minotalen 2021-04-27 02:54
to run the PuzzleScript source, you need to go to: https://dario-zubovic.github.io/PuzzleScript/editor.html
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → [HTML5] Bodenhorizont
By minotalen and Mer Grazzini
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 527 | 3.75 | 40 | |
| Fun | 903 | 3.35 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 121 | 4.05 | 40 | |
| Theme | 287 | 4.09 | 40 | |
| Graphics | 680 | 3.86 | 40 | |
| Humor | 893 | 2.69 | 36 | |
| Mood | 522 | 3.78 | 40 |
to run the PuzzleScript source, you need to go to: https://dario-zubovic.github.io/PuzzleScript/editor.html
super unique take on the theme, i love it!! after playing it i finally understand what the first line of the description means. i like that i discover more of the game the more i play. however i'm still not quite sure what the big flowers do. other than that, great job :)
this was surprisingly compelling! calm beautiful graphics, and the gameplay balance felt well-tuned; I played this a lot longer than I expected to because I was so close! nicely done with the engine; it's fun to see very non-sokoban stuff like this made in puzzlescript. A nice meditative experience :)
A soothing and surprising experience, really innovative take and quite charming, congratulations on the submission!
The term FrustraZen really defines this game quite well. A very nice spin on the theme, very interesting mechanics and a nice use of Puzzle script, well done.
Super cool game!
I really like this concept, it was kind of weird having to back track, but each time I reached a new soil layer felt great!
@frogmen yeah the big flowers charge your cursor and allow you to place a crossing once. This helps reach places when out of options :)
@valden yeah making it in PS was a bit of a challenge, ended up disabling a helpful visual feedback animation in favor of game performance. I'm just a really big fan of portmanteaus, that's how frustraZen happened.
@rubentipparach there is a way to travel faster, but I don't want to spoil it here :P
Really nice! Slightly more instruction early on would have been nice (it wasn't initially clear what my options were), but once I figured out the mechanics it was nice and I managed (after a few false starts) to explore almost all of the map. Very pretty too!
The music you suggested added a nice touch, it reached the end before I finished playing though. Fun little fru-laxing game. Nice work.
I is happeh plant Boden.png
hehe @lone-wolf that might be a bit of a spoiler (: glad you had fun!
Plantasia was a good choice for the soundtrack :P One of my favorite albums and well suited for the game. This is one of the more interesting games I've played in the jam. The jam's theme works well to give the player a goal without telling us anything. I felt like the game as a whole comes together (with the soundtrack) really well as an art piece, with something to say. Going back after I had collected each note and the treasure and looking at my roots and the decisions I had made was really nice :) I tried to collect all the seeds and flowers too, but sadly I softlocked myself behind my own root system :( Really cannot emphasize how much I enjoyed this one!
P.S. I also made my entry in puzzlescript. I thought there was a hard limit on sprite size at 5x5. Now I know that is not the case! haha
This is a really creative game with the most apt description I've seen - FrustraZen. It's mindless, it's fun, it's frustrating, and the music accompaniment really helps make it shine.
I never thought I'd get so ticked off at a rock :x
A fun and soothing little game to play! The description does it justice.
It took a bit for me to really feel out the vibe of the game, but once I did it was enjoyable! I liked the soothing sounds of the dirt chunking away as the vines grew and blossomed to the sound of the background music. You did a great job encouraging an atmosphere of calm, even though I wanted to yell every time I was soooo close to a note but my vines furled in on themselves and I couldn't get to it, lmao.
A great job! The art is nice and polished - I loved all the variants of flowers used, and it was very pleasing to watch them pop up as I went along. Even though I didn't use the teleportation between flowers mechanic much, it was interesting to have in there, and I appreciate that it was there - any game that involves backtracking and puts effort into making it easier to do so is a godsend, imo.
Excellent work! ☆☆☆☆☆
This game is deceptively fun! We played this on stream and sort of just zoned out for a while going through and spent a lot longer than we intended due to its addicting gameplay. It was fun to progress and learn how the best way to handle making simple decisions would be. It's hard to stop because you always find another path to go.
