ben-taylor 2020-04-20 10:18
Thanks! That was fun. The walking animation was really cool. In general nice art. Cheers.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Sacred Gardener
By hanamigi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 847 | 3.03 | 31 | |
| Fun | 1017 | 2.46 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 944 | 2.70 | 31 | |
| Theme | 375 | 3.82 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 484 | 3.50 | 31 | |
| Audio | 522 | 3.03 | 31 | |
| Mood | 620 | 3.08 | 31 |
Thanks! That was fun. The walking animation was really cool. In general nice art. Cheers.
Not bad for a first time!
@ben-taylor Thanks for the kind words, glad that you liked the art! Pretty rough, but it is where I ended up spending more than half of the time. @njm-games Thank you! First ludum dare but not my first jam, been some years since I last joined one though.
Liked the animation, nice work
I love the animation so smooth! keep up the good work hanamigi!
Nice chill experience! I messed around with the game and here are few of my notes:
**Things that I liked** - music and sound effects really made the game, it added the right atmosphere (I would honestly play background music by default, without the need of turning it on by pressing M) - simple but nice looking art - comfy, idea fitted to Ludum Dare theme
**Things that could be improved** - I didn't 100% get it what exactly are plants trying to tell me, if I should water constantly or wait for some condition or how to get to the next stage and win the game - walking animation was smooth and pretty but I felt that bucket wasn't animated with it properly, it made animation look worse than it should
Overall very nice work in 48 hours :smile:
Nice animations :) I liked the idea, but found it too hard. Couldn't win in any way. :/ Might just be me. Might be missing some feedback indicator for the flowers.. God Job :D
@prackli @sot @saviqq Thanks a lot for playing my game and for your feedback! I am glad that you liked it. Concerning the bucket, I added it later, it is literally a sprite that sticks to the character. I needed something to indicate that water had been picked up, but time was running low, so... here we are haha! I agree that the objective is not very clear, and the positive feedback of watering the plants is also pretty weak. Should have added some more animations! The original scope was bigger, but I had to cut a lot and basically retool the assets I made to create a slimmer, more minimalistic game that could be finished in time. I will consider turning background music on at start of the game, keeping M for toggling it.
@incd021 Thnks for the feedback! It is winnable, I will put a strategy guide in the description with my proven watering method :potable_water:
@hanamigi I know, I too ran out of time making my entry! I had so many funny endings to do and ended up only have 1½. So understand 100%.
Sooooooo it seems that now the player character is moving much slower than when I tested it yesterday, no wonder that it is hard to win... I will do some debugging and upload a fixed version.
Thank you all for the feedback.
edit: fixed (or seems so).
Animation was fun and interesting - it was different than most animations which is a very good thing. Your idea was simple, and you really took heart to the theme - the theme was spot on - I did try to keep them alive lol! The instructions were much clear without using text and better than a lot of games (use water on plants lol - win by having 2 flowers!), yet I struggled starting the game
The game took a little long, and at first, I had no idea if my watering was having an effect. It wasn't until later that I realized that I have to keep watering the same side over and over again to reduce walking time. When the tree smiled, I thought I had won, but I kept going out of curiosity - unknowing if I had won or not.
Thanks for making a game web based ;)
@zypo Glad that you liked the game! Thanks for the feedback, I will keep it in mind if I keep working on this game, as to ive a clearer indication of winning. You are welcome, web based games are better for game jams imho :slight_smile:
Nice simple game, I think adding a relaxing music in the background would fir perfectly, and maybe some birds noises ;)
Nice! I think the my main constructive feedback is to give the player some sort of cue that they are doing something that is working. I found it hard to know if I was actually watering the plant or not. But eventually that root grew, so I figured it was working. Art style is nice. Awesome footstep sounds btw, glad they were not the harsh sounds some people like to use. Bravo!
@mathurin Glad that you liked it! There is some music, press M to turn it on. The bird noises are a good idea!
@matt2728 Thanks for the kind words. Those steps were made by patting a bunch of clothes with my hand, the aim was exactly to have a softer sound :smile: There is indeed a bit of an issue with player feedback in the game. It might not be noticeable but the bucket can be emptied only near the plants, the idea was to show that yes, you emptied the bucket near the roots, so you gave them water. I will think of future enhancements!
Walking animation and well sound are great! Was the tree based off the great tree in Zelda?
Nice little game - in particular the tutorial signs were pretty smart.
I liked the idea of the simple and relaxing game. The aesthetic is very well done and that walking animation is noice. I didn't relax tho, for some reason sometimes when I stop pressing the arrows I was still moving. And also, I was kinda confused because I didn't knew if I watered the plants or if I missed so maybe a little sound would be nice.
This is so aesthetic I love this so much. Instructions were really neat. Sprite design is fantastic. Audio is great (even the repeating tune is perfect for the game).
Only complaint is: The plants need more feedback. On my first playthrough I watered both evenly and didn't see a change in either plant.
