a-312 2020-04-20 04:17
*(Be careful when you add sound at your game, think to set the volume to 20 or 30% and not 100%^^)*
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Keep It Alive
By pennycook
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1037 | 2.64 | 23 | |
| Fun | 1009 | 2.47 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 914 | 2.76 | 23 | |
| Theme | 233 | 3.97 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 990 | 2.45 | 23 | |
| Audio | 787 | 1.76 | 23 | |
| Humor | 546 | 2.69 | 23 | |
| Mood | 796 | 2.85 | 22 |
*(Be careful when you add sound at your game, think to set the volume to 20 or 30% and not 100%^^)*
Interesting concept, not explaining the details here. Although once I worked out how it worked, it was fairly easy to keep it alive indefinitely. The puzzle was interesting up until that point though :slight_smile:
@a-312: Thanks, that's a good point. A lot of the sounds seemed quieter in my offline testing than on the web, and I should definitely pay more attention to this.
@princesschoochoo: Thanks for the feedback! I'd considered throwing in some more random elements or tweaking the constants so that the actions on each day required some more thought, but didn't have time.
I like that you get to name the plant! It definitely gets the player instantly attached. Cool idea.
@blobo: This is one of the "little features I'm very pleased with", and I'm glad to see that somebody discovered it and appreciated it. Thanks for playing!
Took a bit to work out the details on what each thing did, which was a cool part of the game. Once you learn it, the game becomes very easy. The sound was super loud, as others mentioned.
This was also my first jam since the birth of my daughter, definitely makes it more difficult! Well done!
@nicksmaddog: Out of curiosity, did you complete it? I'm wondering if it's so easy that it becomes boring before people reach the end. Also, congratulations on the birth of your daughter!
Oh! The sound was definitely stunning.
Great concept you have there! Took me about two or three runs to realize that the colored rectangles are actually litmus papers.
The talking is an interesting option here -- it's an opportunity for the players to have an insight on both the character they're playing with and the plant. I think that you can play that up a little bit more, maybe even affecting the stats a bit further.
Nice little game. Thank you for the experience.
I liked working out how to keep the plant alive!
I liked this game and played it longer than I'll in spite of several things, chief among them being the sound, dog.
@pennycook I had stopped after 101 days. I didn't realize there would be an ending, it seemed like it'd be a "keep alive as long as you can" type game. After your comment, I went back and played it until the end. I would say it probably is a bit too long. I didn't notice it becoming any more difficult as I progressed either, which could help keep it more interesting.
"What's Grandad got against instructions anyway?"
Superb lampshade hanging, there.
I like the ear-grating volume and esoteric music, together with the sparse graphics it leans into the unapologetically simple gameplay loop. The game simply is what it is, take it or leave it. Good job!
Fun little concept. I like that you can name your plant. Good Job!
Im very good at killing plants :(
I liked the the systems design a lot!
This was a really cute game! Simple but fun to mess around with, I liked the start where I would experiment with different PH levels before finally figuring out the right one, would be awesome to see it randomize every so often but no biggie it was still really fun! I liked naming my planet, I thought that was cute and I managed to finish by keeping it alive for 365 days! Overall solid entry, I thought it was really good
Putting limits on some of the actions each day may add a lot to this game. As it stands, it's kinda hard to lose (at least it didn't happen to me, as I was able to click enough each day to just make it happy). As others have mentioned, the volume is super loud, but that's why I have a volume knob :)
Sound very loud and no instructions. My plany is dead :(
Excellent job pulling this together in just five hours! You managed to establish a great mood and humour effectively given the limited elements at your disposal.
I did have the same experience as @nicksmaddog, also initially stopping after 101 days, not realizing there was an ending I was working towards.
Well done and congrats on both the game and the baby!
I love the concept, figuring out how to keep the plant alive was really fun, the talk button was awesome, simple yet addicting. After figuring it out, it gets tedious(as i'm sure you're already aware), so a much less amount of days would be nice. overall a great entry, but I disagree with the granddad's mentality towards plant instructions.
Definitely check the sound volume. Other than that it was fun. Reminds me of the first games I made when learning programming.
Ah, I remember my first LD after becoming a parent. I only managed to get the core mechanic and didn't even manage to turn it into a game. It was fun trying to find the sweet spot before running out of time, doing talk options. I ran it to 165 days once I found a steady state just to explore the talk options. Nice job for such limited time!
Took me a number of tries before I figured the trick out =) Not bad for 5h or so! The one additional thing I would have liked to have seen is either a win condition (reach day 100 or somesuch), or a reward in the form of the plant growing larger and/or flowering. Despite the simplicity, it kept me wanting to work out the details until I got it down and was able to keep the plant alive ;) Well done.
Wow! I didn't expect to come back to so many comments! Thanks to everybody who played and left feedback!
@brian-teng: I completely agree. The original plan was to go a little more "visual novel" and have events occurring to the player character be hinted at through what they were saying to the plant, but I felt like I wouldn't be able to give that idea the time it deserved. If I keep going with this, this is something I'll definitely fix!
@scalphamission, @lepletier, @hoyr: Message received (loudly). :wink:
@kamekai: I didn't know what I was doing had a name! :laughing: I'm glad to hear you liked it, that was one of my favourite lines.
@baby-dino-herd, @jason-woerner, @edz123 : I did consider putting the ending at 100 days, but couldn't resist the urge to tie the ending into the "story". Maybe if you could advance multiple days at once it would be easier to reach? I'll think about this more, thanks!
@synoxgames: Thanks for sticking with it to the end! I agree that something like random elements, or limited actions as @bitdecay suggests, is necessary to help to keep things interesting.
@bradcode: I can see how that could happen... My wife kept coming in and saying things like "What if you had to care for multiple plants?" and "What if you could select a plant at the beginning?" -- being disciplined was really hard this time.
Oh hoh! After your cryptic comment, I tried again and found the ending :D