FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD52 → The Night Harvest

The Night Harvest

By matank

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4593.4370
Fun4873.2370
Innovation2703.5070
Theme2553.9470
Graphics5393.3070
Humor1723.4968
Mood2953.6269

Comments

reivilibre 2023-01-09 21:11

Fun and a nice idea! Those water balloons go off too frequently though. :')

andreadbx 2023-01-09 23:26

Fun game! Loved the gibberish! :D

rincs 2023-01-10 02:36

I loved when the goat?? Something? Got whirlygigged out of the game. I had fun, bugs aside.

auros 2023-01-10 05:09

I started to play it strategically, definitely requires multiple playthroughs to find the best strategies. The music is wonderful and the overall mood of the game is really cute. Amazing art and the narrative described is cute.

unentokku 2023-01-10 08:42

Didn't realize you needed to hold x to harvest, figured the plants just weren't ready.

sgtweirdo 2023-01-10 08:47

Fun lil' game, well balanced and works like a charm. Dialogue was funny, made me double check your name and google translate at the start before the bunny(?) came in.

xeke-death 2023-01-10 10:42

That balloon is pure evil. I couldn't get past it. Kind of a puzzle game, need to work out the steps to progress. Good work.

svenerik 2023-01-10 12:15

Cute and solid game. Had a bit of a time to figure it all out and got stuck at one point, but the video helped luckily. I admit I fell in love with the dog too, lovely animation on it.

Well done!

neon-overplay 2023-01-10 16:08

Great game! I really liked the art style and music. Reminds me of Lakeview cabin collection. I wanted to add a very similar stealth mechanic in my game but was not able to due to time constraint. Anyways, keep making cool games!

aendawyn 2023-01-10 17:09

That's a fun little game you have here ! Love the art and animations. Cut scenes are great too

elysiagriffin 2023-01-10 17:22

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my stream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1703228774?t=3h3m51s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

rickylee 2023-01-10 19:43

So cute ^^ the ending is amazing! I have to admit I watched your video on how to beat the traps though haha

zimny11 2023-01-11 00:12

Cool take on the theme! Really nice art style. My only complain will be the speed of the popping thing on the pole ,it was super hard to avoid. Besides that, well done!

la-bread 2023-01-11 04:06

REALLY HARD (didn't use walkthrough though) had to play the game multiple times but I did it. Only gripe is the traps by the farmer are really unfair/hard and it felt like brut forcing it is easier. Sweet ending though! Oh also nice touch that you can't understand the humans!

merdeboi 2023-01-11 08:39

Great story, difficult to play without the video. Sounds and animations all fit together very nicely. I guess next step would be just to add more nights and puzzles for the doggo :smile:

tvorojok 2023-01-13 05:36

thank you for making me feel like a pest, it's unexpected on this jam! I liked it!

jitspoe 2023-01-13 05:39

My main suggestion would be to have just a single action button for both hide and harvest that depends on the context. I kept pressing the wrong button and getting got!

enchantedbrews 2023-01-13 16:03

I’m new to games so I found it a little hard at first. Once you get the hang of it it’s very fun and a great twist on who the harvester is.

zluca 2023-01-13 16:05

I like the concept of being the beast (not sure if thats a dog) and stealing the crops from the farmers. The two balloons were too much for me to handle and i just watched the video :sweat_smile: I liked the gameplay in general, but being on a "qwertz" keyboard, y and z are switched for me. wasn't really a big deal just something i thought I'd share. Cute game, good job :thumbsup:

captaindreamcast 2023-01-13 23:00

Aww, what a cute ending! Very lovely game. Sound, art, story and gameplay really came well together here to create something special. Figuring out the safe spots from the trap and managing which crops to leave for a bigger energy bonus down the road was fun to experiment around with, the bottom-left-and-top-right strat (registered trademarked name) was my favorite. Wonderful job on your game, well done!

lomby 2023-01-14 04:48

Thanks for submitting your game on the stream! Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/_eTFfxJO2YM?t=12641 and managed to finish the game here youtu.be/y26fNN5FUi0?t=21744

Nice work!

matank 2023-01-14 05:18

@lomby That's awesome, thank you for linking, I missed the day when you finished the game. Thank you so much for streaming it! :smile:

yellowkamel 2023-01-14 09:49

Cute little game! I liked the ending a lot - it came very surprising! Nice entry.

luhuchiha 2023-01-14 12:49

Nice game, the art was really nice! Dealing with the water balloons requires a lot of patience. Good work!

takeshi64 2023-01-15 00:15

I liked the game, it was pretty well polished with the story and different phases. I think maybe the farmer could have spent less time looking around during that phase, once the dog is hiding in the bushes and hasn't been found there's not too much point to waiting. The balloons (?) were interesting, I didn't realize you have to dart in and out at first since they were going so fast. The ending was nice, it was cool to have that moment happen as I was in the middle of being stressed out at harvesting the seeds. It was a little abrupt though. Thanks for the game!

kirsten-lee 2023-01-15 16:04

Cool concept! It took me a while to understand what to do but having the controls on screen helped!

poshdan 2023-01-15 16:11

This time/energy mechanic isn't my cup of tea so I gave up a bit early but I got the overall idea, it's cute. The scope of the game seemed very appropriate for the jam, and everything fit well together.

moosey 2023-01-16 08:33

Very cute little game! I'd love to see some of the core ideas here explored a bit more- the day/night phases have room to make some really interesting gameplay. Great work!

jumpirate 2023-01-16 09:05

The game mechanism is very interesting. The difficulty of the levels gradually increases. Although the operation fluency is a little uncomfortable, it does not affect the overall quality of the game.

harmofish 2023-01-16 09:21

This is an excellent piece of work. During the process of avoiding the farm owner and digging the land, I felt extremely nervous. It's fantastic. The function of skipping can be added to the early guidance process.

dfaouaz 2023-01-16 11:20

Lovely little game! I really enjoyed it :)

caranha 2023-01-16 14:02

The made up language is really charming! I loved that! The radius of the "trap" was kinda hard to judge, but I liked the idea of having to balance out hiding and harvesting. Thank you for the game, I hope you keep working on it! :-D

milq 2023-01-16 15:23

I love the fast forward at the beginning, it's something that many games don't have and it's valuable. At first I got a little involved but later I got the hang of it. Very funny, really.

chase-of-bass 2023-01-16 16:54

First really loved the the cut scenes -and then how the music went all serious and dramatic at night. Got challenging fast! The art was good and really liked the music too!

