Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Sow'n'Reap
By philstrahl
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 21 | 4.11 | 23 | |
| Fun | 70 | 3.76 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 57 | 3.78 | 23 | |
| Theme | 1 | 4.57 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 9 | 4.47 | 23 | |
| Audio | 4 | 4.38 | 23 | |
| Mood | 13 | 4.16 | 23 |
awesome game
after watching the tutorial (very useful) I couldn't hit play, so I had to restart the game
the art and music is very nice
the game seemed complex at first but after the first level I found it wasn't too complicated. it's oddly satisfying & fun to play :) maybe it's the sound effects
nice job
Wow! Everything is good in this game. Art, Music, Gameplay, UI, can't find one mistake. Harvesting those tile is sooo satisfying! Rated full five stars without hesitation because is my favorite so far! 173 days to complete for me :) I'm sure I can improve on that by micro-managing using all the layers each day. I keep it on desktop for next time I need something to chill on. Well done!
edit: I also had the bug mentioned above.
Congrats on the entry Phil, it's fun, well polished, but maybe a bit too "data-heavy-ish" which decreases the immersion for me a bit. In details:
Personally I started playing without watching to tutorial because I like exploring mechanics on my own. And it wasn't a struggle, it felt really rewarding discovering mechanics, tile types, etc one by one.
There were some mechanics which just existed only in my mind but it was fun finding out my mistakes :D. And it was even better to check my theories with the tutorial after I finished playing. :laughing:
I didn't use the layer visuals so it was a bit tiresome for me to check the nutrition values on the tiles every round. So these layer visualisations were a good idea for sure! But I think it's still not an optimal solution to always switch between layers. It's kind of ruins the farmer vibes for me, but maybe it's just me. Maybe there a nice and simple solution to visualise the nutrition level in a "realistic" & immersive manner. If that's done, all three data is nicely visualised without the need of checking numbers or layers. I guess the hard part is finding the "how". :|
The music was really nice & fitting, even after an hour of playing it still wasn't annoying. The sound & visual effects are juicy and the simplistic art style was good on my eyes too.
Congrats again, can't wait for the devlog, cheers! :)
I really like this little farm puzzle game - it has all would you expect of a good farming game, i love the puzzle part of the game aswell - only thing i could not quite get my head around are the days. I had a few way older seeds that were watered and fertilized and still didn't evolve while other just evolved in a few days :x
Thank you for the game, it had a nice, contemplative mood!
It started slow, but got surprisingly busy! It is a very good puzzle! I wonder how it would feel if the turns were timed.
One thing that I wish for the game is the ability to choose the levels from a menu, so I can leave the game and return later.
Anyway, good job! :v:
I quite liked this game. It's very well polished and the gameplay is fairly enjoyable.
The tutorial helped a lot in the beginning and explained the game well. I'm surprised that such few people (including me) haven't thought of embedding a video in their game. The graphics and audio were very well done and looked and sounded really good, definitely 5 stars on those.
Regarding the gameplay I felt that the turns were sometimes a bit awkward where I would skip multiple turns with nothing to do just to then have turns where everything was happening at once. I also didn't really grasp how to affect the growing speed, it felt quite random. Other than that, this was a positively interesting concept.
@mostlikely Thank you for playing, glad that the tutorial helped you. Also thanks for reporting the bug, it's fixed not in version 1.0.0.1 😊
@horda Thank you, makes me super happy that you enjoy it so much! ♥ In my test run it took me 174 days to complete the game without optimizing my strategy.
@tudvari Thank you for playing and the feedback! I totally get that it breaks a bit the immersion but then again i didn't want to have "fertilizer-bars" or something. Maybe I can come up with something diegetic, e.g. green leaves on the ground...? 🤔 There must be a way! 😅
@thoastbot Thank you for calling it "good". And I know what you mean, sometimes crops take weeks to ripen (but then it goes rather quickly) and i haven't yet figured out why. i tinkered a lot with the different soil properties so probably there's a bug somewhere 😅
@caranha Thank you for playing the game on stream! Good to know that it works sufficiently well under Wine. Sadly the tutorial video didn't work for you, I now added a like to the YouTube version here. And apparently I need to make it more clear that you can use the mouse wheel to display info overlays. I intentionally decided against timed turns because I wanted it to be relaxing (it gets a little intense anyway). Also, sorry that I didn't have time for a save feature (or level select. Or quit button) 😅
@adamwatters Thank you, Adam! Glad you found it enjoyable!! 😊
@supremekurt Thanks for playing and the feedback, Kurt! I didn't think of the video either, it was my wife who came up with the idea as I rambled on about implementing text boxes, image overlays, tutorial triggers etc. 😅 As for the turn skipping, I'd say that's "intentional", mostly because sometimes it takes very long for crops to start growing initially; there must be a bug somewhere, because with enough water and nutrients the growth should be relatively linear. My bad! 😅
What an awesome and relaxing game! I love the art style, and the music is really soothing. Gameplay is straightforward, but still loads of fun balancing what needs to be done within the 3-actions-per-day limit. Excellent work!
