Foon →
Ludum Dare Explorer →
LD52 →
Super Plantoid
Super Plantoid
By sztobar, bigwhiteshogun and dans17
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 40 | 4.17 | 42 | |
| Fun | 100 | 3.92 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 208 | 3.61 | 43 | |
| Theme | 129 | 4.15 | 42 | |
| Graphics | 67 | 4.39 | 44 | |
| Audio | 44 | 4.08 | 43 | |
| Mood | 119 | 3.97 | 41 | |
Comments
Neat game! Though I almost put it down right away because I wasn't able to go down the first platform by pressing down + X. I had to press space to go below it. I liked how you can spam Z to skip the growing stages of crops, but if I skip the last stage of the exploding one, I wasn't able to harvest it.
Overall, I think this is a very neat game with a great atmosphere, and I finished it to the end. I think if the issues I mentioned above are fixed, it would be even better.
joe-eric
2023-01-10 05:03
I love the mechanics of planting different seeds to do different things. Great game and good job!
@offworlddemon thank you for your feedback and for playing our game,we agree the issue you mentioned is annoying and it somehow slipped through with the latest update. We will post hot fix soon for it <3
@joe-eric thank you so much, we're happy you enjoyed playing our game.
I loved the mood of this, nicely made!
daitli
2023-01-12 05:03
Very well polished game, you guys did amazing. I especially liked the contrast between the player and everything else. Very well thought and perfectly executed visuals. Thanks for sharing, I had fun with it :)
jitspoe
2023-01-12 05:45
Really polished entry! Loved the groovy music and the fact that there were hidden Morse code messages in it. One thing that would be nice as just a quality of life improvement would be that you can't throw the floaty berry(?) higher than you can jump. It's a bit frustrating to have it one pixel out of reach and not get the boost. Had fun playing on stream. Lots of content for a jam entry!
feor
2023-01-12 06:11
This game has way too few ratings. The only reason I can think of is that like the other commenter I was stuck for a while until I found how to go down platforms, and other people might have put it down by then. But this game is awesome, and the best compliment I can give it is that it doesn't feel like a jam game. The art is gorgeous, the game feels good to play and has a lot of QoL features you wouldn't expect from a 72 hr game like the checkpoints, skipping animations, and there's a varied soundtrack with some really good tracks, the later ones in particular. The first track is a tad busy for an ambience track and wears its welcome a little bit (but maybe I just feel that way because I was stuck for a while).
I'd say the level design is both the best and worst point of this game, it makes you feel clever when you understand what you're supposed to do, juggling through the different powers, but when you're stuck it's really frustrating. For instance I had to look up a streamer's playthrough to understand where to go after the 2nd flower (you can jump to the platform right of the ship with the bubble). It also has some rather unexpected difficulty spikes (a room full of spikes?? in the dark?? ...gives me Rayman 1 (https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQJAo_0UaY4) war flashbacks.
The only giveaway that this is actually a jam game is the ending which feels a bit rushed, but considering the unreasonable amount of content here, it's hard to fault you for it. I completed the game with 18/20 collectibles. I had a good time and I'm not one for platformers/metroidvanias usually. My only advice is that you should really indicate somewhere here or on itch.io the down+space trick to going down platforms, and perhaps give a few more hints in-game for n00bs like me.
Really beautiful! A very competent platformer implementation with catchy music.
The pixel art and animations were great and music also very good, the game is very polished for a jam game. the map and the length of the game is pretty big for a jam. some jumps to the spike area are brutal. overall very good job and very polished game.
This review is based 15% off of my gameplay and 85% off of @jitspoe 's gameplay, more on that later.
Things I liked
1. The visuals are fantastic 2. The audio is amazing (the jump sound is sooo cute) 3. I 100% took the animations for granted because they looked so good 4. Enemies don't immediately take away your life points, which gives you an opportunity to get away from them
Things I noticed
1. I couldn't interact with anything! `j` and `z` wouldn't pick stuff up from the interactive areas and I died when I encountered the first enemy! If I'm doing something wrong please let me know, I'd really like to play this game through for myself (this is why the review is based mostly on a stream)
Please let me know if there's something I should be doing differently!
