liam 2022-10-03 07:03
Apologies to anyone who tried to access this and couldn't, I was pretty tired last night and forgot to take the game out of Draft on Itch.io :sweat:
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Void Garden
By liam
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 266 | 3.36 | 21 | |
| Fun | 364 | 2.97 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 127 | 3.60 | 21 | |
| Theme | 79 | 4.02 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 341 | 3.10 | 22 | |
| Mood | 369 | 2.78 | 21 |
Apologies to anyone who tried to access this and couldn't, I was pretty tired last night and forgot to take the game out of Draft on Itch.io :sweat:
I really like the base mechanic here - make your plans and generate resources every 10 seconds. But there are a few things which make it difficult to have fun with. Firstly it's visually hard to remember what unit does what, which resources it needs and what it will make - would be nice if the graphics hinted at this. Then when you have a lot of units it's impossible to allocate all the resources in 10s - that might be partly the point, but if the challenge is to strategize about resource allocation, then that's being displaced by frantically just trying to move resources quickly enough! So I think there needs to be an easier way - perhaps by being able to select multiple of the same resource, or maybe for units to keep some of their resources between turns to take the pressure off. Anyway, great job at making a really interesting game!
The 10 seconds is the perfect amount of time to plan your next moves whilst also being challenging! Well thought out mechanic and detailed explanation. Good entry.
@anxiousgamedev Huge thanks for the feedback. Glad you found it interesting! I had intended to add the requirements/production to each units graphic so I 100% agree with you there.
The challenge was definitely intended to be the allocation but when I was paper prototyping I considered a "Lock" unit that produced a resource to link two units together (would have required the same resources as the final unit), I was tight for time tho ofc :laughing:
Another way I considered making the game a little chill was allowing required resources to stack (so you can pump an extractor full of energy and then forget about it for a while)
@osh-studio Thanks for playing! Really pleased you though the mechanic was good, I think testing the game loop a little in paper first helped this one. Just wish I'd had more polish!
Oh man this one made me mad. Fun idea, I like allocating resources, but 10 seconds was just not enough time for me. Scrambling all the time, never making it, the resources kept moving when I didn't want them to. Mad. I'm not sure if that's just me or if the game is just not balanced the way it should be. Personal taste it a thing, and so is poor balance when making a game in 48 hours. The one thing I can say for sure (I think) is that some visual reminder of what everything needed to survive and build. My best score was 4500. I think I like the game, but with like 30 seconds per turn I know I'd like it way more. Great concept, looks nice, and the game was fun when it wasn't going way to fast for me. Good job.
Man that was so much fun! I had quite a hard time in the beginning getting all that information into my tiny brain, but oh boy it was worth it. I loved the stressful puzzle-part of the gameplay, it was a bit like tetris but instead of limited space I had to keep em alive and well. I loved that my farm would grow and then become smaller because I couldn't manage all the different plants, it really felt alive. At round 17 I thought I was screwed but then I realised that my solarplantthingie (the electricity generating one) was still on so I could continue with the right plan. Super-fun game. Contrary to other criticism I liked that the artstyle made it more difficult to distinguish the plants, I thought that was fun. Good job man, one of the best farm/puzzle-esque LD-games I've played.
It was mentioned before, so I don't want to regurgitate too much, but keeping track of what each vorg requires and produces is difficult to remember. Your own idea of including that information into the graphics is great, I think that would help a lot. Aside from that, you got a solid foundation here! The game is very fleshed out, and the step by step tutorial is really well done. It took a few tries to really get going, but I had fun! Nice work.
Good idea and the execution is good. Needs some audio and it also needs some sort of indicator as to what everything does and its upkeep cost. With that it would be fun to play but without it it can be really frustrating to keep it all straight. Maybe even just coloring the different items differently would really help.
Nice gaming. There is a lot of stuff to remember tough.
Really interesting take on the theme! It would be nice to have combinations displayed somewhere on the screen. Besides than, good job with the game :)
I'd just like to say a huge thanks to everyone who has played this and extra thanks to those who have commented, it's been a busy rough couple of weeks for me since the jam so I've not been able to play as much as I'd like or take the time to comment (which I will now remedy!)
@thedashdude So when I was paper prototyping I considered a type of plant that could lock in allocation, so you could build more complex allocation and not run out of time so much. I decided to try and keep things as simple as possible so I appreciate that did make it pretty hectic! Agree that having the option to display what would be produced and what was required would have made things a lot better
@maxkyckling Sounds like you definitely played the game how I was trying to set it up, thanks for the kind words and appreciation of the rough art!
@diego-escalante I was pretty happy with how the tutorial turned out, maybe I could have kept the key points accessible for access (when paused maybe) and that would have helped. Glad you had fun!
@caveman54 So during development... the super programmer art was colour coded and I realise now I should have carried some of that over. Didn't need to be much, some accents on the different vorgs would have been enough! You're very right. Every jam I always think I need to spend so much time on audio but seeing how much people do with just little touches, it's something I have to commit to doing. Adds so much, you're 100% right
@flying-dog-fish Thanks for playing and yup, hope you agree with some of my suggestions about how I could make that easier. I'm going to build a version 2 of this game, it was a fun experiment and I'd like to figure how to optimise it a bit more too
That was a nice little experience! The graphics were simple but it worked! Everyone basically mentioned what I wanted to say for improvements so I'll just leave it at that~! I hope that you do some post-jam improvements.
Cool (and stressful) little game!
Very nice graphics. I like the idea, but as people mentioned at some point it gets impossible to allocate all the resources. The tutorial is a great helper and is done very well, straight to the point with only needed info.