Life is Fleeting: New Harvest

sarah-alexa 2023-01-09 21:15

[You can play my game here in case the post doesn’t show my link: https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest](https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest)

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I just want to add that there's definitely issues with this game that I just didn't have the time to fix up. Here's some of them:

Some error/correction messages will just now disappear There's some weird visual bugs when going between scenes The NPCs you're supposed to advance your relationship with are absolutely tiny though they have big hearts to help them stand out at least There's no walk audio because I forgot to add a state for keeping track of it The pause menu has no dark background, I didn't have time to even throw one on The volume slider doesn't really work as well as it should, if at all There are no physical collisions on anything to prevent the player from walking through them Sometimes tilled soil will just untill itself when crops are growing on them The selected slot on the hotbar can be difficult to make out

Harvesting has AOE... this is now a feature

Other worthwhile mentions:

If I had more time, I would redo all character sprites including the player I would also add in more animations and interactions with the environment Some tiles don't tile terribly well with each other because of a lack of time I kept forgetting I needed to have gifts selected to use them and it began to annoy me, I think with the short format game jam games have, it's a bit too tedious

I definitely felt limited by Construct 3 this time as things I wanted to do were limited in how I could go about it, making those things take a fair bit longer

All that said, it was a solo project and I'm quite pleased with what I got done. I was beating myself up about not being able to enter the compo but with doing so many new things and the game only being in a state where you can actually play it from start to end at the last minute.

Anyways, looking forward to seeing what others came up with!

lisyarus 2023-01-09 22:54

Sorry, maybe I'm missing something: how does one play it? I only see source code linked...

wolfraam1974 2023-01-10 06:21

The same problem

sarah-alexa 2023-01-10 09:09

@lisyarus @wolfraam1974

Hey! [You can play my game here](https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest)

I’ve also included it in the first comment. The link was included with my submission but I guess something bugged out on the site or something as it didn’t include it. Seems to be showing now but linked in comments just in case.

Thank you for letting me know!

svenerik 2023-01-10 09:26

Bass the soil, the till sound got stuck in my head. Cute little Harvest Moon-esque game. Start is slow & cozy but gets faster which is good. Solid game overall, besides some graphical glitches and bugs that I encountered everything else seemed to work.

Good work!

lisyarus 2023-01-10 21:12

Interesting game! Loved the tips and screenshake effect when you're doing something wrong. Nice background music, although it would be cool to have more sound effects. A few bugs/suggestions:

- Sometimes I just couldn't plant seeds on titled, watered soil, no matter what. This seemed to persist between days, i.e. even on the next day I could use the tile (which remained tilted & watered), and on the next day, etc. - For some reason it was really hard for me to find the watering can! It kind of blends in color saturation & intensity with the environment, and I just missed it. Only found it after restarting the game for a second playthrough :) Maybe making it glow or have a visible distinctive outline would help. Also the mechanic of picking up instruments feels a bit redundant since you don't really do anything after that, you just pick them once. - Switching between instruments using the keyboards was a bit unintuitive & inconvenient, also most of the slots are unused most of the time. Maybe an inventory that grows on demand would be better, and you'd select the items by clicking on them with the mouse or by moving the "selected" cursor left/right with the keyboard? - When using a tool, you have to repeatedly press [SPACE] in order to use it on each visited tile. I've found that if I press it fast enough, I can move through a row of tiles without stopping and tilt/water all of them, but that's not the most pleasant thing to do :) Maybe it would be better if the tool was used if the [SPACE] key is already pressed? I.e. I'd just keep in pressed down and move over soil tiles to tilt/water them all at once. - Again, it was hard to find exactly where I'm supposed to sell the crops and buy new stuff! Maybe highlighting this places somehow so that they'd stand out of the surroundings would help.

Anyways, nice & promising submission, good job :)

2023-01-10-235515_1920x1080_scrot.png

sarah-alexa 2023-01-14 14:23

@svenerik Thank you! I wish I could have solved the graphical issues and made the start a wee bit faster but I'm glad it wasn't horrible to play!

@lisyarus Thank you for all the feedback! Was the stuff you couldn't till/farm on the upper 2 rows per chance? I had some issues with that happening in my tests and they really annoy me! It was one of those bugs I really wanted to fix but didn't have enough time to come back to at the end. If I'd had even 10 more minutes what I think I'd have done as a quick fix is just replace the problematic farm tiles with grass tiles.

