zolar 2021-04-26 21:34
Great game overall. The puzzle mechanic is something you have to get into at first. That's great. I absolutely have no idea how to beat lvl 8 though... the left root is completely blocked by poison.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Deep Roots
By oddarock, myrmyxo, Gogolexicomatisation, thanol and danframe
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 174 | 4.03 | 31 | |
| Fun | 109 | 4.05 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 112 | 4.06 | 31 | |
| Theme | 333 | 4.05 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 749 | 3.81 | 31 | |
| Audio | 261 | 3.89 | 30 | |
| Humor | 1363 | 2.00 | 24 | |
| Mood | 618 | 3.70 | 29 |
Great game overall. The puzzle mechanic is something you have to get into at first. That's great. I absolutely have no idea how to beat lvl 8 though... the left root is completely blocked by poison.
Really cool game idea! I love the chill atmosphere and sounds, and the puzzles are really satisfying to complete. Reminded me of old flash games and the game Baba Is You. Some thoughts for further development: "You win!" sound effect could be more satisfying and fit the atmosphere better, and the UI visuals could also be improved to fit the nature theme. But it's understandable that the game isn't finished yet. Overall, a really nice and relaxing experience, I'm glad I found this game. :deciduous_tree:
I like the poison tile animation, reminds me of Baba is You >:)
@zolar Thank you very much ! Level 8 had a missing empty column on the left that made the left root unable to move down and so to complete the level. It's fixed now, so you should be able to complete the level ! Good luck !
@wesxdz Thank you ! The game was indeed partly inspired by Baba is you (well, we actually figured out it was a bit similar to it the second day haha) and that tile in particular is very reminescent of the style of Baba Is You (maybe I was unconsciously manipulated by baba while making it who knows) !
@lauranto I’m glad to see that it relaxes you too and that you like the athmosphere, thank's!! I didn't know Baba is you but i watch it and it seems very cool, go in wishlist haha. Yeah the Ui visual have maybe to change, it's true.
Amazing tune in the background there, it was so chill. The Puzzels are harb, but on spot. I really liked this game. If I had to have to give some advise, I would say that the levels could be a bit more diverse, like day/night graphics or more diverse textures. But overall a really nice entry. :)
Of the games I have rated so far, this is the best!
Really innovative idea, great level-design, very challenging puzzles, cool graphics, good looking animations, nice particle effects, great sound and awesome music!
It is very hard to come up with suggestions what you could improve. Maybe the UI could get some nicer graphics instead of blue boxes as buttons - I don't know :D
Amazing game, good job!
@remusnomos Thank's ! Yeah the music is cool haha,I hope you made it. Your have rigth, I wanted to make a hallowen atmosphere level to diverse. We’ll add that kind of details in the post jam version, it's important.
@cambryx Wow the best, we are flattered thank's. Yes i thinks also that the color of button is not the best with the backround and the theme, we go try something more down to earth (lol).
Chill music, I love it. The sound effects are a little too loud, though. The level design is smart. I really liked the game.
I like the art! The gameplay is also very innovative. It feels as if this is a good idea for a mobile puzzle game of some sort. Overall very good, even if I am pretty bad at it :P One small quality of life feature could be the ability to quickly move a root by holding down the movement key. Not a necessity in any way though. Well done!
This is a really neat puzzle mechanic, although the simplicity of the first few puzzles had me doubting. I also appreciate the (mostly) seamless transition between levels. That's always cool!
Heck yeah, that was a sweet puzzle mechanic. Was also quite fond of the pixel art! The menu font is a bit too wonky for my taste. In some levels I wished that I had undo, but that's daunting to implement, so I understand why you didn't :) Another small detail is that I skipped a level at some point and couldn't see which, because the level select doesn't show which level was solved. Still a really cool root game, if you like puzzle games you might enjoy joining the thinky-puzzle-discord, folks are talking about puzzles there like, all the time!
@minotalen Thank's and yes wee can't see the number of the level what we do but you can click home and see at what level you stopped and do the precedents, but yeah I already had that myself once.
Cool idea and an interesting take on the theme, I love this kind of puzzle game!
I haven't solved level 6 yet so I haven't even seen all of the levels, but because you said we should report bugs:
I find it annoying that the level starts scrolling slowly (and jumpily) up- or downwards any time I move the roots. I really wish it would not do that automatically and just let me scroll manually to wherever I want to look at and then stay there until I scroll manually again.
I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug but I would have more fun if it was fixed.
@flauschzelle thanks for the comment
Actually the camera movement is intentional. The camera automatically focuses when you move your roots to display all of them. Maybe it was not the best choice. We'll try to find some compromise, once the player moves the camera inside a level, it won't refocus automatically.
Thanks for the feedback.
Nice puzzle game. The mechanics are very simple for me to pick up. My highest level I got to was 11 just because I didn't want to keep track of the control switching mechanic. I like the atmosphere it fits the game quite well.
@awildekans thanks for you comment, you are right we need to improve on the switching mechanic, the "inverted" roots need to be clearly marked.
And congrats for reaching level 11 !
@oddarock It was still so much fun to play this that I kept playing despite the scrolling. I finally finished all the levels now and it's a really great challenging puzzle game!
Aww, this is really clever and hard! Nice concept, nice execution. Thank you
Very nice concept, and I really like the sprites and visuals in the game, Good Work!
This game was awesome, great job making a cool concept and challenging puzzle game
The scrolling is the worst part of the game, otherwise everything else is really good.
