FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Digital Pet

Digital Pet

By the3rdhunter

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4433.2128
Fun5682.5928
Innovation4353.0128
Theme4183.3828
Graphics3773.2627
Humor993.6324
Mood4103.0226

Comments

forgin-bits 2022-04-04 11:53

Couldn't play the game, UnityPlayer.dll is not found. You need to include the full repository which Unity generates, with UnityPlayer, MonoBleedingEdge and the crash handler. Cheers

sivarde 2022-04-04 21:20

Unable to play, as the above comment mentions!

the3rdhunter 2022-04-05 00:20

The upload has been fixed. Game is now playable. Sorry for the inconvenience!

jordan-pavlic 2022-04-05 00:40

Funny, I liked that the digital pet looks like a derp. haha. Some in-game instructions would have been nice to see.

jsmitq 2022-04-05 00:44

I tried neglecting my digital pet, but it never died (maybe I didn't wait long enough?). Also think the game balance could use some tuning as I was able to rack up a ton of money by smashing the work button.

Overall it's a pretty simple resource game that gives me nostalgia for the Tamagotchi pets from my childhood. It's a great start with some potential for future development. Nice work!

exaggegen 2022-04-05 00:58

First of all, I will say that there is really nothing to be seen here related to hunger or outside, respectively, with investing in health. It's also possible that I didn't play for too long, but I was only able to go through two evolutions, after which there was no more evolution. I would also suggest adding some kind of scale, where it is displayed in an unopened form, which is expected further. The idea itself is generally good.

benskca 2022-04-05 01:05

Overall this is a great start and I liked the games style a lot! I found some parts of the game a bit confusing, I think a little bit more player feedback on some of the actions would go a long way.

darandin 2022-04-05 02:15

Unfortunately I couldn't play through the game to the end if it had one because of having played too many spam click games today lol

The character was cute and I liked the idea. More user feedback for when/if an evolution would happen or how long the pet needed to be outside would be good.

Thank for the upload!

the3rdhunter 2022-04-05 04:04

Thank you everyone for the feedback!!! I agree with all of you. The game not balanced at all. I ran out of time at the end and never got a chance to test it out and get it right. I was just guessing at the game values and I completely whiffed on some of them. Whoops!!!

I'm planning on continuing development of this (after taking a little break to recover from that intense weekend, lol), and I am taking all the great advice on here to heart. Thanks for taking the time to play and review my game!

aderpychickenstudios 2022-04-05 04:08

Cool game I think the hunger bar didnt work for me it was always at the same value. I really liked the art style and thought it was really well done. A couple things I'd love to see are the ability to name your pet, a larger point option so the clicklyness is a little less spammy and a meter to show the next evolution really good start overall!

phil-c 2022-04-05 04:44

Had fun for about maybe 2 minutes clicking and buying points for the raise, when I was hit with a revelation. If you click the buy button you can then use the Space and Enter key to spam the click button for money. After that it was down hill as I could bought everything so much and was so bored, the food meter doesn't seem to work and the evolutions and stuff took ages, I never even died after leaving it running on my PC for 40 minutes. Definitely some more user feedback like @darandin said. The art is probably my favorite part. I have a love for programmer graphics.

auxc 2022-04-05 06:44

I love the minimal aesthetic, very neat! There's a lot of feedback already, so let me just say that I, for one, am pretty happy that my little turnip friend will not die of hunger anytime soon. :D

turnip.png

smilewood 2022-04-06 02:47

Well my clicking finger is tired now. This is a cool concept for a game in this theme, and while the implementation is simple I think that the game itself shows promise. The general art style works amazingly well for how simple it looks at first glance, I became surprisingly attached to by blob of ~100 pixels. It took me a while to realize that the bar below the food button was a slider, and was entirely unclear what benefit more expensive food would have. In general I agree with a lot of the other comments, more feedback on some things could have been nice, but I think that not having explicit hunger/outside bars for the pet is a much better representation of how pets are. Great game jam entry, well done!

p.s. It would have been nice to have a web build, this game would work well in the browser. You made this in Unity, so you can easily build a webGL build and host it on the game's itch.io page

pierce-brooks 2022-04-06 03:21

A clicker game fits the theme mechanically well, and the emotional motif you went with augments that even further :)

jk5000 2022-04-06 09:35

I like the idea, but I would have liked a bit more information about what was happening.

iambaangkok 2022-04-06 09:43

The pet's face is so hillarious! I love it! :joy:

My finger died playing this. But it's worth the curiosity of wanting to know what the next evolution will be.

