Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → H. (A Harvest Puzzler)
By ditam
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 610 | 3.18 | 37 | |
| Fun | 700 | 2.77 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 187 | 3.65 | 37 | |
| Theme | 347 | 3.79 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 636 | 2.97 | 37 | |
| Humor | 640 | 2.12 | 30 | |
| Mood | 486 | 3.31 | 35 |
Hello and welcome everyone! I'm very much looking forward to reading your comments. This is one of my more experimental entries, so I'm not sure what to expect.
This game is just called "**H.**", but I had to add a few more characters to the title for it to be accepted by the website.
It took me a long long time to figure out how it works, I recommend simply telling people how to play it otherwise it becomes tedious and it takes away from the fun of the gameplay.
i had to edit the divs in order to get all elements on screen, for some reason it seemed to start half a screen above. couple things id consider changing - keep the palette visible instead of using a cycle button, it's a bit cumbersome choosing the tile you mean to use. - seeing the next tile color in a big square is more attention grabbing than the current tile color on the cursor, i sometimes mixed up which tile i had active - some kind of feedback as to which tile had an effect on a changing tile would be welcome, its too hard to make sense of it without the spoilers
hope im not being too negative :sweat_smile: i think i like the idea you were going for
As cool as the minimalistic "figure it out yourself" vibes are, I think the game is lacking a way to teach players. I messed around in the first level for a couple minutes before reading the spoiler details and I was still confused. After messing around for another 5 minutes or so, I gave up once I got 4 green tiles to turn yellow (with harvesters next to them) and I still didn't pass the level.
My thought as to how you could teach the player while retaining the minimalistic vibe is to cut back on the mechanics presented to the player from the start. Give them a couple levels of just green, blue, and grey (if soil or pests are required to grow crops, I did not realize) on a small board. Then from there, very slowly add in complexity or a new mechanic. I may simply not understand an obvious mechanic; however, even with the tips, I still couldn't figure them out.
The music and art-style is perfect though! I will likely come back to this game and give it another shot. Maybe my brain is rotting from coding all day every day, and fresh eyes is all I need.
Really cool game when the rules finally click. My only issue with it is having to cycle through the colors, having all of them available through a palette instead would speed up the game by a lot. Adding a reset button to clear the board faster would also help.
Hi @ditam, your game didn't work on Firefox for me, it was too high up on the web browser for me to see all the squares. On Chrome it works though. I didn't get more than two wheat bars, I tried some patterns that I thought would work out but I'm not sure if they made a difference. I tried a row of water on top of green on top of brown and grey thinking that gravity would bring the water down onto the plants and the plants had to be on top of the soil. I also tried water on two diagonal edges, soil on the other diagonal edges, a harvester in the middle, and green plants all around it in a cross. That would maximize the greens that neighbored soil and water, and the harvester could be next to all of the greens for collecting them. That still didn't work so I'm really not sure how this system works. I love the audio and the overall mood though, it made playing around with the different combinations relaxing and enjoyable.
Thanks everyone, I appreciate your feedback. It seems that the game is currently just too confusing to be enjoyable, heh.
First of all, I've now included the exact rules and mechanics in the description above. I'll see how can I add some minimal post-jam changes to the game itself to improve the experience.
Thanks @daitli, very fair criticism! I knew it's going to be a tall order to make it enjoyable without instructions, and it seems that I ended up on the wrong side of that fence. It's not just you haha. Exact instructions are now included on this page, fwiw.
@togo-sepultraut I really appreciate the detailed feedback and I agree with all of your points, really. I made some stylistic decisions at the expense of UX, but I'll see what can I improve here. I definitely want to extend the harvest stage to provide more explanatory feedback, I just couldn't get around to it during the jam. (I had a shoestring budget of time this time around, probably less than 10 net hours.)
@travh98 thanks for sharing your thought process, it's good insight! I've included exact rules above now - note that soil only needs to neighbour the water, and the water has to neighbor the plants, so soil can be further away overall.
Later today I'll take a look at those issues in Firefox and add a fix.
Thanks @fishy-f1shy for the ideas! I also considered only adding the mechanics level by level, but I really didn't want to change the rules inbetween levels, because I figured that would be confusing in a different way. However, you're right that pests are not necessary for the first level (soil is, however), I'll probably remove it from the palette there.
I'll look carefully if there are any bugs related to scoring, if you had 4 wheat tiles, and they were not eaten by pests, it should have been accepted for the first level.
