kro 2023-01-09 21:28
Great rhythm game, you got it right! It's a little disappointing that there's only one track tho. And also the game gets repetitive too fast. But overall good impression.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Techno Plants
By morpheyz, thejan14 and Schmalex
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 146 | 3.89 | 109 | |
| Fun | 80 | 3.97 | 109 | |
| Innovation | 97 | 3.85 | 109 | |
| Theme | 562 | 3.45 | 109 | |
| Graphics | 391 | 3.66 | 109 | |
| Audio | 17 | 4.28 | 108 | |
| Humor | 186 | 3.44 | 107 | |
| Mood | 265 | 3.67 | 106 |
Great rhythm game, you got it right! It's a little disappointing that there's only one track tho. And also the game gets repetitive too fast. But overall good impression.
Great music and feels great to play. Definitely leaves me wanting more, great work!
Cool track!Love the concept! The beats can be pretty hard to hit though.
This sunflower is simply awesome! I really love the track. Sometimes I felt a bit stuck even though I thought I was on tact. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the game and couldn't stop myself from nodding with the track. Well done. You also use a creative way of including the theme into your game.
What a fun concept, I played through level 1 after getting through them all. It is a good beat too. I felt like I was "missing" beats unfairly, it took a couple tries to get the hang of where it wants me to press they keys.
Cool techno music, and nice split-screen
Love the headbanging sunflower, also music loop is a banger
Wow, what a cool main menu! I love how everything moves to the music!
Very fun to play!
even without the tutorial you catch on quick! could have helped to have a visual beat indicator near the root tip so that it's easier the course correct when you lose the beat
Had lot's of fun with this one. Looks great, musics good but extra tracks would have been nice. Good game!
Really great game! I didn't find it repetitive - just frustrating when I got a split second off beat and then missed like 10 beats in a row :stuck_out_tongue:.
I'm not quite sure what caused it, but somehow, I ended up in the same space as or next to an earthworm and I lost all my nutrients immediately.
Besides that one small bug, incredible game and music!
Reminds me of "Crypt of the NecroDancer"; simple, but addictive. Also, I like the cute art style. The headbanging sunflower is just bad-ass ;)
Sick beats, bro
Awesome game. Gives me Snake X Necrodancer vibes. I especially like the music.
lovely. I feal the beat. Nice game
Excellent work! This is one of the most fun games I've played from LD52 so far. The rhythm-based movement works well, and I really like that you've simplified it only 3 buttons. I also like the very clear objective of just needing to reach the water, while the complexity comes from random level generation and creatures with various movement patterns. Also, the headbanging sunflower is a fantastic detail, haha. Great jam entry! :)
Amazing rythm game, first i felt like it was off a few milliseconds, but i just didn't play games like this for a long time and totally miss listened x)
Great game, works very smothe and feels great to play!
You should check LD-48 compo winner, ROOTS. It is quite similar, but without techo part.
Love the tunes, I could not find the tempo - might be my keyboard or something. Like Im pressing on the beat but maybe only move 1 in 10
Really fun game! Simple but really well implemented and satisfying. The whole thing had an excellent feel to it. The track was good and the art was a great match to the subject matter, great work all around!
@phillip-scott Sorry to hear that it didn't work out for you! We had some thoughts for this issue like a difficulty slider or tweaking the animation timings but its too much to fine-tune (hah) within the jam. For some people it helped to focus on the music rather than the animations.
Glad you gave it a try anyway!
@kro At some point we had priorize if we want to make _one_ really nice track or several tracks because there wasn't time for both. We obviously chose the former, but I totally agree with you that @morpheyz should put out some more tunes!
Thank you everybody for the heartwarming feedback!
Neat idea for a rhythm game and not something I was expecting someone to do around this theme. Though it's a little unsatisfying how it loops without an overall score at the end.
Nice game!Thanks a lot
@wizorbe We didn't even think about accumulating the scores yet :sweat_smile:
But its a good idea!
Im bad at rythem games but this was still good
Excellent idea, the mechanism of the game makes me feel very interesting, excellent rhythm game
Oh my God track is excellent! I dance on my chair and push buttons like a DJ haha I always missed rhythm at the beginning)) Good job!
Head-bagning sunflower is awesome. Wish the levels were longer!
I don't really like rhythm games, because I'm just not good at them. I wasn't good at this game either, but I still couldn't stop trying and seeing how far I can get. The beat is just mesmerizing :)
Simple yet addicting, a perfect jam game with its own style! The beats are indeed sick, and while I did notice a slight de-sync between music and animations, it really wasn't that life-threatening (or maybe I'm just used to relying on audio cues more that on visual ones)
Oh my god this game is amazing, i would love to see more of this with different tracks. Nothing bad to say, i like everything about it.
