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Orchard Alchemy
Orchard Alchemy
By caeonosphere
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 19 | 4.13 | 35 | |
| Fun | 38 | 3.98 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 13 | 4.16 | 35 | |
| Theme | 44 | 4.21 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 87 | 3.93 | 35 | |
| Audio | 28 | 4.03 | 35 | |
| Mood | 56 | 3.84 | 34 | |
Comments
rob6566
2023-01-09 11:29
Love this game! It gives me strong Factorio vibes. The graphics and audio are lovely, and the tutorial is awesome, explaining exactly what's happening. The delete button is a nice touch, letting you clean up the mess. Thanks for making a Mac version too. It did crash when I got to upgrading pears to level 2 (about to retry to see if it happens again).
EDIT - crashed again on Mac, after researching quinces and pears, but hadn't finished researching apples. It doesn't seem to be triggered by anything specific. I'll test on PC.
EDIT 2 - PC version also crashed at around the same point (while doing 3rd research).
@rob6566 Ah jeez, I thought I had fixed the crash issues. I’ll take another swing at it, thanks for the heads up!
@rob6566 I had fixed one infinite loop, but it turns out that there were TWO MORE! Should be good to go now.
rob6566
2023-01-10 08:31
@caeonosphere - Sweet, that fixed it! I got the victory statue :). Awesome game!
@rob6566 Are you serious?! I would have bet $100 that no one would beat it. Holy hell.
Very fun! Eventually I made such a mess that I just couldn't deal with what I'd created and had to stop playing 😅 but it is well put together and executes on the premise very well. I was very surprised when I unlocked conditional flingers, I didn't expect that kind of depth to the mechanics! Overall a great game, maybe I'll try to be more organized and get that victory statue one day
mstrp
2023-01-11 05:57
Excellent game! Really enjoyable and I could totally see myself setting up the most efficient "farm", Factorio style with a bit more playtime. Real good job on this!
Wonderful work! the flinger system brings interesting challenges and tactics. It is also more tricky to get everything in order. It is easy to build up one or two simple pipeline working, but diffculty arises when space beside market is occupied, or the fruit path intersects, etc. Overall very playable and fun, good job!
A super impressive compo game that drips with polish! I'm a big fan of factorio-adjacent automation games and this one definitely taps into the same addictive energy.
must... fling more fruit
fedora
2023-01-11 06:03
Very fun and well thought game! Quite difficult also, but the mechanics are really well explained through the tutorial. Also really liked the simple art style and relaxing music.
Really cool concept! I really liked the automation, though I found moving the fruit around a little cumbersome. The numbers were a bit slow, particularly with the fancier fruit, but it was cool. I think maybe being able to research multiple fruits at once would help that? Also I feel like the money limit might generally be a bit low. Probably just my playstyle.
I really liked the graphical style, really appropriate and cute use of tiles!
poboy
2023-01-11 06:12
I am a huge sucker for Factorio-likes and spent way too long in this. Super innovative automation game and an amazing level of polish/design for a compo game! I think you'll do really well, could easily see this being expanded slightly and released as a full game.
I would've liked being able to put stuff back in my inventory, and also some way to demarcate the boundaries between my different systems.
Great game, I think you'll do well!
Thanks for the kind words, folks!
@paetramon I hope you noticed the button to clean up all the fruit! Even with that, it's definitely easy to make a mess.
@nardandas "Cumbersome" is definitely the word I would use. When I came up with the flinger, I didn't expect it would be so different from conveyor belts, and so... cumbersome. I also agree about the money balance, there's a lot of work to be done there. If you happen to ever play again, please do use the cheats :)
@poboy I forgot to add this to the tutorial, but you can add things back into your inventory by dragging them onto the trash button. Drawing regions is a great idea!
Capture27.PNG
Balance was actually pretty good, I'd say. I liked the way resources moved a lot, it made for some interesting factory building, and the game stayed performant all the way through. I'd play an expanded version!
kosmi
2023-01-11 06:39
i really enjoyed your game! It reminded me factorio.
@const-arch Wow, nice work! Thanks for playing. I recognize some of your jam games; looks like this is your first compo? Looking forward to giving your game a thorough exploration. :)
Very interesting take, couldn't put it down until I had found all the fruit. I found it really challenging to chain all the machines, was really feeling a missing "push" machine instead of the throw
Absolutely nothing else to say, a solid and addictive game
mhorth
2023-01-11 22:57
You're a front end developer I'd bet, right? The UI was great and smooth from the start, but the most satisfying bit was that your right side drawer closes if I click anywhere else on the screen. That's some good UX :smile:
I did get stuck not too far in unfortunately. I bought the lab and was directed to research a quince. I made a quince and put it right next to the lab, but nothing seemed to happen. If you can tell me what I might have missed there, I can come back and see what else you had in store for me in the late game.
eddrw
2023-01-12 06:04
The gameplay is so smooth and polished, I love this! The introduction/pacing of mechanics feels perfect.