So chill and so relaxing! I like the part where you can skip the tutorial and still success somehow. :) I did watch the it afterwards and realized that there were some useful features I missed. :sweat_smile:
I noticed a rather unusual behavior: on the very first level I did a lot of random fertilizing and watering, but nothing seemed to grow for 40 days. I thought something was broken, but decided to skip several days until something interesting happens. Somehow, it helped! I guess the moral here is if you want something to do something, stop pestering it. :)
See the full playthrough: https://youtu.be/m2jbPyLlDeU
This was a very peaceful game.
The graphics are beautiful, the audio is top notch and its very well put together.
You did a quality job.
nice work :)
Really nice game phil - also i like the instruction you put into the game. Can't believe you made all this in this short amount of time. It is a really great work :)
@digital-bacon Thank you so much for playing, I'm happy you enjoyed it! 😊
@yngvarr Thank you for playing and the video! Glad that it also works without the tutorial, I was just afraid people wouldn't know that they could (and should) advance a couple of days. And the reason for the slow growth is a bug that when a its needs are 100% satisfied, it doesn't do anything. (Much like me, I guess) 😅
@d3kryption Thank you so much! I'm very happy you liked it! 😊
@neowhoru Aww thank you! It was a bit stressful (especially towards the deadline) but I feel that after 8+ years, I am slowly getting the hang of it 😅
What a lovely, relaxing experience! I really like the presentation, the music probably even more than the visuals, it's just so wonderfully peaceful <3 The gameplay itself is also nice and put me in a flow-like state once my mind grasped the hotkeys. I pretty much never used the overlays anymore from level 3 on, as they kinda distracted from that flow, but they are certainly nice to have! The final level was a bit off-putting in that regard as I couldn't keep up with all the plants, but it was a nice nod to our beloved jam nonetheless. Overall, an awesome, tranquil experience that I enjoyed a lot! Not sure if it lends itself too well for developing further though, as you're a bit between puzzle and casual relaxation here. I for one liked that second aspect more. PS: How great is it that you made an ingame video tutorial? Pretty great, if you ask me, but it's probably pretty obvious for you to do so :) sownreap.png
Awesome game, had a great time farming! I'm not sure if there's a better strategy for the last level (that has the letters LD52 but only a little bit of water at the center) but I ended up ignoring all the crops that were too far away from the water and centering my farm around the water source :smile:
This was fun to sit and play for an hour while watching/listening to YT on my other monitor, although I wasted a lot of time before I figured out the 100% bug :P
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Enjoyable as a wind down game. Music was perfect for the setting. The graphics and art fitting. Cool stuff.
2023-01-15 15_33_59-Sow'n'Reap.png
Enjoyable as a wind down game. Music was perfect for the setting. The graphics and art fitting. Cool stuff.
Looking forward to your Post Mortem if youre going to do one... Really relaxing game that suits your style really well. Oh and i forgot to use scroll at all and still finished the game lol! So maybe it needs to be a bit harder
Alsooooo does this make me the best because i was the fastest boy?! :D.
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Hi! You said in your stream you still need ratings :slight_smile:
Before I rip into this (its just ... sometimes a games more interesting properties are not its highlights, you know -- that always gives a bit of a skewed review) I have to also talk about the things I really liked about this game. The soft but understated graphics stile fits perfectly. It's also colorful and pastel enough to not 100% go the 'beige euro board-game' look. The audio is enough to liven up the game, but wise enough not to get all 'in your face' as it understands this is a puzzle game. I also really like where you got your inspiration(s). Cellular automata 'F.T.W.'. It's also, like a lot of LDJam games this time around for some reason, just pleasant to play. Lastly, good job on including keyboard shortcuts (... though I think I only used the space = next day one. Also in the very beginning I thought the (1) .. (4) might be 'action-cost, but I think that is more one me.)