Great game, well done ! Where can I download the ost ? :)
Banging tune! I saw a head-banging sunflower on the feed, and I knew I had to come check it out. I was not disappointed! Simple but fun game with an excellent vibe. I never got tired of the tune! \m/ (0-0) \m/
Banger! Cute art, enjoyed this entry.
The music is absolutely amazing!! So much fun!
I love the game and the music!
Very fun! Timing on the beats was a little tight, but the tune made up for it! I wasn't sure whether or not it was worth it to wait for roots to grow and get resources, and it was difficult to look ahead to see whether or not I would get one. But all in all solid game, good graphics and audio. Well done!
@chartle thank you for playing!
I agree that the nutrients collection may need some more tweaks. As long as you hit the beat you will not get into much trouble - so unless you want to get a high score you could also just ignore it. But we wanted to keep things rather easy for this jam so that people can enjoy the game even without mastering this specific system. In longer and potentially more difficult levels, we thought, you need to hit the nutrients in order to get enough steps until you reach the ground water. Unfortunately we didn't have the time to design advanced levels like that.
Anyway, thank you for your feedback :)
I really liked it, and I'm a fan of these kind of games! But there seem to be some latency or calibration issue between graphics and music, as I kept getting the "Early" or "Missed" feedback... (and I'm a very big player of Crypt of the Necrodancer, and that's usually not a problem at all!...) But otherwise, really nice! The theme link is a bit tenuous, but that vibe, really good!
I didn't expect to be entertained by a root progressing through soil to a techno beat, but I liked it!
Fun concept, good job on selecting music beat. Graphics and animations are not that great, but they get the job done – I also liked the worm shrinking animation.
Would be really nice to see the bar that shows when you will unleash your mini-roots. Every 16 beats is ok, but I want to see it on my screen, not only hearing the music beats.
Dancing Sunflower is a funny touch :)
Cool game.Very fun! Just like what @danmerey said " I want to see it on my screen, not only hearing the music beats."
@danmerey @cloistered thank you for your feedback! I agree that especially the 16th beat root spawn needs more indicators on screen. We thought about more visual hints close to "where the player is looking" in general, but didn't manage to develop them within the jam.
Glad you liked it anyway!
@adamsmccall the OST is now available on SoundCloud (we updated our page with the link)! :notes:
It's very rhythm.
For me, one of the best games on this edition!
It's a really masterpiece!
Congrats!
Awesome! This is a fun fun game! I normally avoid rhythm games. But I liked this one. I was disapointed that there are only three levels ... I kept on playing. I love the graphics and the dancing sun flower and the little insects and ... Music is techno, ... you know. Easy to get the beat. Good. Congratulations to the fun fun game!
Great game! We also had the idea to do a Turmoil-like kind of game, where we would explore undergrounds with roots ^^ The music is cool, but I feel like the timing is sometimes off. I mean... I'm a musician, I'm usually pretty locked in, so I'm surprised whenever I'm not in the beat :thinking: Anyway, nice entry, well done!
This is such a great idea and excellently put together! The music slider is very much appreciated! I love the concept, the music rocks and the game play is tricky yet engaging!
I loved the track. occasionally I felt like I was on the beat but the game said missed or late, might be an issue, or maybe I'm just bad at the game. It would be great for different types of music but obviously game jam so its more a concept. Cool take on a harvest theme
I feel like the window to hit the beat is a little to low. But overall I really love it! Won all levels :) The enemy placement and the fact that you can't go back sometimes force you to purposefully mis a beat
Hmm, controls didn't work for me the first time I tried (after viewing the tutorial), had to refresh, and then controls seemed to work. When playing level 2, occasionally about 10 "Missed!" would stream up from my cursor (maybe I had pressed to move somewhere I shouldn't) instead of the regular 1, which quickly ended my run ^_^.
Sweet music, and really nice polish overall, was fun!
Really liked the music! -The art was really good too! -loved the head bangin sunflower and farmer xD -really fun! Awesome work! :D
Jammin! Was disappointed to see myself back at Level 1 and would have been happy to experiment a bit more if there were some more tracks, but it was still good enough that I ripped through the whole game a few more times trying to get a better feel for the timing. I started off making tons of mistakes but then I settled into the groove and was jamming along.
And then I turned off my brain a little TOO hard and ended up here:
TechnoPlants-Oops.png
WOOOOPS!
Nice art, thumpin music, appropriate difficulty, and a headbanging sunflower all came together really nicely in this entry. Well done!
Huh, I've never played one of these Crypt of the Necrodancer style rhythm games before, but I did enjoy this one! The gameplay is very satisfying at a basic level.
The rhythm timing felt very natural. I didn't have too much difficulty staying on beat, which means the game clock and the music track were well synced with each other. I only occasionally would get a note too late or too early, but I assume those were my fault. I had trouble at first, figuring out how to keep track of when the roots would deploy to suck up the nutrients. But it became a piece of cake when I noticed that was also queued by a crescendo in the music!
