backwardscap 2021-04-27 17:39
This is an awesome concept. It is really original and it is executed well. Great job dude!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Roots Puzzle
By wdebowicz
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 219 | 3.98 | 28 | |
| Fun | 199 | 3.94 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 22 | 4.40 | 29 | |
| Theme | 406 | 4.00 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 970 | 3.63 | 28 | |
| Audio | 782 | 3.35 | 29 | |
| Humor | 1064 | 2.47 | 24 | |
| Mood | 1001 | 3.44 | 28 |
This is an awesome concept. It is really original and it is executed well. Great job dude!
That's a nice game! I love the puzzle (even if i never solve it without cheat)
I love your game! The music is so relaxing and there is actually a challenge that is easy to learn, hard to master. My compliments to you sir! Only complaint I have, is that I have to use WDSA instead of scrolling with my mousepad on the laptop :smile:
The game is put well together and it earned a spot on my bookmarksbar to play level 4 and 5 too
A neat little game! I really enjoyed the sorta making a simple piece of art through the management of resources.
Really cool concept, and fairly simple to understand. Great work!
Great little game! Loved the way it worked and had really nice puzzles!
This was really fun to play! Enjoyed the last level a lot, was super difficult imo x) the only citique I would have is that the sounds are a bit harsh to my ears but the music was nice and relaxing!
The idea is excellent and well implemented, great job !
Great idea, great game, I loved it ! It is well balanced, not too easy, a bit challenging, good job !
Very cool game. And implemented very well. Sounds were a bit annoying but everything else was great
Pretty neat game! One of the levels (4th?) spawned with a bunch of minerals, but no water or goal, so I had to give up. Not sure what happened.
@ordineu Thanks for playing. Water and goal are a bit deeper. **You can use WASD to move camera.**
Oh ok thanks I was stuck on this level too ! Otherwise really good puzzle game with an original gameplay ! :D
Interesting mechanic and a great entry, congrats!
This game stands out among so many more typical ones. I really liked the idea here, and am going to bookmark this for later. It also looks like you put some good effort into level design, so nice work on that as well.
That was a lot of fun!
Hey matey, thanks for submitting your game to stream! I enjoyed playing it, here's the vod, I hope the feedback helps!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007237865
Super nice puzzle game! So many time I thought "ok I got that now!, I can go straight to the end"... and fail! Back to the drawing board ;)
You could try an hexagonal board version to have a more organic look to your trees and root!
Wow, great concept and cute little puzzle game! We had a similar idea but different aproaches. I really like your take on it! My only advice would be to give the minerals a different color. I had to always double check which is which because water and minerals are both a shade of blue.
Everything else is great and I enjoyed it. Thanks for that!
Very innovative idea ! The game is well finished, the turoial is perfect, the player can learn quickly how to play. The first level is easy so it let the player understand the rules. The difficulty increase step by step, it's well balanced ! I would like more animations and effects, specially on the victory screen. Reward the player with a more juicy animation. The grid lines are too dark, maybe replace the black by light grey.
Overall, it's a fun game.
In this video I played your game and five other games. Soon I will make a detailed analysis via comment. :)
I will check on the post-jam version soon as well (right after the review).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAQ0odowKTg
With 170% zoom on my browser I finally found the goal for this stage. Hahahahahah. Playing again before completing my analysis.
Roots.png
I found enlightenment. '-' ASDW allows me to browse the map.
Hahahahahahahah.
Now I can do the analysis. @.@
Roots2.png
**Analysis...**
1 - Mechanics, Learning and Flow: The game is based on resource management. Get minerals, water and oxygen so that your roots can grow and reach the target point in the soil. I found it very interesting (it took me a while to finish the game, but I did it, without using cheats). I separate the question of learning into two parts. (1) The very well designed and explained gameplay with the mouse. (2) The difficult to perceive navigation through the stage using ASDW. I would like to have the ASDW buttons in each corner of the stage, at least in the first one, so that the person had a clue that it would be possible to navigate (even though they are so common buttons for computer games). I suppose the idea is to expand to smartphones and that would be exchanged for another type of input, but using ASDW could come along with using Arrows and pushing the screen with the mouse itself (at least if it is on top of some corners, but this could generate new headaches). The game flow is very well planned, keeping the challenge constantly growing as you learn to play. Some balance may be interesting for a more polished version of the game (as I would like to see more stages and vertical challenges, including, with not only roots, but leaves forming part of the stage). Perhaps the tree may, in later stages, become "strong enough" to generate a root variation that goes through concrete or something else.
2 - Graphics, Audio and Narrative: The graphics are very good as they already eliminate everything with their "square to square" format and the elements of the HUD combine and are well built (I would just allow them to be minimized to a smaller version and with transparency, to reduce the screen space waste) . The soundtrack is very repetitive, it would be interesting to focus on polishing it, or a bigger loop for the game to be more comfortable (it didn't bother me so much, but whoever heard me from afar complained, hahahahahah). The sound effects can be more diverse (more variants of the same sound event could enrich the gameplay). The narrative is not the focus of the game, but there is a journey with a beginning, middle and end, so it already sells itself in its gameplay and assimilable path.
3 - Culture: The game is a very interesting example of puzzles, I would venture to politicize it a little more and add elements that reflect on ecology. So it may be that the game sells more easily in advertisements targeted at interest groups (in addition to being quite interesting as puzzles by itself); I say this without a great intention of making it reflect intensely, it would be basic things in the gameplay itself.
4 - Monetization: I suppose the game can have a free version with few stages and a cheap version for smartphones. In addition to a possible full version for Steam.
Very neat puzzle! I included it in my compilation video series of a bunch of LDJAM games! https://youtu.be/9MwVPzD0l-Q
Wow, that's an exciting puzzle. I'll try it after work. There was a time when I was surrounded by many problems, both at work and at home. So I decided that I needed something to occupy myself with to distract myself from my daily worries. My friend suggested that I buy a box of jigsaw puzzles and keep myself occupied with it. I decided to start with the easiest ones and gave one hour every day to this activity. Surprisingly, I liked it and started buying more and more different [jigsaw puzzles](https://journeyofsomething.com/collections/1000-piece-puzzles). You won't believe it, but it made me feel a lot better. This hour allotted to puzzles allows me to relax and put all my problems on the back burner.