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Harvest City
Harvest City
By digital-bacon
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 813 | 2.43 | 50 | |
| Fun | 814 | 2.10 | 49 | |
| Innovation | 746 | 2.56 | 48 | |
| Theme | 600 | 3.37 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 573 | 3.21 | 48 | |
| Humor | 663 | 1.98 | 45 | |
| Mood | 785 | 2.37 | 46 | |
Comments
tuomas
2023-01-09 19:19
Congrats for submitting even if you didn't finish everything you planned. The game focuses lot more on driving in the city than growing the plants on the farm. Maybe you could have focused more of your development time there insted of the city. :) Like you said, the game feels like you spent most of the development time on drawing art assets on city screen. I think its good to pick a single thing to focus on if you have limited time or resources. And you did well with the pixel art! Especially on the house assets. I think you managed to capture the looks and feeling on lots of materials like sheet metals, bricks and wood planking. Little details like highlight and shadows on the doors hint the shape of the door framing nicely. I recommend to check Pixel Architects YouTube channel if you haven't already. He has really good tips for drawing different materials and surfaces in a pixel art style. Keep on practicing, cheers! :)
Thanks for your comments, @tuomas!
I'll admit that the driving part had more attention: making the city (including creating the buildings) was a lot of fun! (And wasn't that how Wil Wright invented SimCity?)
I have seen Pixel Architect, love his Ghibli-style work.
jaj
2023-01-11 11:19
For what it's worth, the time you spent on the sprites does show :D It looks good! I like that you tried to add something to the expected concept by adding the driving part.
A good idea is to make a list of things that you want to add to the game, and then divide them into three lists: Things that your game absolitely needs, things that you really like to put in, and things that would be nice to have but don't add the most.
Then work on the most important things first.
It's ok to revise the list later on. Some things that you thought your game absolutely needed may not be that necessary, and things that you thought you liked to put in may be elements that make the game work in the end.
Thanks for the comments @jaj!
I usually have a Trello board put together before I start working on the game, but this time round, I inexplicably didn't do this until near the end of day 2 of the jam, which is really mad because I'd found them very useful (for the exact reason you said) in previous jams. Oh well, lesson learned :shrug:
jaj
2023-01-11 11:56
@digital-bacon Yes, Trello is amazing for this!
Good game!
Thanks, @triangle-point !
A really solid foundation for a game! I think the game play loop is really fun. Really ambitious game for a solo dev in a game jam.
Thanks @bo-dangles!
justin-c
2023-01-12 13:44
I see what you were trying to do, and I think it could have worked. In these jams it's really important to prioritize getting a minimum viable product working as soon as possible.
I keep a list of features sorted by importance and work on the most critical ones first, and then cut the less important ones as I start running out of time.
I had to hold myself back making a farming game as well :D I see no problem with focussing on some aspects like sprites in a game jam as it should be a learning experience and it is very cool that you still managed to finish something that can be played! The farm has some serious Stardew Valley vibes :) At first I thought, that the city is way to big but when I returned to the farm I directly had a feeling of "coming home" so that would definetly work in the next version of the game!
Cool concept and it sad u didnt finish. Be cool to see a revamp of the farm with graphics made by you like the farm. Keep up the good work
profan
2023-01-12 23:22
Interesting little game, though the first thing I tried to do was go into town while my wheat was growing in my farm (and it had just vanished while I was gone?) so that was a little silly, the wheat selling mechanic not working is a little sad, but I do like the art you've put together, scoping it down a lot more and actually just focusing on selling only wheat and maybe making the town even smaller would have probably made it easier to finish on time :)
Either way, I hope to see you again in another LD! It's an interesting setup, just needs a little narrowing down (and having the transition between the farm and the town be smoother would improve the feel a lot)
Good work regardless :D
t90
2023-01-12 23:25
Don't feel too bad about unfinished game, it happens. Try to get minimum barebones working game next time and then iterate on it in the remaining time, constantly adjusting priorities and cutting corners.
Thanks for all your comments!
@justin-c @t90 As I mentioned above, I'm usually a bit more organised, with a Trello board to keep me focussed, but this time I just jumped in without one until 2/3 of the way through the jam. :face_palm:
@xoreaxeax I won't lie that Stardew Valley wasn't a source of inspiration, especially for the art style; I really love that game! I'll keep in mind your comment about the feeling of "coming home".
@elmoeinstein The farmhouse was the last pixel art I worked on, and comparing it to the earlier buildings, I can definitely see a progression :smiley: It's something I want to keep working on.
