Alice Redux

hitchh1k3r 2023-01-08 19:41

As I played this game, I was initially a bit confused about where the music was. But then, I had a breakthrough and was able to beat the game. And when I finally heard the music, it was such a satisfying feeling! The graphics in this game had a really cool "Alice in Wonderland" aesthetic, and while the way they scaled was a bit unusual, it ended up fitting in perfectly with the theme.

One thing that was a bit challenging for me at first was figuring out how to get seeds. But then, I noticed that the first tree always gives seeds, while the later ones do not. With this discovery, I was able to come up with a strategy: I would plant one tree to the left, then plant a grove to the right. I would then harvest the left/seed tree, replant it, and add to my grove on the right. It was really satisfying to come up with this solution on my own and see it work successfully.

As I played, I couldn't help but feel reminded of the game "Starseed Pilgrim." Both games have a peaceful, meditative quality and involve strategic planting and harvesting. It was a nice feeling to be able to draw a connection between the two.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing this game. It was a fun and unique experience, and I appreciate the effort that went into creating it. Thank you!

Screenshot 2023-01-08 143505.png

gamebuilder 2023-01-09 00:31

@hitchh1k3r that is an impressive score: 50, twice times 25. And it’s a brilliant strategy you came up with — I hadn’t even thought of it.

As for the music, chances are you are using Chrome. If you use Firefox, you’ll hear @bcav’s main track at the start of the game. Apparently Chrome requires a keypress before music plays. Anyway, I prefer his second (i.e., winning) track myself — I sometimes play it in the background. A nice moody effect.

Thank you for your insightful review.

papaya 2023-01-09 00:35

While I didn't get the game at first, after reading the comment from @hitchh1k3r I was able to beat the game as well. I like the game's concept overall! For some feedback, have more clear instructions on how to obtain seeds would be helpful.

caranha 2023-01-09 01:17

Thank you for the game!

That was surprisingly fun for such a simple game. It had a kind of meditative feel to it, and trying to figure out the rules of the game felt nice, since it was so short.

I really liked the tune at the end, it felt like an appropriate prize for solving the game's puzzle!

Three things that bugged me in this game though: - It would be great if there was a reset button. - The "pings" and "bzzt" sounded a bit too sharp, maybe soften them a bit? - the tree was always planted in the same position (to alice's left), regardless if she was facing left or right. After I "got" the game, I tried to plant a nice garden, and it would be cool if we could control the planting position a little bit more.

Also, thank you for the postmortem, it was an interesting read! I would have loved to see the tree with children head in it!

**Addendum after reading the comments**: I am using Firefox, and I also only heard the music after the end, not from the beginning.

fluburbio 2023-01-09 17:58

It's indeed unclear how to get seeds, I had to read the comments too to figure it out, but this is a cool concept! Thanks for sharing your game!

theghostoftommy 2023-01-10 01:52

I really like the backing track

sn4pi 2023-01-10 02:27

After I understood, which tree is holding the seeds, the game was fairly easy. The mechanic with Alice shrinking and the ever-growing trees would have some potential after putting in some more effort into this.

lereveur 2023-01-14 02:15

It took me a little time to understand the mechanic (where to get new seeds, and the strategic to follow after that), but once done, I figured it out how to finish the game. Good job!

khaotom 2023-01-17 00:28

Very interesting concept with a surreal mod. Fitting for Alice. It would help to know which tree I'm targeting at the time.

lizelive 2023-01-24 01:43

huh X didn't seem to do anything?

cat-chef 2023-01-24 04:42

What an intriguing riddle of a game! This is honestly a huge accomplishment for 25 hrs, And using different scaling on the plants was an intriguing way to make a few assets feel like a forest, resulting in a really unique aesthetic. Also lovely guitar at the end, although I agree the harvest/out of seeds pings were a little sharp. Lovely game, thank you for making it and sharing it!!!

dfaouaz 2023-01-24 11:23

Simple mechanics and it has worked quite well! Good job!

honey-pony 2023-01-25 00:30

What a great use of image scaling in a game! Having both Alice and the trees simply be scaling images with not much other animation is a very effective aesthetic in my opinion, and what's more, the game mechanics are tied in to this scaling extremely well.

"Plant trees before you get too small" is so direct and to the point, and made perfect sense as soon as I started, watching Alice shrink.

And, the fact that you can't harvest trees when they're bigger than you makes intuitive sense -- although I did not actually learn of this mechanic until I was doing some investigation into whether the game will tell you whether you have lost. (It does not seem to -- it seems you simply get softlocked if you plant all your seeds and get too small. Which, seems to fit the in-game instructions perfectly!)

I also love the amount of strategic depth that you managed to put into this. Like, at first I thought I would just be running around harvesting every tree, but eventually I realized that only a specific kind of tree was dropping seeds. Then, as my forest got larger, I realized that I would want to try to get those trees located away from the others, so that I could harvest them without accidentally harvesting a different tree. (I was not super successful at this, but I managed to win anyways).

I did guess that I might be able to just plant a tree and immediately harvest it, as the first one seemed to be the one that would drop seeds (a nice way to prevent softlocks..?) but it seemed like once you reached a large number of seeds this was no longer the case. Maybe it's seed 5 that is always that tree...? That would make sense to me. (I had skimmed the source code to look for losing mechanics at one point, but I did not look into the tree generation at all. :smile: )

Honestly this might be one of the best entries I've played. It is a short game that manages to be extremely effective; I felt like I experienced more strategic depth and discovery in this game in just a few minutes than I have in some games that took me much longer.

And I really do like the use of the image scaling. It was especially great to see Alice get gigantic at some points, and I love the way that the image feels vertically stretched... it just feels playful, in a sense, and I think it works really well.

So, great job! And super cool that it's a 25-hour game.

EDIT: On a technical note, during my playthrough, the main music did not play for me either, I'm on Firefox. It is only now that I read the comments that I have learned there was main music.

Note that I can play it manually through the JavaScript console--specifically, if I click on the page and then use the JS console to play music, it works (if I don't click on the page, it throws an exception, even if I am using the JS console). This reminds me of some similar annoyances I was having with Emscripten :sweat_smile: . Perhaps you need to wait for user input somehow before playing the music...?

gamebuilder 2023-01-25 22:11

@caranha it seems in hindsight you are right: the main track doesn't play in Firefox either. It seems to be some kind of bug — something I missed given the limited time I had to test. Honey-Poney gives instructions on how to play the track if you’re interested.

@honey-pony thank you for the encouraging words. It’s funny how a shorter amount of time yielded a better game. I should try that out with my work.

As for your question about the code, every fifth tree has seeds. This is the line which sets the tree type whenever a tree is planted ('planted' is the tree count):

**type = planted % 5;**

Tree type 4 yields seeds, the others are regular trees.

As ever, thank you for the insightful review.