Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Pomodoro Panic
By pkenney
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 13 | 4.21 | 28 | |
| Fun | 2 | 4.44 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 12 | 4.17 | 28 | |
| Theme | 25 | 4.30 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 76 | 4.01 | 28 | |
| Audio | 44 | 3.88 | 28 | |
| Humor | 45 | 3.72 | 27 | |
| Mood | 61 | 3.82 | 27 |
Woah very nice! I liked the game and the challenge!
I tried level 5 about 5 times, but couldn't get more than 19 tomatoes in. Maybe with a bit more practice.
I really liked this, the pixel art was cool too. Maybe you could export a web version and put that on itch instead of the download version?
Best game ive played in the jam soo far , good and responsive cant ask for more
Wow this was super fun to play. Level 4 took me a few tries before I narrowly made it. I can't see how level 5 could be possible. It was so difficult. The frantic gameplay was very fun and addictive though. I really liked trying to figure out ways to go faster.
The platforming feels good on keyboard, I was too lazy to go find my gamepad. In combination with the physics of the tomatoes and items some whacky situations arise with just the minor changes in level. I could see the difficulty being a bit hard sometimes, but also sometimes you can just be lucky. I think its a pretty fun and unique game!
Slick and snazzy. The sound effects really make this. Getting a good run of tomatoes going all at once is so satisfying, with the clang clang clang clang as the reward (not to mention the satisfaction of a job well done). It took me a good number of tries, but I was able to beat day 5 with 23 tomatoes. Could I repeat that feat? Okay, probably not, but it felt great.
There's something that clicks quite well about rolling a group of tomatoes down the ground. Even though it felt pretty chaotic how they would bounce, eventually it started to become second nature to jump at the right time to kinda corral them in on their way, and I lost many fewer fruits to funny bounces. I'd have to experiment a bit to figure out if there's some pattern to the direction the tomatoes bounce when the come off the vine, but sometimes I felt like there was just a bit too much luck in whether they set themselves up nicely next to the can, or if I'd have to chase them down. It was especially annoying when one would land on the platform with the plant itself, although I'm not positive this wasn't my fault due to bumping one the wrong way.
Initially I was trying really hard not to let the plants wither completely, as I thought I might actually lose the level, or the plant wouldn't regrow again. After mistakenly letting one go I realized that they bounce right back with a bit of water. It seems the best strategy is to let them go until a bit after the last minute, given there doesn't appear to be much of a penalty if anything at all for the speed at which they produce fruit the next time.
Anyway, I enjoyed my time with this one, and felt a really strong sense of improvement as it increased in difficulty, which is always that hook I'm looking for. Nice submission. =)
My greatest fear is to do a LD and not be able to finish a pkenney game. I thought this was going to be the one because that last level looked so daunting. I made the gamble that I should just water only the bottom 4 flowers and luckily that was it for me.
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Delivering the tomatoes is unbelievably satisfying. In this day and age people always talk about juice, and then cite THE juice video. I think this game shows how you can do a lot with a little. I think there's a hidden element that makes it extra satisfying too. I do think the difficulty itself makes it work. Because you know every tomato absolutely matters. All the levels are tuned very tightly so I feel that itself adds to the "juice" of delivering.
I've absolutely never seen a game where crops died that fast. That in itself is a fresh mechanic. I suppose the closest equivalent then would be Overcooked but you're juggling everything yourself.
It really is an interesting concept, I'm still thinking about it more. There is no single player Overcooked because usually you think "well this would be fun with more players". But you showed that it can work in this game. The game is very roughly a little supply chain game and you're trying to make sure you optimize your output flow by juggling watering plants vs delivering. On top of that, there are tricky-ish routes you need to take because pushing around tomatoes may or may not help you. I generally don't like saying this because it's cliche on LD but this seems like one you could go further with because it's pretty expandable.
Loved the hidden strategies in the game. Deceptively strategic is a fine bar to set every time.