@profan Yes, there's no tracking what crops are planted during the scene swap, so it resets the farm every time you return. It's definitely on the bug list, and something I'd want to fix, especially with crops that take longer to grow. Definitely, building the city as large as I did took up way too much time (personally, I'm amazed I didn't try to make it bigger...). Will be back for LD53 in April :smiley:
The art is beautiful! It definitely gave a "farm game" mood because of that. I think there needs to be a little more work the system. I'm not sure why I couldn't "sell" the wheat once I brought it. Maybe I missed a step, but there were other bugs mentioned in other comments. But, considering the effort you up in the art, it makes sense. The art is amazing, and I think if you had more time, the game would be much cleaner. Good job!
Hey it is a bit sad you focused more on your sprites and city than the harvest gameplay itself. For example you actually have working rear-driving warning on your car sprite I was like wow wtf xD. The arts look cool and it could have been really nice if we actually could do anything with the harvested wheat and the money from selling them... So many possibilities, but you chose to have rear driving lights ahah. Anyways congratulations on your entry anyway, you really got something here, just, If I may suggest, try to set up priorities first and foremost
Thanks for the comments!
@toosalty0000 I'm not sure I'd describe the art as "beautiful", but it's very kind of you to say so :blush: Definitely learned my lesson on focussing on the gameplay ahead of the art assets. The sell system is bugged, not something you missed. It was one of the last things I implemented, about 2 hours before the end of the jam (for me, this meant 7am Tuesday NZT, and I'd been up since 6am the day before...)
@thunderchief Yes, the core part of the game design revolved around selling the harvests, so it's kind of missing that bit at the moment :face_palm: Definitely have "plan ahead" top of my Lessons-Learned list.
I wanted to play this just based on the intro, because I could relate to it so well at the beginning of LD52. Well done on getting a submission ready in time, even if all the features didn't make it. Each of the screens looked nice and seemed to each encompass pretty solid core gameplay ideas. As others as said, I feel fixing up priorities and massively reducing scope in the future would benefit immensely.
Thanks, @lintfordpickle!
tildecat
2023-01-15 10:26
I think it's very good start for interesting game! Game visuals are very nice.
Thanks, @tildecat!
The part of the game you managed to make looks good and is playable, it's a pity you couldn't finish it.
Thanks, @flying-dog-fish!
asfdfdfd
2023-01-16 16:58
Oh-ho-hoo, this game looks like complex economic simulator!
That was on the nice-to-have list, @asfdfdfd... :laughing:
pope-paf
2023-01-17 11:34
Nice pixel art ;)
Thanks, @pope-paf!
Nice job with this :)
Thanks, @juicybrucey!
Nice approach to the theme. The game looks cool and play swell. Nice work.
Thanks, @projectaroid!
I was surprised after the farming part that there was a whole city that you could drive around! The art was great and driving around was fun! Great job getting all that done for the jam -nice work! :D
Thanks, @chase-of-bass! It's a pity the farming bit wasn't more developed.... :rofl:
yvanor
2023-01-23 21:23
Nice little game, it's too bad that you lacked time to realize everything you wanted. I hope that you got more familiar with stuff that costed you time, and save more time for your next game !
Well done :)
Thanks @yvanor!
ciaranw
2023-01-25 21:10
There's quite a lot of city there and the game does look pretty so nice job on the sprites! I also like your UI and the idea of focussing more on the 'salesman' side of farming was a nice take on the theme. Also good on you for submitting anyway even though you didn't get it all as you wanted - hope you meet your expectations next time!
I don't have anything too insightful to say here, but I can talk about one feature I enjoyed that I'm not sure I saw in any other games I played this Ludum Dare.
The driving in this game! It's slow and takes a while, and feels exactly like driving through town to get somewhere. This is a great mechanic to have in a farming game, I think. It creates incentives for the player to avoid going to town too often, because it is slow. So if there was more progression in this game, for example, a larger car inventory -- I probably would have gone for it! It would help me save time going back and forth, and so I would be directly incentivized to participate in other game systems, by a mechanic that makes narrative sense.
I mean, this is kind of seen in, say, Stardew Valley, where getting anywhere from the farm takes a lot of walking, and there is explicit game progression that helps you get around faster.
But I haven't seen it done with a car before, and it's a surprisingly effective combination. I think this is because, at least for me, I have personally experienced having to drive somewhat far away on a regular basis for work, while I have not yet experienced having to walk through the countryside on a regular basis (like in Stardew Valley). So it really is a more personal, and therefore more immersive, framing.
Thanks @ciaranw!
@honey-pony: There was certainly intended to be a progression in vehicles, so you could take bigger loads into town (the functionality to increase the size of the vehicle's payload is already in there!). I don't know if I could've articulated the plan as well as you have, but encouraging progression was certainly something I was trying to put into the game. Thanks for describing it so wonderfully: it's given me more ideas to consider (like putting the farm on the same map as the city, so you literally have to drive all the way).