Well done :)
@matt-burton Thank you! The tree originally had no face and was just based on the idea of large, ancient sacred trees, but I later gave it a face for some extra player feedback and to fill up its bark with something interesting. It is indeed reminiscent of the deku tree, as well as the tree boss in kirby games.
@tigerfinch Thanks! I always try to keep my games as text-free as possible to make them universally playable. Using symbols also forces me to distill the game rules to their essentials.
@masterpose Thank you! The walking bug never happened to me, but since you commented I did a small fix in movement for other reasons, I suspect that it will have resolved that as well. Please let me know if the bug persists! For watering, the bucket can be emptied only near the roots and has an animation and water noise, if you see no change in the plant it only means that it needs more water :)
@goblinkingmatt Glad that you enjoyed the game! You are not the first one to address the feedback problem. Originally I wanted to implement an easy and a hard mode, so that players could either relax and just have the plants grow very easily (so watering would give almost instant feedback), or have a more challenging experience where the player had to water plants very efficiently to see any progress. In the end I opted for a middle ground, mainly to keep it simple and to be on schedule for the compo.
I would really have liked to see more feedback on what my watering the plants was doing. Did I need to be watering when they weren't wilted, or should I be continually watering even when they appear okay? I kept both plants alive for around 5 minutes, but it was unclear if there was an endpoint to the game.
Animations were great, and the sound (aside from the music :D) was solid. Good job!
@jason-woerner Thanks for your feedback! I can understand the confusion. Keep watering the plants until they grow, even then they are healthy, and you will reach the game's victory screen. I did have an additional mechanic in mind for this issue, but did not manage to put it into the game: there would be weeds growing, that would prevent the flowers from growing themselves. So the player would have to water the wilting flowers, and pull out the weeds to let the flowers grow. How does this sound?
Pretty neat game for two afternoons. I especially like the graphical style and the sound effects. However, the gameplay is a bit... slow and repetitive. I played for five minutes and only got the plants barely to the second stage. Without any real way to tell if I was making good progress, it didn't feel worthwhile to continue...
One thing I think is that there should be more player feedback. Right now it takes a long time before anything happens, so there's no way to know if you're actually doing anything. I still don't actually know how close I have to stand to the plants to get them to grow.
And the other thing is I think there needs to be some kind of active obstacle in the game. The weeds suggestion you mentioned in your other comment might be a good way to do that.
Although, one strange idea I had about this game: the two things I mentioned, the lack of player feedback and the lack of active challenge, do actually create a somewhat interesting and unique experience. The player is not trying to overcome the mechanical difficulty of the game, but rather the challenge of staying focused on a project that is not necessarily engaging. That's probably not what you were going for, but it's definitely something you *could* go for. :smile:
Good stuff:
The art design was nice, the colors worked with with the game, and in particular the walking animation felt nice (kind of round and fluid, fitting nicely with the comforting aesthetic) The sounds were extremely well done-- there weren't too many, they weren't at all jarring, and they just sounded good. I played it without music and I think that helped give it the soothing tone you seemed to be going for-- just a bit of wind in the background would make it absolutely perfect. This is kind of silly, but the movement speed was just right-- not too fast and not too slow
Areas for improvement:
The gameplay isn't particularly deep or rewarding, just walking back and forth. Someone else mentioned that it works to give the game a soothing, meditative quality, and I completely agree, but saying that up-front in the description would make it feel more intentional. It felt a little too long, but that might also connect to the gameplay being sparse. I'm certainly not the first to mention it, but more overt player feedback would be nice-- probably would help with the game feeling a little aimless. This is really nit-picky, but outlines are typically supposed to be only 1 pixel thick when making pixel art. Here, it actually works pretty well with your other art, but it might be something to keep in mind going forward. Check the start of this tutorial for more details http://samkeddy.com/pixel-art-outlines/
Overall: This is an INCREDIBLE for a first game jam, particularly given that it sounds like you didn't spend the whole 48 hours working on it. It feels polished and completed, and that's a great place to start, since I'm sure you'll be able to expand in scope as you get more experienced and faster with coding. In the end, it's a game about watering plants, and I felt like you really captured the meditative sense of caring for something even if there might not be immediate results.
@honey-pony @snail Thank you for your extensive feedback feedback! I am very very glad that you got what I was going for, even if I had to cut the scope quite a bit. The idea was indeed to create the experience of caring for a garden by doing repetitive tasks, without immediate feedback, trying to put the player in a situation where they question what they are doing, if they are doing things correctly and if something is wrong with the game world itself.
I think that I would need better sound design and some other changes to convey the feeling better, because based on the feeback I am getting the players do not play the game with the expectation of an experience to be taken slowly and methodically, so I have to set them up. I purposefully avoided any text explanation because it would defeat the purpose of the experience, which is also why I tried to keep the instructions as text free as possible. My idea is that such a game would be playable with as little text as possible, but with mechanics, graphics and sound setting up the player's expectations.
I really like the animation and sfx! The gameplay was a bit slow, but at least it was calming :smile: Well done! I look forward to seeing what you make in future jams :slight_smile: