Inevitable Greenery

kingofspill 2022-04-05 01:28

This game is really chill and pleasant to wander around in! I love the art and music, and the different kinds of flowers are really clever. I'd love to see this expanded with some puzzles using the flowers.

I did run into a few issues. When I opened the game it tried to launch SteamVR, seems like that might be because it's an UE4 development build. Also, when I got to the water tower I ended up getting stuck in a loop with the cutscene showing the factory replaying over and over. Because of that I couldn't get up to the flower on that platform. I also had trouble getting to the nearby flower that's kind of hidden among trees near the tower, it seems like there's an invisible wall in the way.

All that said, great work y'all!

kimyokage 2022-04-05 15:41

Lovely game, very chill, movement feels really good, I really loved it. Was a lot of fun to collect all the flowers, altough I couldn't find the last one since I got out of bounds somehow :/ I also got stuck in the animation at the end of the tower, but managed to get out of it for the prize of the camera shifting to first person, which didn't feel intended. Still a very pleasant game, chill and fun to play! Well done! :)

roboolet 2022-04-06 22:17

Some cute visuals all around, liked the background music as well. The water mechanics felt a little arbitrary, with how much water you needed for each plant and such. Also got stuck in that cutscene at the top of the tower and wasn't able to get out.

kobahawk 2022-04-07 11:09

So chill! I was not a fan of the only horizontal camera, but it was a cool little game to relax a bit. Good job!

100th-coin 2022-04-07 15:59

The scenery and artwork is incredible! 3D models are something I have yet to even try, so I'm always impressed by what people can do in a game jam. I think the camera kept getting stuck and I couldn't rotate it? It took some effort in some places. I had to play it twice, since the first run I got stuck!

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Even still I had a great time. Lovely and relaxing game.

substain 2022-04-07 16:50

cool game, like the thoughtful hints. I couldnt find the last 1-2 flowers (might've found one, but could not get to it?)

mordsven 2022-04-07 17:09

A chill game where you water the flowers, though i can't seem to find all the flowers.

0x01f0 2022-04-07 18:58

Hello fellow Unrealers! 😎

This great! I wanted to play it because it looked so chill and it really was! Nice work!

FYI I got stuck here 😔

GameJamGreens_8AuUwXZdHk.jpg

1tater-no-tots 2022-04-09 08:50

Cute game, however I ran into a couple issues. I got soft locked in the cutscene that pans over to the nuclear plant. I must have gotten stuck on the cutscene trigger because every time I tried to move, I would trigger it again. Additionally, I found the footsteps to be too loud and distracting, a little unbalanced alongside the soft peaceful music.

automatonvx 2022-04-10 00:39

Also had an issue with the cut scene camera panning thing, I triggered it a couple of times accidentally, I was just trying to get up to see if I could intreact with the giant watering can.. after the cut scene my camera was stuck inside the player, so after that was a bit akward to see anything. I quite like the environment and the panda character is cute as a panda should be. I feel like even with the cut scene issue though, finding all 24 flowers was perhaps going to feel like a bit of a chore as it didn't feel like there especially a challenge or puzzle in unlocking them, just quite a bit of back and forth refilling the can and then fighting a bit with the camera to see where they were. The music was nice and chill and fit the vibe, and I was intrigued by the mystery of the green creatures, but not quite enough to go back and restart and find all 24 flowers. Good effort, but maybe could have used a bit more polishing for the camera behaviour and level design. I really liked the concept though.

zubspace 2022-04-11 19:34

Very relaxing game. Nice visuals and music. The message is nice and I love the panda and the flowers. A bit too much of backtracking to find all flowers, but otherwise it was a good experience. Thanks!

geojax 2022-04-14 12:18

I love this! The music and aesthetics mesh together perfectly for a relaxing playthrough. Watering plants is such a soothing mechanic. A footstep sound effect would have emphasized the simplicity of the tasks and gameplay, making an even more relaxing experience, I think. The 3D models and particle effects are all fantastic. Well done animating the panda.