Thank you too @jeankb, on second thought I think I really could just lay out the entire palette without sacrificing the general aesthetic, so I'll consider it. I'm less likely to add a reset button, since there is no penalty to painting over tiles, and the harvest resets the board anyway, but I'll give this some more thought.
@ditam Here's the setup that gives 4 wheat tiles but does not win. Hope this helps!
H.png
@fishy-f1shy Oh my, there was a silly bug here indeed, any wheat or pests in the top left cell were not counted. (Just jam things!) This should be fixed now. Thanks a lot for the report! <3
I liked the concept and innovation. Definitely hard to figure out without directions, and even with the directions, the selection was still kinda funky. Refreshing to see something different though!
Great puzzle! I like players have to balance all of these tiles, harvester, water, soil, pest, plants. I have to use every grid and make them useful, the relation is so balance. The music is also great, make me feeling peace. But make a tutorial inside the game is also recommented.
This is a really unique and interesting take on the theme! I love the idea that, much like The Witness, you're thrown in with no understanding of how any of the mechanics work and are expected to figure them out- I think that makes for some really interesting puzzle solving.
However, I wonder if it could maybe be executed with the player in mind a bit more? What The Witness does really well is establish how each mechanic works through more isolated, individual puzzles- perhaps the same logic could be applied here to slowly introduce every tile type. Maybe you start by only being able to place one particular type of tile, and as you progress, you gain access to each of them. That could make the learning process a lot smoother, perhaps!
Overall, this is really cool, and a solid submission! Awesome work!!
It's an interesting submission. The rules were a bit hard to figure out without looking at the spoilers, and I wasn't a huge fan of having to keep cycling through the colours at the top (maybe having all of them clickable at a time would be better). The actual gameplay is quite fun though once you've figured out the rules. The minimalistic design works well for this kind of game.
Original idea and good puzzle game exploration. I'd say it's a bit too difficult at the start, as there are many moving parts of the puzzle. Also I would prefer if the current color was displayed in the top square instead of the next one. Overall, nice job!
I've fixed some issues for Firefox today, hopefully all major browsers are now supported.
Thanks @moosey, a comparison to The Witness is a huge compliment! I'm really glad that I managed to remind you of it. As I explain in an other comment above, I didn't really want to change the rules of the game in-between levels. (For example, if a rule of this world is that water leaks away without soil, why wouldn't it do that on the first level?) I don't remember if The Witness was adjusting the initial rules, or just extending them - the latter is probably just better game design.
As such, the only simplification I can currently think of is getting rid of the red tile for the first level, which is not necessary. I will continue considering this idea though, and I might add it in some form for a post-jam version.
Thank you too @secrt101, @coke, @adamwatters and @suchista! I see now how confusing it is to display the next color as opposed to the active one, and I'll probably end up changing it. I intentionally wanted to confuse the player here a bit, to create a sense of discovery and an a-ha moment... but it does seem to be the consensus that it's not a rewarding kind of confusion, so I'll probably do away with it.
Interesting puzzler. Quite confusing at first but fun. Well done
Truly a gem this game is. My only problem is that being a colorblind, it is very hard for me to distinguish the colors. Also, instead of a looping palette (that made me some confusion) I would expect the 5 colors in a row or column to make it easier to switch colors. :heart:
Really like the concept and presentation. I agree with what other's have said; a couple of "training" levels to ease a player in would have been ideal. I had to give in a check hints as it was very difficult to comprehend the mechanics of the puzzle. With a couple of quality of life changes this could be a fantastic puzzle game (even on mobile). Great job!
Thanks @ravernt, @mistagiggles and @szieberth-adam!
Yeah, this is definitely not colorblind-friendly as it is. I can imagine a texture-based UI option (or a combination of textures and colors) for a post-jam version. In the meantime, I'll try to find a colorblind-friendlier palette that has something similar to these colors (to still keep the semantic connections between the tiles' function and color), and offer it as an alternative.
Puzzles were a little difficult for me. Maybe easing into the mechanics at the start would help teach the player. I like the simple graphics, and the music
I love the idea that the rules are to be discovered by the player. It adds a special challenge.
Spent 10 minutes clicking around thinking there was some code I had to enter based on the color order in the palette. Once I read the spoilers and got a hang of the mechanics, I enjoyed it. I like that there are multiple solutions so it lets you be creative. One quality of life suggestion: If my design fails, I should be able to modify it and try again instead of it being erased.
