Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Hydroponica
By cakestorm
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 445 | 3.71 | 37 | |
| Fun | 824 | 3.25 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 111 | 3.95 | 36 | |
| Theme | 156 | 4.15 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 93 | 4.47 | 37 | |
| Audio | 159 | 3.97 | 36 | |
| Mood | 184 | 4.01 | 37 |
Superb visuals, overall mood is chill but the sound effects can be a bit grating at times. It took me some time to understand what was going on, and I think where it succeeds the most is how satisfying it looks when seeds are flying everywhere. Really good effort ^-^
This is a very pretty game. Unfortunately, I was too busy placing down machines to get enough CO2 for the plants to actually have a real chance to enjoy looking at them. I think buffing the machines a little bit so the player can have a breather and introducing some mechanics that disturb the balance occasionally (e.g. random fires if the oxygen levels get too high, or a hull breach that causes a partial depressurisation) would really help do this concept justice. I'd like to see this get continued development.
Neat premise. Ramps a little too fast to even understand what is going on completely. Matches the theme perfectly.
Very good game
I love the ambiance, music is so peaceful and sfx are quite good, really good entry, good job.
It was really hypnotizing ! Like @dan-livings I think buff machine should be cool to have time to check the life expanding. Sometime I can't construct machine, but didn't really know why :sob: But anyway it was really pleasant to play ! Good job !
Absolutely beautiful! All the individual pieces work together perfectly to create an unique atmosphere! The game loop is tight and makes me want to restart and try again too! Was a little bit confused about the controllers at first, but the aesthetic made me want to continue. Quickly got the hang of it and had a blast. Good job!
Loved it! Visuals very appealing, sound effects contributed without being annoying, central mechanic interesting. Honestly just loved watching the plants grow!
I agree with what you wrote. Visuals and audio are top notch, and the gameplay can definitely be expanded upon.
This is a really pretty game with great music too. It felt quite unique and I think it's clear that a lot of thought went into creating all of these plant species.
However, I was just confused about what to do most of the time. While figuring out the mechanics was part of the fun, I think that in the end my actions felt like they lacked direct impact on the outcome for the oxygen & carbon levels. I never really quite felt in control enough that I could really make informed decisions.
@dan-livings Definitely agree, more mechanics would've been a great addition to the game, and the game does go a bit too quickly to feel enjoyable. I'll definitely consider expanding on the mechanics in future!
@loiclegrosfrere That's an odd bug, it came up a few times in development but I'd thought I'd fixed it - sorry that I didn't fix it well enough! I'm glad you had fun though, thank you!
@gravityflip Thank you! I'm glad you figured out the game in the end; I wanted to strike a balance between explaining everything to the player and not having massive walls of tutorial text, so it's good to hear you figured things out eventually.
@yaen I can understand why, the game was pretty rough when it came to having an impact on the ecosystem, particularly since there's so little to do to affect it - I would've loved to add more to that, like adding new building mechanics, limiting plant growth etc., so I'll keep that in mind going forward! Thank you for the feedback!
This game is very fun, I could honestly play for hours and not get bored.
Really liked the pixel art and color pallet :)
Something to notify the player that they are out of materials would help as I found myself trying to place machines without the materials frequently.
I definitely sympathise with getting your cool little machine set up and not having enough time to refine gameplay out of it - it's a beautiful looking and sounding little game with some cool systems regardless.
The concept of this game is really good and the mecahnical components feel solid. I thought the colours and art was really interesting. Where i got stuck was understanding how the CO2 machines affected the other levels. I placed loads of machines and it did not seem to affect the gameplay. Maybe some arrows to show if rates.
First of all, great art/sounds/music.
I think my thoughts are the same as your own and what's been said before. I found the first playthrough a bit surprising since I didn't expect the plants to take over so quickly, but had a lot of fun trying to organize my machines to contain the plants on subsequent playthroughs. I think a game like this is hard to balance, sometimes it felt like the plants snowballed a bit too quickly once they reached a certain threshold but at the same time without that the game may have been too easy. I think just starting off a little slower so that you can spend the early game preparing a bit more by mining and setting up buildings would have been nice.
Overall really enjoyed the game though, great work.