It also feels oddly balanced for a game where I thought a bug (well, maybe) was one of the game-mechanics:
I originally thought I was going to begin this review with: "Today I Learned: You shouldn't immediately fertilize seeds on planting." My first run had 216 days... but seeds immediately fertilized seemed to take ages to sprout. Could it be the case? I looked it up, and sure enough, there's special 'slow release' fertilizer that you can have as a 'starter' for rye seeds. -- Well, that must be it then. After realizing that, I did another run where I got 117 days with this information.
Then I read some more of the comments. It turned out to be unintentional.
All of the other systems and overlays, while impressive, I had (felt) not actually _needed_ during the game. -- Watering seems only really 'needed' in the level with clay in the middle, as far as my play-style goes. For the rest, it just seems a matter of planting seeds close to the water, being careful to only fertilize when the no-nutrients icon shows, then harvest and sow. This is a fun enough way to play the game, and, seeing the other comments, still competitive enough to get near a high-score.
What I think I'm getting at here is that for a game of this scope all the systems seem a bit like overkill. (This feels very familiar to me.... last time --so not this* LD-- for example I tried to physically model a system -- for what was a point-and-click adventure :sweat_smile: )
Anyway, all of that is a lot of words just to say I found it a pleasant little game.
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*) edit/PS: Coming to think of it, my _current_ submission had a cellular automaton implemented at one point ... but I decided to scrap that when it turned out that I had little time left and the game I was trying to build with it wouldn't have been fun.
@erkberg Thank you for playing and that the music I frantically slapped together didn't reflect the stress it was created under ;) Good to know that game is playable without the overlays (not everyone was aware of them), I just thought they were helpful to players trying to understand the systems better.
Yeah, the final level was just a not to LD52. At first I didn't have the water holes in the middle but that made it more tedious so I kept it that it's not too hard to finish. I am still trying to decide where to go with the mechanics with this one; more puzzley and less systems-driven or the other way which would make it less of a game 🤔
All the credit for the idea of a video tutorial goes to my wife. She suggested it as I was stressing over that it's impossible to make a tutorial system in an hour. 😅
@matank Thank you for playing, glad you enjoyed it. And the last level was more of a gimmick, so however you solved it: It was the right way!
@lone-wolf Thank you so much for playing if for that long! I am really sorry about that nasty bug, punishing attentive players 😖
@commanderstitch 162 days, very good!! Thank you for playing, I'm glad you also enjoyed the music!
@kikiriki367 Thank you, I already started on the vlog-mortem for this one 😊 And you're not the only one forgetting about the scroll wheel. It's good that the game can be beaten without it, I didn't want to make it too hard when the goal was to make it more of a relaxing experience. And 104 days *is* impressive! 🏆
@remco Again, thank you for taking the time for such thorough feedback! What can I say, I like colors and despite the game feeling like its set in the desert, I am glad that it didn't look too drab 😅
And I am so sorry about the bug and all the trouble it caused you! 😭 Thank you so much for not giving up on the fame! And late-starter/slow fertilizer almost sounds too good to not include it in a more polished version of the game. And you're right, the overlays aren't needed, I just thought they might help players trying to figure out the systems behind the curtains and to optimize their play-style but you can also play it leisurely.
The interplay between the systems is not very well explained (or transparent) and also a little shallow, I feel. And the cellular automata aspect is just something nice to put in a feature list but players probably never notice it. In other words: Pointless 😅
Lots of people tend to do a character 2D in thoses case. I'm glad i finally see a gestion game ! Really cute, and definitly want to see more !
Very impressive polish with music / graphics! Impressed this is a compo game! And the video tutorial is fun. My main nitpick is just that I wish there was a way to easily tell the amount of nutrient on a tile without hovering over it. With the water, the color of the tile does nicely for that, but it's less easy to tell if a tile is running low on nutrients. (unless I missed something?) 3 actions a day feels like usually enough to do everything you need to, so the game wasn't too difficult, but it was certainly a relaxing experience. Also, lovely music.
Very nice and peacefull game!
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