Froot

dob 2023-01-08 21:56

I made three quick bug fixes right after submission: * The level number (11) was improperly displaying on the final screen because of a sprite carryover glitch, and I took that out. * The costs of the market weren't being implemented as listed because of a math bug, which meant the economy was kind of broken, so I fixed the market and adjusted income a little bit to compensate for having the prices right. * The storage bin said 'Fruit' instead of 'Froot,' so I changed that.

Original submission minus these three bug fixes is here: https://planktongames.com/ld52original

Also, if you're curious, the mega rats mentioned in the level intro text never got implemented, but adding them would be too big a change post-submission. :-)

steven-garberg 2023-01-09 04:28

I love the artwork and the theme. Great game!

mihkelroomet 2023-01-09 04:43

The art definitely looks good and very futuristic. It was quite fun to shoot the rats, too - even though it was a little hard to maneuver with the tractor. Only using fruit to kill rats and never harvest any seemed to also be the best strategy since it always netted more cash.

Oh and it took me a while to figure out how to load the fruit into the truck since the "Tractor Storage" on the bottom right looked like more of an object in game space than a UI element, so I thought all fruit I collected ended up in a box on the ground.

dob 2023-01-09 05:57

My best so far: hiscore.jpg

imyellowfish 2023-01-09 06:01

Awesome game! fun to play, and the harvest -> upgrade loop is pretty solid. The sound effects are very fun.

Late game it is a battle between me and the collector, fighting for more bullets to shoot the rats XD

fnkee 2023-01-09 06:09

$822 and 43 rats killed! This game was really simple to pick up, and seems to be constructed with a lot of room for strategy. The use of AI artwork is impressively executed(first game I've seen with AI art!), especially considering how the style seems hold up really well. Great take on the theme!!

vinzbad 2023-01-09 06:24

Wow I love the gameplay! Felt quite tense sometimes with the harvesters grabbing my ammunition right before I could pick it up to fight a rat. While I like the art I won't give you any rating for it as AI isn't supposed to be submitted for the Compo category: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52

Screenshot 2023-01-09 072002.png

mnikn 2023-01-09 06:57

Spend some times figure out how to play this game, ths sound effect is very funny and cute!

dob 2023-01-09 07:23

@vinzbad I wasn't aware of that discussion. People have been using synthetic music generators for years - not sure why the art would be different. I would understand if code was AI-generated, but that's not the case here.

dob 2023-01-09 07:26

Note: I changed the category to Jam from Compo, in light of @vinzbad informing me of the rule against AI generated art. I followed the Compo rules in every other way (solo, 48 hours, source code, I did everything from scratch).

vinzbad 2023-01-09 08:56

@dob thank's for changing the category! It also makes me feel a bit better of the programmer art in my entry :grin: also think it could've been communicated better, like adding the info to the rules page and the publish page.

jackypark9852 2023-01-10 05:39

Love the art style of the game. Getting the harvester felt like getting a new buddy. The conveyor belt system work s really well too. Impressed by how much can be done in 48 hrs!

richard-vollebregt 2023-01-10 18:45

Fun game to play! Great that you have upgrades in the game, that's something we wanted to implement as well but ran out of time. Gives a lot more content to work with.

jk5000 2023-01-12 14:25

This a very fun little game. I overall like the visuals and sounds. But the visuals is also a bit muddy and can be a bit difficult to see where the rats are. Anyway, this is overall a really good jam game. Well done.

yngvarr 2023-01-12 18:32

This game has some strong Vangers vibes for some reason. I enjoyed sounds, the gameplay and the how independent of the player the world is: it doesn't wait for you, everything just minds its own business. Great idea to use fruit as ammo, allows for tradeoffs. Rats are a freaking menace and pretty soon the game becomes a shooter. :) Great work!

Also, I didn't understand how to predict the end of the level until the very last one, when I finally recognized the sun on top. If only I did it earlier, the game would be much easier. :) But such lack of clarity works well with the game like this, so no bit deal.