I liked the game, a song is missing here, but the sound feedback was very good in general. I didn't like the collisions, I couldn't jump well to water the plants and having to dodge elements to not change the basket for the watering can was a little strange, but it's a matter of habit I believe, the game was supposed to be simple and you did it!
Check out my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/space-harvest
What a fun game! I like how this is a platformer with puzzle elements woven into it. The graphics are cute and the whole game feels very polished. I also like the tutorial element at the start. This music could use some background music though :-)
Very fun game! Running around smacking tomatoes into each other as I desperately try to stop the plants dying was a lot of fun. The art and sound effects were both simple but super effective, and the game had a fair but fun level of difficulty/
Good stuff!
This game does a lot with a very small set of mechanics. It's definitely nice to have a game where the only control is moving around... this makes it very easy to jump into as a player. But, because everything is interacting, there is a lot of strategy involved, despite the relatively small number of mechanics. It's quite effective game design.
It is a rather tricky game. Level 5 took me a few tries; I lost with 20 tomatoes three separate times. But, it does seem possible to get better at it, which is interesting, because I don't feel like I internalized a lot of conscious choices about the strategy.
If I analyze it a bit, I think the only real strategy I could put into words is minimizing down time. That is, as I got better at level 5, it seemed to me that I was more efficiently switching to watering plants when there weren't any tomatoes to collect, and that maybe I also made better decisions about when to abandon far away tomatoes because they would take too much time to collect.
It does seem like time is the main currency here... tomatoes in the middle of the screen, for example, are especially expensive if you're already at the edge, as it takes time both to move to the middle and then to move back to the edge.
I did find it somewhat frustrating how little control I had over the two tools. One especially frustrating mechanic here is that there seems to be very little control over where the tool you're not using is located. The only way to move the tool you're not using is to hope that it flies off in a useful direction when you swap tools.
This mostly affected me on, I believe, the second level, where for some reason most of the time when I swapped tools the other tool just stayed put, and it was far away from everything else. I do think it worked out better when the tools just flew off in a random direction, as this made it more into just another random item you had to dynamically incorporate into your route, rather than a static point to keep returning to.
But, I do still wonder how the gameplay would change if the player had control over whether to pickup tools. It would certainly make it easier, as then, for example, you wouldn't have to worry about picking up the watering can when trying to deliver tomatoes, and vice versa. But that particular obstacle does seem to be rather important to the gameplay. It wouldn't be quite as frantic and tricky of a game without some degree of obstructive controls.
In any case, I had fun. It is a tricky game, but it seems to be tricky in an engaging way. As others have mentioned, there is a lot of nice polish or juice... the sound effects for collecting tomatoes, and the way that the canned tomato flies up in the air, are great effects that make it satisfying to collect tomatoes.
And, as I sort of described earlier, the way that everything is interacted with through movement results in a lot of interesting interactions. Perhaps the most important is just how collecting multiple tomatoes in quick succession works... you kind of have to push them over near the canning machine, and then sort of get on top of them. This is cool, because it's a bunch of pretty simple mechanics combining together in a natural way.
Another fun strategy is trying to decide which way to push tomatoes, in particular if the watering can is in the way. Is it better to go the opposite way, even though it's longer? Or is it better to try to jump over the watering can?
So overall, I would say this is a nicely polished game that has very well designed mechanics.
This was short and simple, honestly the best way to do Jam games. You managed to get something with such simple yet smooth movement and really flesh it out with some really interesting and fun interactions and gameplay, well done!
The movement was buttery smooth, the perfect level of slipperiness. I found myself picking it up really quickly, and then finding that the more I played the more confident I got literally jumping around and almost juggling items that get thrown in the air, it was a fun time.
The graphics were simple, but I think that really played into this games favour, any more complicated and they would have not kept up with the frantic level of gameplay, you weren't lying calling this game panic. Speaking of presentation I think maybe some more audio would have been nice. Given how short the days were having a frantic theme that sped up as the game got closer to the end would have been just the icing on the cake.