@therealjtgill hi, thank you for your kind words. About your problem, our game was conceptualised as metroidvania even if simple one, but mostly based on platforming first. So when you start the game you don't have any special abilities all you can do is jump, jump down from thin platforms and move around. You need to first find the seeds/power ups to be able to plant them in those glowing soil spots, harvest them and use.
Hoope you give it another go and enjoy the rest of the game. Good luck o7
Theres a few games every jam which i play and think to myself that its impossible someone made this in the given time... And this is one of those games! Amazing graphics, music, sound effects, level design... Everything is perfect! There only minor issues, the dark levels are a 1 hit kill which is fine, but there seems to be a bug when you die in them the death animation goes for 10 seconds or so... So check that out because it makes those levels a bit annoying. Also i collected all 20 green seeds and went to the ship by accident(so i didnt have time to goof around). So i just wanted to ask does something happen once you collect them or did i need to do something extra for it to work?
Apart from that i really mean when i say i have no clue how you couldev made something so awesome in such short of a time! And im curious if you are thinking of making a longer game out of it? :D.
@kikiriki367 thank you so much for kind words, we really are trying to fix some pestering issues that keep us sleepless at night, nad on top of our priority list is that bloody darkness bug.
About how we manage to make it in such short time, trust us, we are as surprised as you are, cause we cannot believe ourselves. If you would like to hear more in details, each one of team members is planning to write down a blog about his experience this jam and what each one of us did and how we did this.So follow us up here on LD page to be notified when those blog post eventually go up.
About the artijokes, first, it makes me so happy to know there are people who like playing our game so much they wanted to finish it 100%. I don't want to spoil completely what happens when you collect all of them to other people, so I'll leave with a hint. Your fantastic, amazing and definitely not disappointing reward for collecting all of the artijoke you can find at the end of the game credits :P We hope you find it worth your time and effort, and not lame at all :P
Well i guess ill need to replay the game tomorrow and see what it is! :D i kind of skipped the credits by pressing some button i think or dunno lol.. And yeah id love to give that a read so ill deffinetly follow!............... if i figure how to do it..............
@kikiriki367 I already followed you cause I don't want to miss any new game you gonna make next jam. To do it you simply click on the red link next to my nickname above me, that should take you to my profile, and there should be big blue button that says follow. When you do that whenever I publish something or post a blog you'll get notification in the right top corner, same way you got it now when I @ed you.
Hey, youre making me blush! It was a fluke that i made an okay game :)) I followed you and im looking forward to seeing your posts! Once again the 3 of you made a really amazing game, with apart from the things i mentioned the only bad thing about it is that there isnt more so ill just have to replay it again! :D.
@kikiriki367 we are working on some small patches and change to the game so there will be tad bit more content but not to much, after that we are done with the game basically.
Ohh also I gave your game to one of the streamers who played LD games and they liked it a lot ;)
Heyyy I would really love to have seen that! D: damn its a shame i missed it :((
Also then it seems ill wait till the patch and replay the game fully then!
Probably the most polished game I've played this jam, I felt the jumping took a little while to get used to, the character fell so fast the was hard to react sometimes. but the amount of upgrades and the size of the level was really impressive! Great entry hope to see what you guys make next time around!
matank
2023-01-13 23:08
Wow, this game was so good, almost everything about it was way more than I expect from a jam game! Level design, art, sound, the feel of the gameplay mechanic. It all felt like a fully polished game. Good job! Really hope you plan to continue and make a full experience (either from this game or something completely different) because I would love to play that :smile:
Thank you so much for making the game!
pyspher9
2023-01-14 00:36
First of all, the art, music, and sound effects are absolutely stellar. From the player's manual to the in-game art, everything looks in its place and is amazing while its there. The music is provoking, mysterious, and exciting. I love listening to what you've made.
Overall, the gameplay is really smooth; however, I don't seem to be able to interact with anything. The first pumpkin enemy was impassable and I couldn't figure out how to drop through the floor, use the wispy light thing you see on the first hill or go back or anything. I tried on keyboard and mouse as well as an Xbox controller.
Am I missing something?
EDIT: I see now that you're working on a fix, but hopefully my feedback helps find the issue
@pyspher9 thank you for letting us now. I just wanted to make sure, you couldn't jump down from the platform with any of the possible control combinations right ? DPAD Down + jump, s + jump, or arrow down + jump? If you could confirm this we have another lovely bug to squash.