Here's my playthrough if you're interested: https://youtu.be/M1Ytjwsyjt8

arron-fowler 2023-01-14 08:01

I thought the overall game system was really well thought out. The rats were annoying but in a good way and the balance overall was pretty good. Everything worked well with the level progression etc. I found the control layaout pretty counter intuative and that was the only real thing that frustrated me. Good work

d3kryption 2023-01-14 08:23

The amount of things you built into this game in the time are incredible.

You did a smashing job.

I love upgrading to harvest more.

And the little baddies you shoot are funny.

Absolutely needs some subtle background music just to break up the limit sounds.

But a fantastic job. Great work :)

bangkerpow 2023-01-15 03:17

Solid gameplay and the upgrades were nice. I had a hard time seeing the rats when they were in the farm but maybe that was intended.

aes1 2023-01-15 09:30

This game was incredibly fun, I can definitely see clearly why certain decisions were made like at first the new plot button I didn't even think about(playing while tired) but It wouldn't make sense to create 12 plot buttons to format in the same way as the other buttons, so I have no critique, perfect game great scope :)

mhorth 2023-01-15 20:25

It's hard to balance out upgrades and create a loop that feels good during a jam. You nailed it. The upgrades were all so satisfying, and I really felt the impact of each one. On the last few levels I don't think I ever delivered any Froot to the truck, I was purely on rat slaying duty, and I loved how that evolved over the course of the game.

The only thing I can critique is the sounds. I see your description that you were otherwise aiming for compo, so generated sounds make sense, but they seemed to clash. I think you even had the same sound effect for bats dying as clicking on an upgrade that I didn't have enough money for?

That's super nitpicky, but that shows how good your game is. The only fault I can find is that the sounds weren't amazing.

phillip-scott 2023-01-16 19:42

Controls were a little hard to grasp - but overall was fun to play and liked the complexity increase over time with the new levels

lomby 2023-01-17 00:40

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=16278

Great game! Amazing that you've made this in JS - Congrats!

dob 2023-01-17 05:04

@lomby Thanks for playing! I watched your stream, and you correctly intuited that buying extra farms early really helps. Seemed like you did well. I agree the key choices weren't ideal, although for a while I was using CTRL to fire, and that didn't mix well with W being the gas - kept closing my window while playing. I never did get the mega-rats implemented. Fun to see somebody else take it on - I appreciate it.

itzemii 2023-01-17 16:53

Great use of AI tools for the art (i.e. using tool, selecting, preparing). The results are impressive. Sound ... I only could hear a humming thing, not much. Controls do not fit me at all: I like simple intuitive controls and had a hard time with this. 1. felt like a random distribution of functions to the keyboard 2. I believe that the game could be done with one or two buttons/ keys (besides the steering), but here are many 3. Not everybody has a numpad nowadays (e.g. on laptops) Your core game mechanic is nice and well implemented (grow, collect, bring to truck loader, truck moves). The meta game is solid. Overall an impressive result for a game jam!

P.S.: One note on AI created art. Your machines, rats, ... are very concrete. I strongly think that they fit 1:1 the art style of somebody out there who did the original art on which the AI learned. Don't forget that. Maybe one day an AI learns your games and takes bits and pieces (even larger) from your game and somebody creates a game, which fells like yours.

unentokku 2023-01-17 23:46

Graphics are cool, they remind me a lot of some old computer games, primarily Creatures I think.

Controls seem a bit weird, initially missed that it said numpad 2 and kept trying to press regular 2.

Getting upgrades is nice and interesting.

Pretty quickly I ended up spending most of the time on shooting rats and delivering barely anything myself, presumably as it's meant to be.

I didn't realize until I'd seen a hint mentioning sun and wanted to avoid too much waste from delivering stuff right before end of day and looked for where the heck would that sun be that the sun is the orange ball on top of the screen that I thought was some sort of alien blob that I had tried to shoot a few times.

lenan 2023-01-18 21:48

Nice game, had some trouble with the controls and trying to find out how to shoot, would be nice to have the keys in the screen with the level instructions. Overall cool game

schmalex 2023-01-26 20:51

Look and plays great despite the fact that i did struggle a bit with the controls at the start and the use of AI art is spot on. Well done and contrats on a really cool entry!