The hoe and watering can graphics I actually hate. They look horrible and the colouring was very much placeholder stuff I realised I didn't have time to change but the glow/outline suggestion is actually great! Agree with picking the instruments up, the idea was that you'd initially purchase the watering can from the shop and then water the crops that are already planted until harvest and then use the money from that for seeds and the hoe to have a progression line which I wish I'd managed to get in there.

The cursor is something I'd work on a bit more for next time. I want it to glow more to be more obvious. I do have using the scroll wheel to switch as a thing and arrow keys were for movement as some prefer it but I definitely agree that it wasn't the most intuitive. In testing towards the end, I found I kept forgetting I needed to switch slots for stuff. I think for a short jam game, it def needs some work there.

Holding the key down to water and stuff was actually something I tried implementing but I encountered an odd bug that made it completely unusable. Construct has some weird quirks and for time's sake I had to scrap it but yeah holding it down was honestly way more fun other than it breaking the game haha.

Thank you for playing and for the thoughtful feedback! Some great suggestions there and it'll let me hopefully focus a bit more for the next game! One thing I'm going to spend a bit more time practicing is feedback and direction for starting the game so I can work on stuff quicker without having to figure out issues during jams as often!

rex-tv 2023-01-14 16:06

Like the game, What I would want to see more is that number keys can change from items in the inventory

sarah-alexa 2023-01-14 16:28

@rex-tv Thank you! What do you mean with the number keys sorry?

globul 2023-01-14 16:35

Nice little farming game. Still little things to finish, but well done ! :)

falkreon 2023-01-14 17:42

I really like where this is going. You're really down on your art but it gets the job done: Aside from some contrast issues with tools, I can tell at a glance what is tillable soil, what is tilled soil, what's watered tilled soil, who I can romance, when I can harvest, and so on. That's half the battle.

Useability concerns really got me here. Days are *super short*! I always felt rushed, no matter what was going on. It was hard to tell at a glance what present went to which person, and the cheaper person was further away. It was awkward to select later presents because the slots aren't numbered, and scroll wheel is off limits for non-fullscreened web embeds. I also hit that bug where a crop square bugs out in each of the top two rows.

You really went for the theme and I appreciate that. This is also a game style I'm not used to seeing in LD, *and I wish I could have played more of these!* Really well done.

justine-olshan 2023-01-14 17:56

This was a fun little game! A lot to do by one person in a few days!

There were some minor issues like the popups to tell me how to interact seemed misplaced at times (telling me to water my plant after I harvested it).

I could only hold one present in inventory at a time, and after I gave the present to someone the next day the visual reset to 0, but the next present would bump the counter correctly -- so just a visual error. I think it would also help to include a direction about how to switch your items.

Those were all pretty minor though, I enjoyed the game and was engaged to play til the end. :)

taikinaaa 2023-01-14 18:39

Great game!

substain 2023-01-14 18:52

pretty good for a solo dev to do a stardew-valley like game with planting/growing mechanics within a jam. Keep it up!

vidarn 2023-01-14 22:19

There's a lot of stuff in here. Having played your last game, I can definitely see the progress on many of the elements. I liked being able to enter the shop to browse and buy items. I also liked the slightly slower pace. I think last time, the days were only 10 seconds, right? This was a more peaceful experience :laughing: . I think the art and sound work well together to create a nice atmosphere and I enjoyed my time with the game. Good job with such an ambitious project!

lastorange 2023-01-14 23:43

This game reminds me of stardew valley. It is clear what the objective of the game is, although there are some bugs.

luhuchiha 2023-01-15 13:27

Nice game, with good HarvestMoon vibes! Good work!

gabrimer 2023-01-16 02:34

At first I was stuck because I couldn't switch the items in my inventory, but I managed to find out how to do it. I like how your days are timed, because it kept making me try to always rush and get everything I needed done on each day. It's a very interesting game, and I think there's still a lot you could do with it!

lomby 2023-01-17 00:28

Thanks for your comments and feedback on my game, played yours on stream today if you wanted to watch initial thoughts and feedback, it starts here: youtu.be/a12mtQSnQ2o?t=11149

Nice game, loved the stardew valley vibes!

sarah-alexa 2023-01-28 23:48

@vidarn Thank you! That's one of the nicest comments I've received! Definitely something I'll be trying to keep improve on!

@gabrimer I did consider making the days have no timer but I did want a little of that feeling that you still needed to make good use of each day. I tried a minute for each day initially and it just felt far too long. Thank you!

@lomby Thank you!