I will say you were not lying about the difficulty, I found myself really struggling. Not always a bad thing but it did mean that I eventually had to give up only at level 4. It took me quite a while to figure out the tool pick-ups, and I often would forget which one I was holding and end up wasting time trying to figure it out. I think either having a button to pick-up an item, or maybe just an icon in the corner showing what item I was holding would really just add some clarity, and get rid of the issue.
Overall this was really fun, so simple yet executed so well, a really nice level of mechanical depth with super simple controls. Fantastic!
Overall, really impressed! Loved the simple yet fun concept of managing your tools properly. I liked that that the art was simple but still nice to look at. Sound effects were satisfying. Background music would make this even more fantastic than it already is as well!
As others have said, the tool pickups could be frustrating at times but I am not sure if having full control over it would be best. I actually enjoyed having to dodge the previous tool to avoid picking it up when I didn't want it yet. But there were times when I had a tomato in my bucket and it would swap to the watering can and that was frustrating at times.
Fantastic job!
Wow this was so much more fun than i anticipated! Great smoothly executed concept and the canning is soooo satisfying! I'm happy i found this game so i could contribute with my votes so that yoy could be closer to the needed 20. Well done and good luck!
Oh my god this is so fun! <3
There's so many extra flourishes in the way object interactions work that send this from a mediocre entry to one of my favorite games so far. The way items just fly everywhere and you have to try to scramble to get tomatoes and water plants and having to avoid the other tool when you don't need it and when you accidentally grab the wrong tool you have to scramble to juggle between them while trying to cram tomatoes into the canner and you can just push a whole train of tomatoes towards a canner and then then when you try to jam them into the canner they get stuck until you muscle past them and then suddenly they all just instantly pop out as cans all at once <3. There's a lot of emergent strategies that come up that you learn by necessity. I'm glad you didn't make us go back to the beginning. It's more fun to keep trying a level until you master it. <3
Love it <3<3<3
Beat day 5 too <3
This is actually quite fun an addicting! You've also reassured me that non-8bit sounds can work with a sprite-based game. I've only used beep and bloops with mine but was thinking about using more realistic sounds. I didn't have any music when I played, I think that would bring it all together amazingly! Great work!
This was great!!! Really challenging and fun! The graphics look good and sound design is satisfying when canning those tomatoes -the quiet subtle jump sound was appreciated as well as all too often obnoxious jump sounds are used in other games. The action was really fun and felt chaotic trying not to accidentally switch to that fn watering bucket xD
I did find myself wanting to be able to jump on top of the canners in level 2 as I found myself trying short cut to reach the high one in a panic by jumping from one of those.
I really liked the subtle polish to this game -satisfying without being overly juiced. The sun was a cool, natural way to do the timer too. Really enjoyed this but couldn't beat day five lol. Anyway, fantastic work! :D
Just one more go. That's what I told myself on day 5, over and over again. Loved it, simple to pick up and impossible to put down
Wow thanks everyone for the feedback! I've played and commented on all of your games now.
In years past I've entered Global Game Jam and 7-Day Roguelike jams, but it's LD I keep coming back to again and again because of the feedback. So special thanks to everyone who went deep.
I am greatly relieved that a number of you beat day five, but that it was tough. I always worry about whether I got the difficulty right, it's very hard to judge for myself. So shout-out to the mad canning skills of @justinmullin @peachtreeoath @honey-pony and @ghostbomb.
I started making the sounds with less than two hours remaining. The canning sound was my toddler's jack-in-box being sprung open inside a cardboard box lined with foam panels. Then with just under ten minutes left I decided I could rush to add the little can that flies out and spins to add an extra reward for successful canning. I loved hearing that it made it really satisfying.
Good luck to you all in the results Friday!
Pretty interesting idea and great implementation! Fun to play and challenging game with good visuals. I played it a lot but could not beat last challenge unfortunately :( Very solid entry, good job! Also if you would like to shred some zombies in slowmo with your tractor, be sure to check out my entry, I would love to hear your feedbacks :)
Return of the king! Happy to see you finally get an LD trophy. I honestly assumed you already had one :D
Hey congrats on the silver trophy!
Yeaaaah! Psyched to see you show up in the top three, congrats!