Well, the plants look amazing, I like watching the game as the growth unfolds. As you said, some more mechanics would be nice. What I also really needed was some visual indicators of the machines producing the carbon. As a side-note, maybe that's just me, but there were moments when I confused the game canvas with the itch.io page background, lol. Oh, and the music levels are kinda weird, you can hear some of it, but most of the track is so quiet compared to sfx, that sfx needs to be set at the lowest. But still, it's not a bad submission :)
Beautiful game. I like how it's so atmospheric and natural with growing plants etc. The art and music is wonderful too. Overall great game :)
I cant make the machines works too.. Or maybe they do but I dont realize it. In any way I never saw carbon bar filling up...
This is a really fun and unique type of game and creates a very interesting set of problems for a player to solve. Do you block the plants? do you let them run wild and kill your Carbon? Do you intentionally use the machines to disrupt the plants and what's the best strategy to keep your O2 and Carbon level? There is a ton of depth for a Game Jam submission and it's fascinating (also the VFX is wonderful and the music is nice and soothing.)
Minus a few points for needing the player to repeatedly click the mouse (that got annoying quick), navigating the menu for the blocks was tedious and felt very inconsistent at times, and the background of the itch.io submission and the game made me click off the screen a few times accidentally which was a bit annoying. All of those are easy fixes though and with 72 hours, you can only do so much.
Great game!
Very pretty! I really enjoyed the art.
If you do work on this more, I think that adding gentle animations to the plants and machines could really make it feel more "alive".
Also, I felt some feedback for oxygen / carbon dioxide generation/depletion was missing, because when placing machines, it's not clear that anything's happening. Similarly, when you can't place a machine, maybe display some feedback for the reason.
Fantastic game, I really like simple games, and especially ecological games, with a beautiful feel and this nails it. Like the other comments mentioned one thing that felt off was the pace (I could never get the CO2 back up) and there was lots of frantic clicking involved, which I think was not the intention of the game. But other than that, great work and please work on it further!
Good concept, I like how it flips between I'm winning / oh no I'm losing naturally, there's something fundamental about this design. Sound design makes it feel soothing somehow. Good job.
I would've liked the sound bars to not be getting in the way. Also not very clear on how if any carbon was being generated by my machines. It felt like I was going as fast as I could and the carbon was still dropping. Definitely a really interesting take on the theme though.
Loved the art and overall feel. I agree with others that I wasn't sure if putting down machines was doing anything, and in both of my playthroughs I couldn't get the bar to go back up. Not sure what I was doing wrong. Otherwise, a great game.
Best looking game I've seen all jam
The game won't load on my browser :sob:
You know, it's funny you brought up idle games on my page, cuz I was viewing your game as an idle game too! I know it's more of a simulation, but I felt like the clicking to remove metal + buying machine generators was actually the same sort of economy you might see in one of those games. There were some runs where I just sat back and stared at the plants taking over.
It's actually a little unfortunate the primary, initial strategy is to build machines away from the plants because you don't get to watch the plants grow. Though now that I come back to the comments section, some people were actually using them to block the plant grow which was something I definitely hadn't considered.
The system itself is pretty clever, with different interactions between the plants and machines on multiple levels. This allows for depth and flexibility of how you want to play.
Ultimately I think this game's strength is in its incremental visuals. It's a joy to see the system grow and be self-sustaining........until it's not lol. I certainly couldn't keep it going for a terribly long amount of time, but I could still see where the design shined. Great job and clever idea!
@oramun The arrows are a good idea! I agree I should've put something in to communicate that better to the player.
@suchista Huh, I didn't realise the itch background would've been a problem - sorry about that! But I'm glad you liked the visuals, and thank you for the feedback!
@tornadopiggie I agree on the clicking part, it's one of those things that was quickly and roughly implemented at the start that I never got around to polishing, it definitely could've been more fun!
@elias-newton I like the gentle animation idea, that'd really work with the feel of the game!
@ycb21 Yeah, pacing is an issue with the end product; considering the chill music and space atmosphere there sure is a lot of clicking and panicking. I'm glad you liked the rest though, thank you!
@peachtreeoath Yeah, at times I was thinking of it as an idle game too, and if I had more time I was planning to bring it more in that direction! Similarly with the plant growth, I wanted to give it that sort of exponential feel a lot of idle games have, so it's a shame it all collapses after a while. It's good to hear that you liked the game, though, and thank you for the thorough look into the design!