FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD52 → Strange Garden

Strange Garden

By gunturtle

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall403.9721
Fun693.7621
Innovation363.9221
Theme224.3421
Graphics54.5521
Audio204.0721
Humor1213.0520
Mood304.0021

Comments

vidu 2023-01-09 05:12

That is sooo wonderfull ! I absolutely love your artistic direction ❤️

hypernoodlejon 2023-01-09 05:15

Love to see more Pico8 in the compo! :smile: This was very fun! took a couple runs to master the mechanics, but it was a happy sense of discovery rather than frustration. great sound design and little animations all over, everything felt nice and juicy. gonna favorite this cart as I can see myself sinking quite a bit of time into it!

ghostbomb 2023-01-09 06:33

These graphics are amazing! Awesome game! Tons of fun!

I didn't realize the pig fruit counted diagonals so I was wondering why they'd never grow on my first playthrough. After I figured that out it was a lot easier :D

orion-black 2023-01-09 06:42

Good job, this game has a ton of personality. The concept, graphics and sounds effects all add up to really peculiar whole.

superpokeunicorn 2023-01-09 07:01

Really clever puzzle game! I love how all the different plants interact; it really forces you to think several turns ahead so you don't accidentally screw yourself. Some of the abilities later on were really cool as well, like the plant that moves around when ripe. The game escalated nicely with things getting really chaotic near then end as the demands get larger and larger. I managed to get a high score of 129. I'd be super interested seeing an expanded post-jam version of this at some point. Amazing work!

HighScore.png

meep 2023-01-09 07:40

Fun little strategy game- as always love your effects and animations! :D

elastiskalinjen 2023-01-09 15:12

Lovely art and always fun to see pico-8 games!

roblaro 2023-01-10 01:22

Awesome style and music, well done!

bloodbane 2023-01-10 04:33

Nice planting strategy game!

cobear25 2023-01-13 03:49

Very fun and cute. Great use of Pico 8.

pianoman373 2023-01-18 02:07

Really innovative idea! And great effects and music! The visuals and feel of the game seem as complete as they could be. Really impressive for a compo game. It did take me a few tries to realize that "next to" meant the 8 nearest tiles instead of 4. After that I was able to understand the strategy much better.

xfinktion 2023-01-21 01:42

Very nice! SFX were really satisfying and the intro music was a bop. Played this longer than I thought I would and managed to "break" the visuals. Got too many columns added and had the grid off the screen :) The auto feed for the footsies and the apples was a really nice touch; really allowed the possibility for multitasking and clever planning. Plant variety was very good for a compo game, and I would be interested to see where you would take this going further! :D strange_garden.PNG

blubberquark 2023-01-23 15:48

Feels kind of brough-like

romeromey 2023-01-25 02:43

Great game here! Crunchy sfx and solid puzzle design!

flatgub 2023-01-25 06:38

Always love to see a pico-8 game! Presentation is wonderful, puzzle mechanics were difficult to grasp at first but I got it eventually and really enjoyed it after that! Well done!

zungryware 2023-01-25 08:30

Interesting puzzle game. It was fun finding different patterns and structures that would allow me to most efficiently farm the various fruits.

Graphics and sound design were both great! Everything was easy to classify and the game was pleasant to look at. There is a lot of little visual flair and polish that ties everything together. Great work there!

My high score was 201. I would have gone for more, but I was pretty fatigued after my last run. Restarting a run is very arduous since you have to start all the way at the beginning again. And the further I got, the less I wanted to go for another try.

Part of the problem is that this game is very vague with how it decribes the fruits' mechanics. Ordinarily that would be fine, but I think this game disincentivizes experimentation. Whenever I considered spending a few turns to figure out how a fruit works, I decided against it since I didn't want to risk running out of turns. Here are the questions I had during play: - Does the pink fruit count diagonals? - Does the pink fruit count a fruit if I just planted it this turn? What about if I just harvested it? - Does the rock count as a plant for the purposes of the pink fruit? (It comes in the same seed pouch the other plants come in, after all.) - What does it mean when the white fruit "wanders around"? - Can the white fruit walk off the stage? And if so, does it count toward my goal? - If the white fruit walks over an unripe apple, what happens? - If the white fruit walks over a fruit other than an apple, what happens? - If the white fruit walks into an immovable object, what happens? - If the white fruit pushes a ripe apple into an immovable object, what happens?

Some of these questions I never found out the answer to. Others, I was very surprised when I found out the answer. On my last run, I figured that if the white fruit walked onto an orange fruit, it would stop moving, unable to push it. (It does say immovable after all.) But what actually happens is that it destroys it. What?! I didn't notice that I wasn't getting any points from those orange fruit until I was too low on remaining turns to be able to grow any more.

This is the third puzzle game that I've said this on, but I think a level-by-level structure might have been better. Or at the very least had some sort of checkpoint system that let you skip the early parts. I believe players need room to experiment in puzzle games, and this game does not provide that room.

Despite those gripes, I did still have a lot of fun. There was a lot of interesting strategy to get out of just five placeable objects. Great work!