I think you could tone down the use of invertors since moving 3 roots already messes with my head enough, they make it near impossible to figure out what the heck is going on. At the very least you need an undo button so you don't have to go back to start because you hit the wrong key
I was bound and determined to finish this game, but oh my god my brain could not comprehend the inverter. The tutorial was very clear and well-done. I didn't have an issue with the scrolling. It was the perfect amount of challenging, so that it was really satisfying to solve the puzzle. The above-ground was also beautiful! I love seeing fellow root gamers, and this one is fantastic!
@fadex @zackary-bazzle @tryston Thanks a lot !
@wolfier @gharliquebread Thank you for your feedback. We are working on improvements for the post jam version. We will probably improve the scrolling, add an undo button, clearly mark "inverted" roots. We were really short on time to implement all this stuff on the first version. We may add as well more challenges and intermediate levels.
Not gonna lie, this was one of the best games I played during this LD. The music was especially nice.
Btw I completed all the levels. If anyone wants I can post a walkthrough on YouTube or something, some of my solutions were quite interesting, to the point that it may seem a bit...broken, maybe the development team will want to look into them.
@escapade Thanks for your kind feedback !
Yes yes yes we are really interested in your walkthrough. We would like to see if your solutions are (or look like) the ones we planned, it would be a lot of fun. Broken solutions are really interesting. You can perhaps provide us a youtube link ? Thanks again !
@oddarock Here is the link: https://youtu.be/7rNZstMOJOk
You might want to check out my solution to Level 15, I am certain it is not what you intended.
@escapade Wooow so cool you make a video, it's very nice. All the levels in addition haha you are crazy.
@flauschzelle Good joob !! I haven’t even finished the game haha
@danframe LMAOOOOOOOOOO
I'm smitten with the game. I love the innovative use of the theme and how puzzles are built not only on constraints in the blocks/poison, but also in the fact that every root follows the same orders from the player. The music is calming and fits the vibe perfectly. This game is a true gem.
I will admit the inverter is pretty hardcore, but I think it's a valuable piece of the puzzle. It takes it from difficult to absolutely mind-bending. It makes the "slurping" noise all the more satisfying when the roots hit the water.
Nice work.
PS - I actually thought about deeper and deeper tree roots for my game, but ultimately decided on deeper and deeper shades of a color. It's awesome to see other devs thought on the same lines as I did with tree roots and made such a wonderful game with this interpretation of the theme!
This is an awesome puzzle game with some truly challenging puzzles. The art and audio and fantastic. Well polished and put together. Excellent for a game jam! Well done.
What a nice and unique puzzle! At the first couple of levels, it feels very basic and easy to beat. But in the end, it's very challenging and even frustrating. Some of the levels made me feel stupid. The amount of levels you created is amazing, how did you manage to make them in the jam timespan? Overall it's a great game, it feels polished and finished, ready to ship to mobile stores with the additions of tonnes of in-app purchases and ads. Just joking. Nicely done!
@jordan-ottesen @jason-wilson @bereg thanks for your feedback !
@bereg for this jam we had some very "basic" level editor where anybody could create a level with just a basic string of characters, so the whole team could create and very easily share levels, there is a creator button at the startup screen to enter level data. We used a google spreadsheet to visualize the level and then cut and paste into the input field.
This might be the ludum dare game I've spent the most time on so far, last few levels were quite challenging! The beautiful pixel art and soothing music/sound effects make it easy to keep playing and the game mechanics are really clever. I love the inverter tiles! Really great job 🎉
(I also had a look at the post-jam version and those quality of life improvements looked excellent, undoing moves instead of restarting makes all the difference!)
So good! Did you make the lo-fi music or get it somewhere? Fits surprisingly well either way, the rainy mood of nature. The sound effects are really satisfying. Clever mechanic and good introductory level to each new twist! Looks a little funny that the roots are as thick as the trunk of the tree but it's good to see what you're doing 😅 Love the animation of the water. Didn't really find anything to critique beyond it being a bit weird (and this is a common issue) to play the main game using the keyboard but having to go back to the mouse to navigate the menus, would've liked kb navigation there too. But super solid, great puzzle game! 💜
@timon @ava-skoog Thank's for your comment's, it's so cool that you like it, and yeah music was create by @thanol.
Nice! Really clever idea. Those inverters are crazy though, haha.
Don't have much in the way of suggestions, maybe just that it'd be nice to be able to use keyboard controls for the menu UI as well.
Well done!
Re-uploaded because I realised the previous video had export issues.
https://youtu.be/1kaWgTZK9g4
I love the puzzles, though some of them got rather absurd near the end. I don't know if it's the intended solution, but I just trapped one of the roots in a 'bowl' like shape, so as long as I never move upwards, I only need to focus on 2 roots, so once those are solved I can leave the "bowl" with the last root and complete the level.
Great work! I think the movement flipping mechanic is a bit too much, the game was super easy to manage up to that point, but I feel like it added an element of memorizing which ones were flipped at a given moment, and I wasn't a big fan. Overall, one of the best puzzle games this jam. Nice work!
ld_gg.PNG
@100th-coin Thank you very much ! I think the bowl solution was the intended one for the level you were talking about (I mean that's how I solved it but I didn't make it so I don't really know actually). In the post-jam version, the inverted roots now have a floating "inverted" animation over them, so you don't have to memorize which ones are flipped and which ones aren't anymore. There's also an undo button in case you wanna test it !
The puzzles are really good and the game is fun! The tiles have a really nice style to them! I also like the fluid animation of the water (it kinda reminds me of rain world) It also has nice peaceful music. Unfortunately I couldn't get past the last level.
@ratrat44 Thank you very much for your comment about the water tile ! Rain World literally is my favorite game of all time lol, you comparing my animation to it is a very big compliment to me ! Also, I had seen your ghost slugcat video before, it's pretty cute, I also like the nyan slugcat it's very cute too. Have a nice daay !