orionhart 2022-04-05 01:06
So pumped! Made an actual game in such a short time that doesn't break (right away)! Even has high score and options saving.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → [Don't] Prune the Money Tree
By Jacob Schick, orionhart, Aidan Jones, Photosynthesaurus and Taffycat
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 475 | 3.68 | 40 | |
| Fun | 896 | 3.19 | 41 | |
| Innovation | 273 | 3.72 | 40 | |
| Theme | 524 | 3.80 | 40 | |
| Graphics | 397 | 4.00 | 41 | |
| Audio | 324 | 3.71 | 37 | |
| Humor | 451 | 3.36 | 39 | |
| Mood | 676 | 3.48 | 39 |
So pumped! Made an actual game in such a short time that doesn't break (right away)! Even has high score and options saving.
Possibly the most unique and original game I've seen all combo. Very nice.
Really unique take on the theme! Great job! Loved the casual music. For next time, when you have an HTML5 version of the game you can play it on the itch.io page with https://itch.io/docs/creators/html5
I liked the art style and the music was pretty chill. I thought the game play was fairly boring though, for the most part I was just sitting there waiting for a bell to ring then clicking a few buttons. Maybe could have been better if you could buy additional trees or something so there was more to keep track of.
The upgrades were a nice touch but I couldn't really see any appreciable affect they had outside of the light bulb which I'm not sure I actually needed in the first place. I also never actually ran into a situation where a branch would stop growing from clipping it too much although maybe I just never clicked it soon enough since there wasn't any incentive to clip them when they were small.
Weird. Very weird, haha. I haven't been so.. confused by a money tree before. The wavy effect is trippy and I have a rough time clicking pieces of limbs to trim. Turns out you should wait a bit right off the bat haha.
Anyway, I got a few upgrades, seems like staying not upgraded as long as possible was actually the way to go for me.
I felt so powerless to save my tree.... Overall very creative, though as a game, I feel almost depressed after being such a mean, cold-hearted, ineffective caretaker :house_with_garden:
I made a few attempts at a WebGL build but unfortunately, it was more complex than expected. Something with my code did not like WebGL. I can say, however, that the Windows and Mac builds work great.
Thank you so much for your ratings and comments so far! All criticism is valid. This game is its own kind of weird.
Really interesting take, very relaxing haha
I kept playing for a while and wasted all my money on upgrades inadvertedly hehehe
Great execution overall!
A really relaxing game, a nice music to make you even more relaxed :D You just feel bad when you cut the branches and you see that they won't grow anymore but you didn't have a choice :'(
I have one big issue with the UI though :s. The font at the start wasn't easily readable (maybe that's just me) and on the windows build, the buttons for the shop and option menu were really small, I noticed them after 2-3 min of playtime.
It reminds me a bit of the Plants vs Zombies mini game where you can grow plants and earn money from it, but in a more detailed version. There are some tension whenever you have to cut a branch, I really like that.
Also, about your problem with screen-tearing when building WebGl version, we ran into a similar problem and solved it by downloading an alternative builder here -> https://seansleblanc.itch.io/better-minimal-webgl-template I hope it can help you too!
@Aspect-studio thanks for playing! I'll give this a go, and try to get a WebGL build working :)
The WebGL build attempts are ending up with some odd results... it runs okay, but the camera scaling is WAYYYY off. No clue how to fix. Google has yielded solutions that have not worked. Until further notice, please continue to play via Download as intended.
image_2022-04-06_031647.png image_2022-04-06_031633.png
Simple and very fun game. Music is chill. Nice work!
Congrats on finishing! I really enjoyed playing this. The art and the music were both terrific. I really loved the vibe that the music gave off and despite how it ramps up when you're getting close to failing it all still felt very relaxing. The concept was well executed and it makes sense for the theme. I really liked that a lot.
In terms of the gameplay I was very relaxed and managed to keep the plant going for nearly ten minutes. I don't know if there's a cap but based on the theme, I didn't think so. It was a really enjoyable play, but I do have a couple of suggestions for future revisions. The shop menu was pretty much out of sight out of mind. By the time I remembered it existed, I didn't have the ability left to use it. Maybe have their be an alert if the player hasn't used it yet after a minute or two? Just to remind them it's there. A similar thing goes for the monitor. It seemed like it would be useful to check, but off to the side that way, I didn't want to leave the tree.
Lastly I think the pruning indicators might catch some people as misleading. I know that it just means they're mature but it gives the player the impression that it's "okay to cut" and it seemed like I was harming the plant when I was cutting "good" branches. I'm sure that's unintentional, but I think that can be fixed.