The gameplay does get tedious, going back and forth between water and flowers. The game is obviously divided up into areas, so what if, after finding the well in an area, you immediately have enough water for all the plants in that area? It might be slightly difficult to communicate that mechanic, but would make the gameplay so much more enjoyable. Another option might be to add a river so that a water supply is always close by, or increase the amount of water you can hold in the watering can every time you water a flower.

As far as theme goes, "Delay the inevitable" (or, as it appears in game, "don't delay the inevitable") is not very central to the game. You see the message on a few walls, but the urgency in the warnings clashes with the otherwise serene gameplay, and I think it falls flat due to that conflict. You might have leaned into the serenity, and then you'd be making me, who doesn't want to leave the beautiful panda garden, delay the inevitable of returning back to reality!

apandso 2022-04-14 12:32

@geojax Thank you for such a detailed feedback! It's very pleasant to read :) The gameplay was supposed to be a bit different. As you suggested you'd get a better watering can with leveling up - so you could hold more water. Unfortunalety due to a bug this was broken in our release vesrion. So yes, going back and forth became much more tedious than it was supposed to. We are planning to fix the game after the rating time ends.

As about the theme - it indeed does not push you to finish the game faster. Maybe only to find out what happened and why. Though I have to admit we didn't properly show the explanation at the end due to the lack of time... But hopefully all that will be done in the next update.

I'm very glad that you enjoyed playing our game!

angiemon 2022-04-16 15:27

What a lovely little entry! I loved exploring this charming world (I love exploration games, as well as narrative ones, and you delivered both, which I can only highly commend! Well done!)

Especially loved the environmental storytelling bits everywhere: pandagame.jpg Loved all those carefully placed little notes and characters! It was a clever choice to tweak the pandas body to make more species (cat, rabbit,...) to give this even more variety.

The world was cute and pretty. As an artist I have to critizise a liiiiittle thing about the main character, which is the face texturing of the panda pattern, I would have liked it better if you used a clean, hard brush (so no softening around the edges) and used symmetry on the face :) (the panda is still very cute, but I think that would have made him even better)

Take this with a grain of salt, the texturing of our main character also wasn't perfect because I had no time to fix seams, so yeah... haha, gamejams, amirite?

The green was a liiiiittle bit too saturised for my taste, I think a more gentle, soft pastell green would have complimented the dreamy look of your world even better :) Also, the shadows were a liiiittle bit too dark for my taste (but that's all very nit-picky, I know that there isn't alot of time during game jams and you're glad if you even accomplish half of what you've planned etc. ^^)

I'm way less familiar with Unreal than with Unity, but if it's the same thing there you might want to look into Light Baking (in Unity you also have to do ith with realtime light, but it's quick) and Post Processing Effects to make your beautiful game even more beautiful :) (I love post processing effects - basically an instagram filter for your game, lol)

The level design was very interesting and well built and made me want to explore!

A few things that I understand probably simply wasn't possible in the gamejam's short amount if time, but would polish this immensely (if you wanna continue working on this)

-UI Elements would have been better as an overlay, sometimes they were sticking inside of the assets and I couldn't fully read

-add a little UI element to each plant indicating how much water they need (maybe divide it into parts, and for example your little watering pot can carry 2 parts of water, little plants need 1 part, the big plants need 3 parts, so you can fill it up partially or something like that, could add a fun element of planning your trips)

-loved the cut scene when you we're on the tower! Really great. (also with the radioactive tower - really great!) it just kept playing whenever I moved a little keeping me from entering the platform and being stuck on the "stairs" (plant) I tried to be patient but gave up after a couple of tried because I grew a little tired of watching the same 30 sec cutscene every time and gave up, so maybe set the trigger to play the cutscene only once (and maybe also add a skip cutscene function)

-maybe playtest a bit more and hide/clip certain meshes when the player is inside somewhere, as they can obscure your view and be a little annoying

But again, I totally understand that with what you've done this was a lot to do and simply wasn't possible to do in 3 days :)

All in all a very adoreable, fun entry that I enjoyed playing. you can be proud of yourselfes! :)