You won't be able to interact with anything till you get to the first power up, when you start the game all you can do is jump, run around and jump down from the platforms.
EDIT: We also agreed with the team that we have to make some sort of indicator that you can jump down through the platforms. For people who never played platformers or sidescrollers is not obvious and they often think they are stuck which is not good.
Really nice, reminds me of retro platformers with a metroidvania twist. I was a little disappointed when I couldn't stomp the goomba pumpkins, but once I realized it was a metroidvania, I got into the flow and really enjoyed myself! Nice job with the level design, the loop backs and introduction of new mechanics were done very well, I never felt lost. Solid entry!
Great little platformer, love the retro graphics and sound. Excellent work!
Very cool game :) The art is gorgeous and the soundtrack fits the game really well!
I didn't have any problems with controlling the little man, but I found the lack of any information inside the game itself to be a little frustrating and pace breaking, so I just stumbled around for a bit. It also wasn't obvious to me that the seeds are infinite which caused some more stumbling, but that's on me. While the gameplay is responsive, the lack of any map system makes exploring feel unrewarding and slow.
Still, I had my fun! Great job with finishing such a polished experience in time.
Movement, visuals and sounds are great. But the lack of some in-game tutorial make the beginning not that smooth. It's always great to have some tutorial integrated in the level to teach the player basics. Also, it would be great to have a hint for objects with which the payer can interact.
yorsh
2023-01-14 17:37
Well made game with amazing level design. Some parts are too hard tho imo, and the intermediate checkpoints should have a sprite or something, so we know where we we'll be respawning. Cool music and graphics, and god bless that spamming the interact key allows to skip the growing animation !
la-bread
2023-01-14 21:46
Could find all the Artijokes (19/20) but nevertheless had a blast, I'd love to see a larger release with maybe more areas after the ship gets fixed, the art/animations were amazing. My only nitpick is difficulty in platforming, sometimes id hit my head on a ceiling and that would kill my jump, also while you said the darkness not killing is a bug, i think it would be a cool feature to hide something within those areas in the dark. Nevertheless, banger entry!
@yorsh the intermediate checkpoints are the power ups, whenever you pick one you progression is saved, but yes we agree there should be some sort of extra thing I even have prepared and icon that will show whenever that happens, we just didn't had time to implement it yet :C
saving animation.gif
@la-bread you can avoid hitting the ceiling with your head by adjusting your jump height. Depending on how long you hold your jump down, the longer it is the higher the character jumps.If you just slightly tap the key button character should jump way lower avoiding does nasty bruises ;)
lomby
2023-01-15 04:42
Thanks for submitting your game on the stream! Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/gfUiPVIkyL0?t=8703
Very polished entry, and such a lot of content! Will be coming back to it to try to get all the Artijokes!
Really solid entry. I started with the controller but that is a bit broken. I am pleased I checked back and tried again with keys. The use of the them is really interesting although at times made the game loop feel a little slow and laboured. I really liked the art style you went with and the visuals had plenty of juice. That was time well spent. Good game. Kudos
zyper
2023-01-15 21:29
The graphics are very nice. I also appreciate the planting mechanic, as well as the addition of the coyote jump and variable jump height - it's a nice touch ;) Great entry!
Nice Plattformer Entry. I like the graphics pretty much. The planting was interesting, kinda reverse of harvesting.
I've always wanted to go to space and harvest crops to unlock new areas! This is a well-designed, well-drawn, and well-scored game. I had a lot of fun with it! I even got 100% completion! That's not relevant to the feedback; I'm just including it for bragging rights. :smile: :potato:
pazzi
2023-01-16 05:59
This was really well-made and thought out! I'm terrible at platforming, but it was still very fun- especially hitting baddies out of the air ^~^
no-whone
2023-01-16 19:33
Okay, first of all... Wow, the fact that you guys were able to pull this off under the time constraints was amazing! The game was pretty long and filled with a bunch of variety. The level design was interesting to say the least, not the best (sometimes checkpoints were a bit unforgiving, and sometimes tedious walking back was required), but for being made in only 3 days, it more than suffices.
What I particularly like the most was the flotato, in terms of design, it was pretty much professional level... The fact that there were 2 key features in this game and that was holding the plant and shooting the plant, the flotato covers both areas in a very well-made manner. Hold the plant to float, or shoot it to make a bouncy bubble... Good stuff. The animations were cute and felt polished. Controls seemed a bit confusing at first, but it worked nonetheless.