The visuals were very nice, with how everything would pulse on the beat. I take it this is a requirement for the genre :P
I did have a few problems:
First, I don't feel like I ever really understood all the enemy movement patterns. The ladybug was simple, but I never figured out the rolly polly. I just felt like it was a roll of the dice whether they would be in my way by the time I got to them. During the last level, my strategy evolved into just picking up as many nutrients as possible then tanking the damage I took from any enemies that block me.
Second, you really need to let the player restart the level manually by pressing R. I had many situations where I got myself into a corner with >300 nutrients, and I just had to wait until my inevitable death. waiting.png
Those problems aside, I had fun! Great work!
@zungryware Thank you for your feedbak! I can tell you that a restart button was on our task list but didn't make it to our entry in time. We even thought about an auto-stuck detection that would end the game for you.
About the patterns: I agree that especially "Rolli" (thats the name we gave him) has a very hard to understand pattern. He prepares for two beats (with a little dance) and then moves 2 tiles a beat for the next two beats. As there are two movements one one beat (one on the beat and one inbetween) it is rather unintuitive to follow his pattern. Another thing is that he will turn around when hitting a wall only after completing his entire move cycle. So there is a chance that he ends his movement right in front of a wall, dances, moves 4 times into the wall, _then_ turns around, dances again and finally starts moving away. As it is also not clear where he is facing there is a huge lack of visual clarity about what he is doing in general.
We are currently working on a post jam version that will address many of these issues. I'm very happy that you enjoyed the entry as is anyway!
Great game. The music is excellent. The window for hitting the beat felt a bit tight but I still competed all levels. Tutorial was very good too.
Wow, it's a great concept and very nicely executed! I found myself head banging in rythm with the sunflower :D I had a lot of fun and wished there was more levels. Awesome job!
Nice game, reminds me of Crypt of the Necromancer! You tuned the timing for hitting the beat just right; I had no issue matching the beat.
I noticed you had a whole 3:36 track on the SoundCloud link, but I only ever got to hear around the first minute of it during the game (since it resets every level) :frowning2: Maybe a game jam hack-y workaround could be to just keep the song playing between levels and sync up the start of each level by keeping track of the beat?
I think this is one of the better games I've rated. Creative and funny concept that was executed pretty well all things considered. I never quite felt myself getting into the groove per-se and I wonder if that had something to do with the timing? Like it seemed more sensitive to me being early than late, I think. Hard to tell. A great submission!
if in browser game please do automatic lag compensation. otherwise really intresting and unique. thank you for making such cool inovative game one of my favorites that i reviewed this cycle!
This is great! I'm normally not a big fan of rhythm games but this one was fun and the theme was on point :)
Screenshot 2023-01-25 062119.png may have encountered a bug
as a fellow, middle of nowhere, open air, techno enthusiast I adore this game!
Small nitpicks, i wish i could navigate the menu with the keyboard so that the mouse is not needed. Sometimes you can get soft-locked so a restart level function could be a small nice thing to have. And some form of calibration for the beat timings because they can sound off beat to some.
Im really nitpicking there because i think this is amazing! I love the mix of Necrodancer and Snake, the music is absolutely great! The gameplay simple yet really fun, i really loved the game! :D. One last complaint is, i wish it was longer, because im still starving for more!!! :heart: Techno ftw!
Great game! Really enjoyed this one. The random enemies and layouts sometimes give you impossible situations (as others have noted), but the game is cool enough I didn't mind. I didn't feel like I had enough control to grab nutrients strategically, although I got a little better at it with repeated play. At one point, I picked "Next Leve;" and was returned to level 1 - not sure if that was intended or not. Great work, and an awesome entry.
Very cool - if you were to continue developing post-compo, like others have said 'R' to restart, or insta-death for hitting dead-end rocks.
It'd be fun to have other root movement types perhaps, like where soil type changes, maybe root can go faster / srpead / split so you have two mirrored ends or something to keep track of?
Wow! The game is cool, I liked it a lot. Pretty tricky and not easy, but it's fun!
Awesome music! And pretty fun to play! Love the unique mechanism!
this is one of the very rare rhythm game i actually enjoyed playing, because it's more than just spamming a single button every second! i really liked the idea, the music (seeing buttons move on each beat is very fun too) is nice and the countdown is great! it is an original take on the theme, great job on that!
Interesting gameplay and cool music. I found out that I have a terrible sense of rhythm, but the game is still great!
Nice game! Enjoyed trying to maximise my nutrient intake and avoid enemies to the beat.
Cool combination of rythm mechanics and theme! I love the roots growing every 16-th bit the most. Feels dope when you catch the rythm. Several times at level 3 I got stuck between rocks and rodents, would love to have a quick restart button. Overall great job!