwhelming at first but once I got it, I was constantly looking for shrines to learn from and having a wonderful time. I can't overstate how good this game is, and I can't believe I got so lucky to have it recommended to me.
If you make a post-jam version, here's just a couple thoughts:
- I'd suggest either making the game harder and giving the player more of a role at night, or letting time skipping happen at night as well. Especially later in the game, night felt more like a time to wait for resources than anything else. - Add a little bit of variation to the trees? They look beautiful, but even a slightly different color could have helped a bit (my friend suggested putting lights on the mother tree?).
Sorry for gushing on for so long, but I'll be following your work closely from now on. Congratulations on making such an amazing game!
EDIT: I played it again and finished in 16 days
Harosh!
Really cool entry .. I played too much .. did not reach the end to be honest .. root where starting to disapear ..did get why .. congratulation ;)
I finished it in 16 days on my first run. At the beginning the controls was a little bit confusing but when you made to them, it's a fantastic experience. In fact, I may be able to complete the game in less time now after I had seen how to play. The game is not a challenge at all and I feel it easy to finish. This doesn't make it bad, maybe you can add difficulty options changing the amount of resources in the floor. In this way, you will need to be more caution with your actions in order to survive. The night feels a little bit empty and you mostly need to wait for the day to obtain sun. I have to mention the art, it's precious. I want to know how did you manage to do this game in 48h.
I was surprised with that big amount of content, mechanics, tree varieties, ... Congratulations, This is one of my favorites LD46 entries so far.
You made THIS in 48 hours!? That's amazing! =D Such a pretty and pleasant game, and you even implemented tech trees. This is definitely one of the best games I've tried so far during this jam. Very well done ^^
This was a lovely game and a delightful hour spent.
Thank you all for playing, I'm really glad you're enjoying it! I have plans to do a post-jam version this weekend with a lot of the suggestions I'm receiving. Keep an eye out!
@43sam I love the zoom out idea, I'll see what I can work in for the post-jam version!
@flamus Comparing the art and music to Crawl means a lot to me, I love that game!
@chaseplays Thank you so much for the kind words! I'll be reworking the night a little for the post-jam version, and I'll definitely give some of the existing plants an art upgrade! The Willow and Mother Tree will definitely get distinguishing features.
@hadesfury Thank you! Roots and plants will rapidly decay if detached from the Mother Tree. A spirit might have eaten an important root!
@uberpupy I'm going to rework difficulty a little bit for the post-jam version, and night will hopefully feel more important and less idle. It was definitely a stretch getting it into the 48 hour window. I may or may not have slept ._.
@gaminghamster Thanks! I had a lot of fun making the tech tree, but expect it to be much larger in the post-jam version!
@donboose Always great to hear from you! Thanks so much :)
5 stars game for me, delightful and impressive amount of gameplay for a jam game. You definitely nailed the game jam "survival rules" by focusing on the gameplay content. I don't have any other feedback to give, it's impressive.
Great theme tied into the gameplay so well. Awesome work.
Fantastic! I love tower deffense game, and this game was just so innovative, I like how you implement the mechanics of tether from astroneer into a tower deffense game.
really enjoyed this game! I died on day two the first time, but then after that figured out I needed nutrients to be able to build more. I ended up covering most of the map, especially after getting the cactus. Liked finding the different upgrades and seeing their different properties. Some of the upgrades I found when I was already pretty overpowered, but still fun to see. Nice job!
Won after 15 days! I felt like some Zerg player with all of the map control in the world and expanding, expanding, expanding, expanding, expanding...Trees for days......
The overall strategy felt a bit one-note (first get some nutrients going, then sunlight sunlight sunlight sunlight sunlight) and I hardly even noticed the attacks, so maybe there's a bit of tweaking to be done. It felt like the spirits were very hard to notice given that the map was so large and everything was off-screen. If there were some way to consolidate the action into a smaller view area somehow, it feels like might streamline things a bit.
Still had fun regardless!
As always, thanks for the feedback, everyone! I just released a post-jam version with a bunch of changes and new stuff. Hopefully it makes the game a little more enjoyable!
@ddrkirbyisq The resource balance is definitely a little messed up. I tried to improve it in the post-jam version a little, but by adding so many new plants I probably messed it up even more XD. Also, the spirits now spawn in clusters to make focused attacks. The game also shows you where they are coming from, so you have time to go to the area they are attacking and witness your defenses in action. I've also added a map so you can watch all the action at a glance. Hopefully these changes are for the better, but please let me know what you think if you try the post-jam version out!
I like the idea and enjoyed the game in general. For the first time it was quite difficult to get it but then I finally got the point and enjoyed the process a lot :3 Visuals are pleasant and music is good either. Really great job!
:wave_tone1: This game is featured in a blog post highlighting my favorite LD46 games:
**https://github.blog/2020-05-15-ludum-dare-46-staff-picks** `<3`
Just had a few wonderful hours with this. Had a bit of a learning curve, for sure, but I got the hang of it. Only criticism is some UI tooltips would be nice, it took me a while to realise what damage, range, etc. were represented by. Thanks for the lovely game.
Balance feedback: I feel like Bamboo really needs a cap on maximum range. I eventually hit a point where I never even saw the enemies anymore because my Bamboo was nuking them across the map... Also, maybe max sunlight cost for planting Bamboo should increase with each Bamboo planted?
Question, how do you plant more of the Mother Tree like in the screenshots?
@hekateras Thanks so much for playing! And thank you for the feedback, I think I'll come back to this at some point and update it! Bamboo is definitely way too overpowered, so I'll scale it back a bit and buff some of the other plants.
Also I think that screenshot was super early in development; I don't think you can make multiple Mother Trees anymore :frowning2: