FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD52 → The Crystallographer

The Crystallographer

By pianoman373

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall324.0152
Fun683.7852
Innovation244.0551
Theme134.4152
Graphics184.3452
Audio503.8452
Humor2
Mood323.9950

Comments

luizgt 2023-01-08 22:28

The FEEL, glorious! <3

johnnysix 2023-01-09 03:39

Surprisingly compelling - I played through a few times to try up my score. It'd be cool to have a little more randomness, or conversely , more intent to the layouts where different configurations of the crystal growing 'soil' yield different outcomes. Would also be more satisfying if the break cycle was consistent , so it wasn't so random as to where new crystals would grow ( depending on the layout shape, you'd have to plan for this anyway )

poietic-ruby 2023-01-09 06:23

How great the game is!By the way,your previous game is more attractive.Keep making such games!

szieberth-adam 2023-01-09 09:57

Cute PICO-8 game. :heart:

danyclockworker 2023-01-09 14:25

Nice art

matimat 2023-01-09 17:55

Very original, glad to see games in PICO-8 that leave room for creativity

cobear25 2023-01-10 03:36

Great game! Breaking those crystals is sooo satisfying.

haotian-chen 2023-01-10 03:45

short but polished, very good idea, love the art and control feels good as well. job well down!

borderdestroyer 2023-01-10 03:47

Everything about the graphics and audio was amazing! That alone would've made me give it a good rating, but on top of all that the game was also PRETTY DANG GOOD! All in all, you knocked it out of the park with this one dude! Fantastic job!

enad96 2023-01-10 04:27

This was fun and a very consistent music/graphics style.

superpokeunicorn 2023-01-10 04:46

Pretty cool mechanics! I like the dual purpose design giving some tension between breaking and harvesting the crystals. Trying to figure out the right combination of which to break and which to harvest while on a time crunch was pretty tricky. I will say that it gets a bit repetitive after a while, since you're mostly doing the same old break harvest repeat. Might need some extra twist to spice it up. But I had a lot of fun regardless, and the visuals and audio were also very solid. Nice work!

fromage 2023-01-10 04:49

I enjoyed this! Would be cool to see some sort of more puzzley challenges using this system, somehow.

mrs-wheelsx 2023-01-10 05:10

Really enjoyed this! Great Graphics, smooth controls, nice audio, fun mechanics. Great job!

paloobi 2023-01-10 05:41

I really love this! I want to keep playing and seeing if I can top my previous high score. The strategy is fun, and the art and sounds are delightful. Also love what you've done with the theme! Great work!

manchmalscott 2023-01-10 06:28

Woah, this game is awesome! It's easy to understand but still has enough depth to replay!

bartalomew 2023-01-10 09:26

pico8 gang! classic theme interpretation and done very nicely, also very nice art and music!

kongo 2023-01-10 09:30

Easy to learn, hard to master :smile: Love it! Greate game for moblie!

vidarn 2023-01-10 12:07

Very well made and fun to play. The presentation was great, with the graphics being both pretty and easy to read. The only thing was that I had a bit of trouble differentiating the red, green and orange (?) crystals since I’m color blind. It would have been easier if they had slightly different shapes. Anyway, I really liked the strategy aspect, trying to find a good method for when to plant, harvest and break the crystals.

jujus 2023-01-10 12:43

pico8 lets gooo :)))

zahkros 2023-01-10 13:46

Very cool vibes over here, my dear PICO-8 enthusiast friend! I might look into the cartridge and check out your music, it's soo chill! Great game indeed, hats off!

phillip-scott 2023-01-10 16:29

Super addictive and loved the look and feel

would be nice to strategize to decide which gem to buy

Great job :heart: image_2023-01-10_162917883.png

zimny11 2023-01-10 18:03

Really nice twist on farming game! Love the art style! I got to 2650 as my best :) I kind of wish harvesting and planting were using different button, since if player accidently smashed X twice it immediately plants next crystal and harvesting previous one. Anyway, good job!

loig 2023-01-10 20:21

Nice (took me some time to figure out as my gamepad was wrongly configured: I did not manage to press the button to break crystals). I loved this game. Nice graphics, and interesting mechanics.

crystalographer

caranha 2023-01-11 13:23

Pico-8 gang represent! My final high score was around 7800 points, after I figured out how to farm greens and roll seeds until I got blacks! It was a bit frustrating the randomness of seed breaking, but that is part of the game.

Great graphics, and great sounds! <3 <3 I wish there was an easier way to tell how much time is left, maybe some torch going out or something...

BTW, how did you embed the html of the game on the LD page? I tried it so many times and couldn't make it... teach me your secrets, oh master! :pray:

caranha 2023-01-11 13:25

Ooh, did I get the high score? I loved this game :gem:

2023-01-11_22-24.png

lawrence 2023-01-11 17:59

Interesting game mechanic with choices between harvesting and spreading and constrained area on top of it, one of the best variants of "growing stuff" in this jam!

pianoman373 2023-01-11 19:19

Thank you everyone for the amazing comments and feedback! I’m glad everyone is having fun with the game!

@johnnysix I agree that the randomness can be frustrating. I had to make a trade off by adding some randomness to keep the replayability up and avoid players from optimizing too much. This also is what makes some tiles better than others.

@vidarn Oh I should have thought about designing it for color blindness! Thank you for pointing that out. I’m thinking of doing a post jam update so I’ll definitely try to texture them differently in that version.

@zimny11 Yeah the more I play it myself the more I’m realizing the button overlap can cause problems.

@caranha Congrats on getting such a high score! I was wondering when someone would find the strategy of rolling the seeds.

The randomness of the seed spreading is tough but it can be mitigated by using tiles that are surrounded by others. The first tip in the description still applies, it just might not seem like it immediately because seeds can land on dry ground or there may not be enough open adjacent spaces for all the shards to be placed.

Also the key to getting the Pico 8 embed to work is making sure that the HTML and JS files are at the root of the zip file. Zipping a folder will usually put the files inside a folder inside the zip so you have to move them up a level after zipping them.

caranha 2023-01-11 23:28

@pianoman373 About the embedded html... I don't know why, when I first submitted the game, there was no option to upload an embedded zip. But I checked it now, and the option is back there :thinking: weird... thank you though, for making me look again!

maytch 2023-01-11 23:53

Interesting take on growing and choosing whether to harvest or break, good job!

bobbo 2023-01-13 01:29

Lovely little game, satisfying both breaking and selling them gems. Was fun figuring out how to optimally harvest on the time. With there was slightly more of a goal rather than just beat your own score but apart from that I'm a big fan of what you've done. Lovely art :)

bloodbane 2023-01-15 08:59

Cool harvest and breaking game! I may need to play better next time but I get the basics already.

pkenney 2023-01-15 22:04

Such great polish around a cool core loop. I loved the non-tutorial and it was a breeze to just jump in. I think my favorite moment was when I did a break then a harvest, and realized "oops I should have harvested that first to create the empty adjacent space!" That showed me some of the tactics in the layout and I had fun fooling around with that.

Polish was a real high point though, with the nice art and sound, and tight controls. I also appreciated the really attention to detail on having a clear gamestate, like the squares painting which gridcell I'm really standing on. Not easy to make a game with absolutely no splinters getting in the way of the play experience. Nice entry!

jesseww 2023-01-17 03:10

I really enjoyed my time with this. I had a little trouble figuring out the controls since I was playing on PC, but once I got it I had a pretty good time. The game play loop was easy to understand and executed nicely and the interaction feedback had a lot of impact. Well done.

danmerey 2023-01-17 03:44

I like the graphics :) Shiny

mrnotcrazy 2023-01-17 06:44

I saw your post about how you weren't happy with the intro screen but I Think it looks fine. It conveys the general idea of the game.

diccuric-sigeon 2023-01-17 09:43

Screenshot from 2023-01-17 12-43-08.png

sdelay 2023-01-17 09:53

THAT is a good action/managment game, always harsh to choose between benefits or investments. I love the intro screen also, looks good to me, I love the character. Well done for this lovely game. I did 4600$.

pikario 2023-01-17 12:25

So coooool ! Love this kind of tiny game. Visual are gorgeous, mechanic is simple but innovative, control are perfect. The strategy is challenging, well done !

hawkin 2023-01-18 02:30

I always know I'm going to enjoy a Pico title. They are just so byte-sized and charming!

You've got a really great mechanic here. It's simple enough to understand quickly, but complicated enough to ensure repeated gameplay. Really satisfying CRUNCH sound too!

cat-lab 2023-01-26 23:28

A simple concept but so replayable and soooo nice to look at. Well done!