Loved it! It was good to play it on stream because the developer could chime in and answer questions and explain how things worked. Without that some of the instructions may not have been quite as clear. There were also a lot of times that the oaths would end, so adding a way to make sure there is always a path could be a good idea maybe? I think adding some stuff into the sky would also be a great addition. Maybe just a plant growing stronger from the longer roots or something would be cool? And maybe some sort of underground threat. Something like moles that will eat away some vibes sometimes. Good job!
It was fun to figure out all the mechanics. I am impatient and ignore text, so it was pretty hard. :D Nice mood as well. Good job~
@link270 yeah tbh I was not sure if this game would work well with streaming because usually jam games are designed to be digested/consumed in 5-15 minutes. This is amplified on-stream, when you suddently have a queue of devs waiting it can easily happen that a game that is not 'fast-food' falls through the cracks. It was really fun to see how you started fast, almost mashing keys and then slowed down, planning your steps more carefully. Nice also that you were kinda sharing knowledge between each other. I regret backseatgaming and explaining tricks, helped me figure out that discovering the how the root system functions may be an important part of the experience, but perhaps it was for the best since streaming a bunch of games reduces patience. Thanks again for playing, glad to know that the message gets through, even in a bit of a rush ;)
Pretty cool concept. I'm not sure I understand everything but it was fun figuring out some of the rules by myself and some by reaching the little notes with tips. It was a bit hard to know when you had to be careful with your motion and when you can just progress randomly. Great work making a game like that in puzzle script!
@nusan thanks, accidentally skipping choices is a feedback I have gotten regularly. I will try to create a fix for it, but it's a bit tricky in PS :D But yeah, post-jam version should be up in a few days.
edit: took forever but it's done!
Really interesting! Seeing where the roots go was oddly engrossing even though I knew they were mostly random. The resulting web of flowers and vines was also fun to look at. The Plantasia music was also a great choice, haha.
The game looks really good and it's weirdly addicting.
It's very confusing tho, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. The root growth seemed completely random.
I still enjoyed just exploring randomly and creating flowers. Good game!
This was a really interesting game! I loved seeing my plant grow and evolve. I would have loved a bit more strategy to the game. Too many times I got stuck because of the randomness of the way the plants moved and couldn't get to all of the items around. The treasure at the bottom seemed especially difficult to get. Thanks for submitting the game to us to play on stream!
This was a super interesting game, I liked trying to poke at the little ecosystem I was creating to find it's underlying rules. Really relaxing, puzzling, and interesting gameplay loop. I really liked this entry!
The music you suggested is perfect for your game, very sweet and relaxating. The game is nice, like the grphics ( the mecanic of the big flowers is interesting), just a little repetitive because he based a lot on random travel. I'm little sad Capture d’écran (112).png
It was a pleasant and meditative experience. Thanks for making the game.
The term frustrazen defines perfectly this game ! I got a bit frustrated when I saw I had almost no control on the roots, but once I understod it was exactly the point, and that the yellow elements allowed to counterbalance a bit the rng, the game became quite fun and relaxing. Well done !
My key got overwritten by a flower so I could not pick it up :(
This game seems to actively undermine my efforts, and after roughly 5 minutes of play I became incapable of doing anything.
Just realized I was so busy that I forgot to respond for a while, so here we go:
@bokonon glad poking at the system was fun for you, wish I could do the same. Maybe one day I'll lose my memory and get to 'explore' instead of 'exploit' my system haha.
@danframe aww yes that ledge was a bit too sadistic, it has been widened in the post-jam version. In general I have tried to make the game a bit more forgiving this time around.
@fis sorry that happened to you and thanks for reporting it, fix is coming up with the next build <3
@notan-lemon Thank you for playing, 'meditative' was certainly one of the goals :)
@jrevel thanks for the kind works. Maybe it is because I designed the system, but tbh a good portion of my runs now end with me having reached everything, so the 'lack of control' is partially also a 'lack of intimacy with the system'. I admit though that it is much tougher to understand the system when it is presented to you without explicit rules.
@wizard-sino getting a 'bad seed' at the start is certainly a flaw in the jam version. Sometimes I shout at the game: "Let me get there or else, I made you", but that also doesn't seem to help! I hope we have improved on the issue of bad starts in the post-jam version, the game will still sometimes hurt you in tragic ways though, sorry.