In terms of a jam game this is super polished and well put together. I hope you all keep working on it and thank you again for playing and rating The Apocawiz! :)
Great presentation, audio and graphics were great! I had a little trouble understanding the pruning mechanism - is there a difference between cutting lots of small branches off vs one big one? Overall a very authentic plant-keep-alive simulator; I don't know what they want so I guess until the die from overwatering. Good fun!
Love the visuals! Great stuff
Very strange, but addicting game. Played this one for quite a bit. Although, I never got my tree past 10 minutes.
Ok that is realy strange but interesting same time that game :D
Really unique game, I really liked the yoshi's valley-esque background. The initial gameplay was interesting, though I don't know how much I liked the way when you pruned a branch, the values of all of the others reset. I also found the end a bit sad. Branches becoming locked made some sense, but it also just kind of felt bad. I dunno if that was just me. Cute game!
Not sure if the game is too hard or too easy :smile: Great job on music and plant animations! I wish it has some green leaves though.
Here is my playtest with some mumbling:
https://youtu.be/6szNWIl0RSQ
@shadow64 your criticisms are all on the "money" ;) but yeah, we only had so much time, so I opted for a "complete" experience rather than a perfectly designed one. I often suffer from overscoping so I was excited to finish a game early and have time to polish it. Our game designer dropped to do other things after the first night so I was sort of coding and designing at the same time while tackling a lot of concepts I had only thought about. it was a ton of fun, but stretched my mind thin.
@fizzbark pruning a massive branch allows you to sell all the branches at the same trade rate (outlined in the top right corner) versus pruning in multiple batches which affects the trade rate multiple times.
@adam-probert thanks for that! my artists worked hard and I tried to implement their stuff as best I could!
@real-flamingicecubegames I'm having trouble beating 10 minutes as well! my buddy got 20 but I have no idea how o-o
@nardandas we took "Delay The Inevitable" in a cynical way, so that's totally a valid conclusion for you to come to x)
@icxon thanks for the playtest! we considered having green leaves in the form of dollar bills, but the tree generation proved more than enough for me to tackle as a solo coder, so I opted to just have the branches be worth cash. it also let us focus on the core mechanic more, though I agree with you (a money tree with actual money sounds amazing!)
@orionhart All the same it came together extremely well even without - but now especially - knowing that new info! Seriously it's a fun idea and I hope with added time you continue to add to it (sort of the opposite of the game I guess haha). Even if it morphed into a kind of idle game that leaned more towards relaxation, I could see it being super popular. Again, great job!
This is a super unique game and it plays very well! Graphics and music are both excellent, and I like the graphical touches added to purchasing upgrades.
I also think it would be nice if there was a way to see some more information on the main screen without having to switch screens, but that could also be an intentional choice in terms of management so I could see it going either way.
I do wish there was a bit more variety to the nature of different upgrades, but considering the timeframe of the jam, what's there is great. I played a few runs but wasn't able to get TOO far, so I might also be missing any of the later upgrades. It's an interesting sort of 'simulation' type of game
@chaoscomposer truthfully, I thought it was interesting to have the shop and the monitor on different screens. since it doesn't pause, and I wanted to emphasize the "inevitability" of losing, I wanted to make it as punishing as possible to do anything but micro-manage the tree. perhapse that was naive from a game design perspective, since it ends up being frustrating as a player, but jams are a time to take risks-- it just doesn't always pay off haha.
glad you enjoyed it. I did end up having to come up with what the upgrades did pretty late on in development so they are relatively similar, but they're different enough (and we did some math) that deciding what to use is usually a "value over time" versus "smaller value up front" dilemma in a lot of cases. Like, the lvl 1 watering can is technically a heal of 25 HP over time, but the fertilizer is 20 hp up front for the same price. most of the upgrades are balanced with this sort of thing in mind. you end up having to choose based on how dire the situation is.
this is all to say that your criticism, as similar criticisms have been, is completely valid! thank you for the feedback.
I need one of these please.
The artstyle and audio is good, albeit the tree itself being a bit creepy - I guess that's fine given that it grows us money ;).
Congrats on a cool game!
The music is good and I like the art style. Maybe it's just me, but I think that the delay system for the theme is too long to be noticeable. Nevertheless, great work!
Nice art and music. There is enough content for interaction. The money tree is a bit strange.
Very good game and take on the theme! I liked it a lot :) Great music and graphics too
Lovely relaxing game! I really enjoyed the music, I think sometimes it deducted more money than it cost but very solid entry (:
woah! this game is eerily similar to the idea I started LD50 with, really neat to see how the same idea can lead to very different finished products!
cool game :)