Loved the ending a lot! It got a solid dawwwwwwwwwwwww out of me ^_^

Excellent work! :D

nardandas 2023-01-17 08:45

Hi! I streamed this tonight, but I also like to comment! I really liked the fast forward. Especially with so many cutscenes in each short playthrough, it was a really good way to respect a user's time. Great job there! The mechanics were fairly simple but really effective. They communicated exactly what the player should do and gave a really good test. The trap originally felt really tight with timing but after going back a couple of times it was a good challenge! Day 4 felt IMPOSSIBLE and then - well - I don't want to spoil it but GREAT job with the ending.

big-cyckos 2023-01-18 14:01

Bana bakapu!!! Bobogop lel dunug lyp kok!! (great game!! really unique concept!!) Dod homa bakom gagagat a jakesulli a gandalf butudut (awesome that you invented a language for a game jam. Cameron and Tolkien would be proud) Deus meus kosmadeus i morele baks (it's challenging but the ending is worth it. The only nitpick I have is that it could be indicated more clearly that the x button needs to be pressed and held in order to harvest the crop, through first few attempts I couldn't quite get what should I do for my energy to increase. But I've had a lot of fun, great game!)

flying-dog-fish 2023-01-18 17:54

At first I thought "Oh no, another farming game." But then I realized there's a twist, playing an evil rabbit trying to steal from a poor farmer. The game is fun to play and looks good, with a big difference between night and day, accentuated by the music.

honey-pony 2023-01-19 20:39

[Spoilers for anyone who hasn't beat this yet]

Getting through this game took a bit of effort. Especially night three--it took me a couple tries to get through it. The strategy I eventually used to win was to have a plant from night one still there by night three, and then hoping I would have enough energy after eating that to get through the rest of the night. I wasn't expecting night three to be so long, though.

However, it all paid off in night four. At first I thought it was going to be completely impossible -- I was getting absolutely destroyed by the balloon pair and had barely any energy left. Then, of course, the light turned on, and I had to hide in the bushes, and I thought I would run out of energy for sure. But then it seemed like the lady was not going to go back in the house, so I guessed that perhaps I was simply meant to run out of energy here / let her find me. And sure enough, I believe I ran out of energy and then won!

This was a super cool payoff for all the hiding mechanics and frustrations trying to get food in night three. Thinking for sure that night four will just be a huge grind, and then having it be super easy instead... it's a very fun twist.

The winning cutscene itself is sweet and a great end to the game.

One small detail that I love is that the humans speak gibberish. This makes a lot of sense for the player playing as a dog character.

I think the game mechanics here are well thought out as well. The fact that crops grow did indicate to me that they would probably be worth more energy, and then I was able to start engineering strategies about leaving certain crops in place and, e.g. in my final strategy, only harvesting a single crop on night one.

The combination of the slow animations plus the rapid frequency of the balloon popping does make night three kind of frustrating to get through, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. In particular, because night four really pays off that frustration in an incredible way, it seems to me like a good use of frustration.

So overall, this game was a great experience, definitely not what I would have expected going into it. Very cool.

ava-skoog 2023-01-21 17:33

Aaah, I was so close to giving up and look at the tutorial and it looked like I just wasn't going to make that last night but then the kid started talking and I didn't seem to lose despite being out of energy so I let go of the hide button, and yeah, what a sweet moment 😭

Quite polished, with all the cutscenes, and the two music tracks (altho I only ever heard the second half of the morning track because I briefly went to another tab and found that the music had advanced without the game when I came back; normally night would come before the music got that far), sound effects, and how well you conveyed everything even without words I could understand.

Biggest criticism from me would be about inconsistent input scheme, with a mouse click to start and the enter key to restart, while neither was used in the actual game, so the normal action key (X) would've been better probably.

Really liked this one, when I finally managed to reach the end of it 😊 Having to do some strategic thinking with regards to letting crops grow and eating *less* sometimes was cool.

bradur 2023-01-23 11:13

It's a little finicky to know when to hide, when to harvest etc. Otherwise I like the framing of the game and how it's more of a story than just mechanics.

tweekstudios 2023-01-26 23:47

This is really cute and very well-implemented! It took me a minute before I realised that the reason I couldn't undertand the humans was because I was an animal. The anticipation of how they'd react after you destroy their crops too was a great gameplay aspect! The harvesting animation was really smooth and I loved the music too! The ability to fast-foward cutscenes also = genius!

hawkin 2023-01-27 02:05

What a great concept, and the execution of the cutscenes was really great! I loved the setup and the story, and I thought it was a clever detail that you could not understand the people hehe.

I read your log about the game balance, so you are already aware of that. Aside from it being a challenge, it was a lot of fun! The presentation (like the UI) was very well polished, and the artwork was just fine!! Great submission! I really like that it was a story and not just game, you know?

itsboats 2023-01-27 05:35

Took me way too many tries, but the ending is well worth every second of it. Very wholesome :3