Awesome game, the concept is simple but well thought and is fun to discover. The music is perfect for the game.
Great entry
This game reminds me of several very abstract puzzle games (like Baba is You and Understand). The concept of "finding rules while playing" always give me very interesting experience. When I start to play, I associated the five colors with an ancient Chinese metaphysics: the Five Elements. This metaphysics also formed in the agricultural labors of people. But I soon recognized that the five colors aren't symmetric. To find the real rule, I have to work by trial and error. The time of one try will be longer since the size of level is bigger. Sometimes I solve a level with a false rule I imagine, and I will pay more to fix it in the next level. So a restart button may help a lot in this situation.
The randomness of pest may not be appropriate for a puzzle game with static rules. And the color indicator doesn't indicate itself but the following color, is it a bug?
Overall, it's a great try, and I do enjoy it!
Thanks everyone! Following the suggestion that many of you have made, I've added a minor update that removes the red color from the first level's palette, to make things just a tad less confusing. This is the only simple change I could think of to make the progression a bit more gradual (see some of my comments above for my reasoning).
Thanks for the detailed feedback @lsy, I'm glad you enjoyed the puzzling aspect. The color "indicator" is meant to indicate the following color by design, I was intending this to be a sort of virtual palette or color picker that you can dip your brush into, so to say. But it's definitely source to a lot of confusion, heh.
I've also added an alternative color palette that might be more colorblind-friendly, you can toggle it in the bottom left corner. @szieberth-adam, would you mind trying it and letting me know if it's any improvement?
(I've picked a color palette that a [prominent colorblind researcher suggests](https://personal.sron.nl/~pault/) for scientific labeling, but I'm not sure how well it works here.)
@ditam Thanks a lot sir, it is fine for me, Tol palette is good. I am a deuteranop. It is very kind you've made this alternate version.
For the record, I also have a colorblind friendly palette project: https://adam.szieberth.hu/post/e-cvfpc.htm
Good job with the game. I think having a puzzle with no explanation and needing to figure out the rules is a cool idea. It is pretty difficult to approach however since you need a minimum of 3 different tiles working together to make any noticeable effect and 4 to start making progress on the goal. I think the kind of general approach to a puzzle like this would be to trying the colors by themselves and in pairs to try and figure out what they do but that approach doesn't give the player any information to work with. From there I just stared with random combinations to see if i could get something to happen and I did end up getting some bars across the top. However, the puzzle resets after so I couldn't go back and look at the board to try and figure out how I got that result. Additionally I didn't notice the bars across the top originally since they pretty hard to see on the background. Once I looked at the hints for an idea of what to do it became an interesting puzzle. Overall I think this is a cool idea but needs more of a way for the player to break into the puzzle and get information about what the tiles do.
It's definitely very stylish and clever game.
Wow - this was HARD! But incredibly unique, interesting and well thought out. I'm not sure if the pests are a stroke of genius or the most infuriating game mechanic I've ever experienced (it can be both!). Either way, despite my struggles with this, it's a very memorable games, and definitely one of the most original that I've played for this jam - well done!
I usually love puzzle and abstract games and minimalistic vibes and this was a beautifully moody, atmospheric experience with bright, contrasting colours and interacted nicely. However, it was spoiled slightly by being horrendously difficult to pick up!
The idea of having to figure it out yourself excited me and was super intriguing. I tried really hard to figure out what I was supposed to do but there was no way I would have understood without the spoilers! I still think it would be great to not need them but the game would have to ease you into it a little more somehow (like how pests aren't in until the second level). It was very satisfying to see something actually happen, like the golden squares and the bars at the top filling up, but I did have no idea why anything was happening. Possibly having something to show you your previous configuration would have been good (although would clutter the screen maybe), especially for figuring it out, since I could not remember what colours I'd put down under those golden squares to be able to figure out the mechanic!
I also agree with previous comments to have the full palette available to choose from since the cycling was indredibly inconvenient especially with the current colour not actually being the colour showing on top.
Having said those things, this is overall an amazing concept and a great take on the theme. I was dreading having to play a whole bunch of farming games but, whilst this is farming, this is completely different to all the other games out there! The music is wonderful and moody and sound effects give interaction a nice responsive feel. Graphically simple but works so well and the subtle effects like the sheen give the game such a polished feel. I also really appreciate the colourblind mode being available! The I'll definitely be sharing this one with my team to have a go at!
Absolutely incredible job!