I played for a while and was expecting some passive-income in the game but I don't see any.

Just read the above comment and found out about the food slider. I have zero idea that was a slider.

Graphics is simple but it does have a nice art direction!

My verdict: Very nice but there could be improvements!

the3rdhunter 2022-04-06 18:11

@smilewood Thanks for the feedback! I agree this game would work well in browser, and I did try to do a WebGL build. Unfortunately the entire game is built around an event bus which it's doing some fancy reflection stuff to do its thing, and that failed and starting throwing errors in the WebGL build. Stupidly I didn't try a web build until right before the end of the jam, and so didn't have time to address it. In the future I'll definitely test the web build earlier, and future versions of this game will be web accessible. But sadly not for this submission right now. Thanks for playing and providing feedback!!!

wilson-taylor 2022-04-07 03:08

Man I'm just a sucker for numbers that gradually go upward. Played longer than I'd like to admit. Good work!

shorkiesoftware 2022-04-07 03:10

I like the idea of making clicker game and combining it with a pet sim. The evolution of the pet was a nice touch.

foursay 2022-04-07 03:13

YOUR PET LOOKS SOOOO SMART

alexhoratio 2022-04-07 17:53

very cute game... this pet is mine now. thanks! :D

zimny11 2022-04-08 21:44

Nice one! I actually like this graphics. Took me a moment to figure out what does what, but after a few tries, I got it. Maybe they don't do anything, but those pixels are my pet! :)

Also, my poor fingers ;)

jeremy-ryan 2022-04-10 03:02

turnip.png

My arm is sore from repeated clicking, but my pet is thriving and well provided for.

The graphics are simple but effective. The super simple pet and clearly hurried MS paint backgrounds were hilarious and full of character.

I do think the game values could use a bit of tweaking. I'm not sure if there's anything after the point I got to, but my last raise was at a couple thousand points and I've neglected my pet entirely for quite a while and it hasn't died yet.

I also recommend something slightly less physically draining for a clicker mechanic --- maybe limit it to X times per second or have a bar that fills. Basing it purely on number of clicks makes it tiresome and also very hard to balance --- since there's almost no limit and a wide range of what players will be able to do (and even higher if someone uses software tools). Agree with others that objective and progress could be shown a little clearer.

Overall great work, it's a charming Compo entry!

valintone 2022-04-11 09:35

I love virtual pets so when I saw this, I had to give it a shot! The clicking did tire my finger, I feel perhaps a small minigame would fit better for money generation.

The sprites are delightful and it fits the theme well! You can tell the little guy is made with love.

geojax 2022-04-13 00:33

A few small adjustments would make this much more enjoyable -- having the pet evolve a bit faster, or at least giving some idea of when it will evolve, would be nice so that you know you are making progress. A bit of music would go a long way in reducing the feeling of tedium that arises from clicking and clicking. I like the art for the pet and the outdoors background. An indoor background, like music, would give the player something else to think about while spam clicking. This is a nice little game and I don't think it is far from a very fun and addictive pet sim. Well done!

ruthiepee 2022-04-17 15:02

Played this for a lot longer than I thought I would. First off, I love the minimalist aesthetic. It goes to show that you can pursue an interesting style in a jam without having to do really time-consuming intricate artwork. I love the idea of a virtual pet right off the bat, and combining it with the clicker genre is like, :chef's kiss: for me. Like the others say, maybe some feedback is in order for how long it might take to get to the next stage of evolution, and obviously some sound and music would make the idle time go by a little faster, but what you've got is a really interesting and addictive game. Nice work!

roccay 2022-04-20 02:00

omg I tried so hard raising my pet...feel like losing my finger but everything worth it lol. I see the potential of this game, it will become more interesting if there are more scenarios in the future, great work!