@theherborist A pusher would be a great idea: I find that moving fruit over by 1 via flingers can be... difficult. Thanks for playing!
@mhorth I'm a full-stack dev, but I do have high standards for UI, even in a jam! I can think of one reason the lab would give you trouble: you can only research one fruit at a time (which I fail to explain in the tutorial) so if a lab eats an apple or pear beforehand, it'll refuse to take anything else until the current research is done. You can see the current research in the upper left. Hope that helps!
Factorio vibes, yes, but too much math for me lol. The game is really nicely polished, so it's really easy to play. I'd play more if I wasn't so tired xD
Awesome mix of various games! I think this is the game I played the most and liked the most in this game jam! Really great work! <3
Refreshing puzzles and really relaxing atmosphere! Really appreciate that the fruits doesn't rot when I was continiously failing to fling them into the market.
blinry
2023-01-13 22:01
What a piece of art! You surely know your stuff! :) The slow tutorial is lovely and worked really well for us. Having the mixed trees later motivates the use of the conditional flingers in a clever way! Researching all fruit kept us hooked, and the game often made us feel smart! :3
I love that the grass sounds louder when you zoom in! Very relaxing mood. It's both calm and at-your-own pace, but also chaotic! Trying things manually first, but then automating it is so satisfying. The reactivity property seemed like a clever way to limit complexity.
Panning the screen on a computer without a hardware right mouse button wasn't as easy as all the other controls. And we would've liked to see which fruit were already researched.
@xlores-liang Funny enough, rotting fruit was on the todo list! It would have been a way to make wine rather than a fail condition, maybe for the best that I ran out of time for it anyway... :)
@blinry Thanks, buddy! Definitely should have had WASD pan the camera, glad you were able to enjoy despite that.
Very good entry. I love the gameplay mechanics, very original. Great job!
Great game!
zirrrus
2023-01-17 18:50
That's really neat! I couldn't really concentrate on building with everything going all the time though.
someone
2023-01-17 19:32
Really cool factory builder. It was a bit slow though, even with the 2x upgrade. I built something to research lemons and to my surprise the same machine also researched another 3 types. I just had to leave it running for ages and do something else. It would also have been nice to see which fruit you have already researched somewhere. My first playthrough I managed to completely miss the mint tiles, only realised I was missing stuff after reading the comments here. I had to go back and complete it properly.
@zirrrus Thanks for playing! Agreed, it can be hard to build with fruit flying all over the place. A pause button was at the top of my todo list when the deadline rolled around... :|
@someone Sorry about the pacing and the tutorial not pointing the mint out when it shows up. A lot of polish got left out, but I'm glad you went back and found your way!
This ha d really nice smooth polished UI, and was really fun, nice one!
Bildschirmfoto 2023-01-20 um 21.41.41.jpg
I did it \o/
I kept wondering if there's something to do with the statue, though...? because you can just keep playing after it appears.
Very cool game, kind of addictive :D At first, I was stuck when I didn't notice that I could zoom out and find the other trees, and kept wondering how I could ever get any fruit lower than 4.
Accelerating time was useful towards the end, but I really missed a 'stop/pause time' button so all the movement on the screen would stop distracting me from planning what to build. It was very messy and I ended up just moving fruit around manually a lot because I couldn't concentrate enough to build all the automation :/
Oh, and the game really needs some kind of 'quit' button or key - I ended up having to kill it from my task manager, because there's not even a window title bar to click 'close' on or something... luckily, I have a second screen where I could do that, I can image that being even more of a problem on a single screen. Maybe an option to not have it in fullscreen mode would work, too.
(I played the mac version, no idea if that's a problem with the others, too..)
@flauschzelle Thanks for the notes! I have such a tough time keeping track of these polish points; I'll try to be a little more organized and include them in future jams. And great work on the win, wow. It's been so gratifying to see that people have been willing to get to the end, when I thought that number was going to be zero. Such a pleasant surprise.
joror
2023-01-21 21:08
Neat factory game! The looks were simple but smooth, UX was pretty good, and learning curve was good. Had some problems with finding 'nice' solutions that didn't involve a bunch of messy blockers/flingers, but got there in the end. Would have loved a single tile 'pusher' or something for more fine-grained control
flatgub
2023-01-21 23:56
Incredibly good, I absolutely loved this! Both the gameplay and the presentation were wonderful! Really well done!
cat-lab
2023-01-26 07:35
Beautifully designed and the music is so soothing. Very clever use of these mechanics for a harvest theme! Impressive compo!
Hi! Happy to share that Orchard Alchemy is featured on the GitHub Blog in our [Ludum Dare 52 wrap up post](https://github.blog/2023-02-03-ludum-dare-52-staff-picks/).
@lee-reilly Oh, awesome! Thanks for the feature!