A part that I had mixed feelings on (sorry if it sounds a bit mean, but I just want to give honest feedback) was the dark part. Sure the glow fruit was cool with its effects and stuff, however, it sort of mitigates everything else about the game. To clarify, you basically cannot progress if you didn't have the fruit, plus when you get hit, you lose the fruit... So essentially this part requires you to hold only 1 type of fruit, while not being able to shoot it, and you basically only have 1 life. A suggestion I have for this is making the glow fruit similar to the bubble, whereas when you shoot it, it sort of stays in place for quite some time, before slowly decaying.
That's really the only major complaint... One minor complaint was that the planting sound got a little repetitive XD. Other than that, the rest of the sounds were nice, the music was fitting, the atmosphere definitely suits the game. I like how you guys were able to put some extra quests for the game, those little seed coins, within the time frame, that's just insane. I wouldn't be able to get them tho, the main game was already hard enough XD.
Another wow thing was that the level was quite huge considering the time, and the fact that each part felt unique and still filled with content, it does not disappoint. I also liked the fact that the main stage was sort of connected to a lot of the parts, completing certain parts would take you back to the main stage, and parts that were unreachable at first now slowly unlocked not by hard-unlocking them, but by granting you mechanics that allow you to overcome the problem that hindered you from entering those new parts in the first place.
Overall well done! Great Job!
bigwhiteshogun and dan17 watched me stream this game, but I like to also comment on these games, for additional thoughts and for the other member. I really liked the game! God 4/4 solar flowers and 20/20 coins! The secrets were really cool, I love that kind of thing in a jam game. I found some of the platforming a bit tight in context. The colliders didn't seem *super* tight to the sprites. I think a little more leniency could make this feel a lot better. I also think more frequent checkpoints would be nice. It's not really that there weren't enough checkpoints, it's that they weren't always in convenient locations. This really stuck out when I was trying to backtrack to clean up 20/20. It was very easy to get super far from a checkpoint but also not pass another one, which made it really suck to die. This probably all sounds fairly negative but it's mostly nitpicking! I really enjoyed it and these are the things that'd take the game from great to perfect for me!
The pixel art was incredible, as was the music. All of the areas felt like they had distinct identities and the quality of the art was really consistent throughout. A real accomplishment for so many tilesets! Great job!
rodel77
2023-01-18 22:15
Very nice and polished. Controls could be a little bit simpler. It did take me some time to figure the jump + down mechanic
Cool metroidvania! I love exploration games like this and I love the seed based upgrades. Can't say the same about traps though but I'll manage. I'll replay this game to get 100% someday but for now this is the best entry from this jam so far.
chompdev
2023-01-21 22:57
I really had fun with this one! This is a great example of how much even a small world can contain that exciting Metroidvania sense of exploration and experimentation if the abilities are fun and well designed. I wasn't initially sure how interesting it would be to explore such a small world, but quickly found myself absorbed and searching every room for clues and every last collectable.
The carryable light source and bubbles were such cool ideas, and I really liked how tense the platforming became when you couldn't risk getting hit and losing your carried item. The double jump/double bubble system was really cool as well, and though the timing was tricky, it was a great challenge. The dark areas reminded me of some of Hollow Knight's great moments of spelunking in a dark cave and nervously looking around for spikes and enemies just out of your lantern's range. Your music and audio design is perfect, too. Excellent work on creating such a fun and satisfying jam game, you guys!
*This was super great!* I don't play a whole ton of Metroidvanias, but this one was impressive and *really really* polished. I loved the platforming and the level design, the character feels great to use in the open *and* cramped spaces; the art of just about everything is really well made and consistent throughout -- I don't want to understate this, well done, it serves it's purpose wonderfully (especially with the character); and the music is seriously bopping, I couldn't help standing still at times just to admire it (:laughing:)!
Astounding job, all of you! Here's a round of applause from me! :clap: :clap: :clap:
(also, the planet surface reminded me of "Dark Bramble" from Outer Wilds; not really much of a point towards the game, but I thought it was funny xD)
@sephowepho thank you for kind words, you may be the first person who noticed one of my inspirations :) Outer Wild had huge impact on me as an artist in general.