sarellano 2025-04-07 03:10
Controls are somewhat hard (specially on html) but once I got used to them it gets interesting. It is not super clear how to get more oxygen at the beggining though, just a tip for the intro tutorial!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Rooted Deep
By dzejpi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 58 | 3.77 | 29 | |
| Fun | 91 | 3.55 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 119 | 3.46 | 29 | |
| Theme | 62 | 3.94 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 73 | 3.91 | 30 | |
| Mood | 70 | 3.80 | 30 |
Controls are somewhat hard (specially on html) but once I got used to them it gets interesting. It is not super clear how to get more oxygen at the beggining though, just a tip for the intro tutorial!
Thanks for the rating, @sarellano! You have a good point with tutorial hint for replenishing oxygen. I guess once you spend day and half implementing game this feature in it very early, you forget easily. :confounded: When it comes to controls, then I can see your point. I originally used Ctrl as a key for descending, which feels more natural than Q or C, but I had to change it, because it was very easy to accidentally do Ctrl + W in browser and close the tab. Oh the sacrifices we have to make. :slight_smile:
Rated your game back!
Cool game! The overall look and sound is very atmospheric. The mouse sensitivity felt very low (played on HTML5) but that was easily remedied by increasing my dpi. One thing that i would have changed is threatening the player a bit more; once i got a few plants with autocollect i never really felt the need to leave the saftey pot, maybe having some plants grow faster on spots futher away from the base; maybe even having to buy oxygen so you're more desperate to make money efficiently. The seafloor is a great setting for the game, nice use of the Theme!
Thanks for playing, @p1x3lc0w! Great ideas - I was thinking about having to buy oxygen, but I didn't have time nor energy to implement it, but I really like it as an idea, it would surely make the game more interesting! Glad you liked the ambient sound, it's just me with hands over my mouth doing that. At least I used a new microphone a bit. :smile: Thanks again!
Rated your game back!
This is quite something!! If you want the bad thing - only a bit slow controls. All right, you are underwater, not accepted. Other stuff is just incredible! Nice game! Great idea! Awesome result!
Wish I could rate it, but I'm left handed so it's too hard to play with the right handed key bindings :sweat_smile:
I really liked the game! The idea of underwater farming in the depth of the ocean without diving suit is really genius. I think the upgrade system is a little unutilized at the moment - I'm not sure if there's a reason to buy the oxygen and speed power ups, as it's very easy to just plant near your home. I bought the 2k profit upgrade and it's seem not to be worth it as you just need to get to 2.5k
Also I prefer in game tutorials so I skipped the one here, and actually it covered everything other than where the oxygen refill. I tried to swim up
But again, the graphics, sounds, interface - very well done!
Thank you ALL so much for playing and leaving an amazing feedback!
@immortalfox got it, will speed the controls next time! Though hopefully at least those upgrades can make the life easier, haha. :wink:
@youcarryoats oh no, that's a good point I never considered. Shame on me. Double shame, actually, because I am left handed myself :laughing: . But as you can see, I use the typical layout of mouse in the right hand and WASD by left hand. I can't change the game now due to it going against Compo rules, but for the next time - what would work the best for you? I assume keyboard arrows for the movement? What keys would be best suited for going up/down, and confirming? I am all ears and I can make sure my next game is left handed friendly!
@atsh yeah, upgrade system is definitely not that well balanced, but I didn't want to keep the player waiting for too long before winning. Though if this turned into a full feature game, it would need a massive upgrade overhaul for sure.
Rated all of your games back!
Great little game, finished it in 8 minutes and 37 seconds, the water mouvement are kinda cool to move with and the game duration is great without being too long :)
HOLY MOLY I loved this! The most fun I've had underwater this jam!
I really like this kind of game and this one is very cool. I love your graphics, it gives a really good atmosphere to the game.
It's impressive to have done that in 48 hours, great job !
The graphics are sick and waking number go up is really fun. I did experience a bug where you teleport a little bit, also I think some music would majorly increase the vibe.
I tried to figure out the game myself for a long time. The vibe of the first games appeared play station 1. greatly done!
Thank you ALL for playing and for the feedback!
@xwilarg glad you liked the water movement, took me a little bit to figure out the shader. At least I know what the calculus in university was good for. And glad you liked the duration, I didn't want the game to be too long. :slight_smile:
@sayeg I'm super glad to hear that! :heart:
@helagos glad you liked the atmosphere and graphics!
@oxnh yeah, I am aware of this bug, but not actually quite sure how to fix it. I thought it was caused by some rogue collisons, but when I ran the game in debug, I couldn't see anything. And strangely, it didn't happen in debug mode, which makes it even more challenging, haha. I agree that music would increase the vibe, unfortunately, didn't have much time nor energy for it; maybe next time!
@onngd it's true that it kinda looks like PS1. With a little bit more finetuning, it could look very similar. And I will try to make figuring out the gameplay easier for the next time, it's true that it could be described better.
Thank you all again, and of course, as always, rated all of your games back! :slight_smile:
Amazing entry! I love underwater games, and this one has a great atmosphere and beautiful graphics. The gameplay is really solid, though the mouse sensitivity felt a bit low in the HTML version. The sound effects add to the vibe nicely, but the low-oxygen warning got a little annoying after a while. It might be cool to add some incentive to explore or plant things further away if you plan to develop it more (and maybe throw in a Subnautica-style reaper in the distance :slight_smile:)
Very nice, a chill romp in the water garden, also I found the glorious ducky, blessed be his lungs!
Interesting game, i can see a lot of potential in it. Obviously there is always room for improvement, regarding art, sounds nad gameplay overall, but as a 48h gamejam submission i find it very nicely done.
Thank you all for comments!
@liquid you're definitely right with adding some incentive to explore. I originally planned to have some specific plants that would generate oxygen, that would give you a reason to explore and risk more, but never got to it. And I definitely need to play Subnautica, it's been installed on my computer for a while, but I have never found a time for it, I guess the time is now!
@scott-r-howell nice, congratulations! I wanted to have some easter egg, so, this makes me super happy that you found it! If I had some price to give out, you would get it. :smile:
@mcramon thank you for the feedback! Yeah, it feels like there is some potential indeed, but 48 hours limit left a lot to be desired.
Rated all of your games back!
What nice job you made here!!! I really like the idea of a below water plantation, thatβs keep motivated to do a better job on my next game design.Captura de tela 2025-04-08 173953.png
I actually had so much fun with this one. I love these kind of farming games, and it was a neat choice integrating that with this environment.
Graphically this all came together super well. All of the plants look good, but you really sold the underwater atmosphere. Definitely feels like you're 250m below the sea. Great use of color
The gameplay loop with the farming was nice and satisfying too. I always enjoy being able to do things like upgrade profits. Overall, I really think this was one of the more entertaining games to play. Good job!
I don't have really a core issue with this, just moreso scattered feedback
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* One thing is the plants didn't have the best indication of being ready for harvest. A simple subtle color change would have been significant. It lead to me doing lots of unnecessary mashing * The movement was nice if a little slow, but it'd get annoying when you'd get stuck on the side of the planter. If you changed their hitbox from a box to a ramp, it'd help a lot. * I imagine this is hard to balance in the right time frame, but a lot of the upgrades weren't useful. For example, the final 100% profit boost at a cost of $2000 is never going to help when you win by reaching $2500. * Also, while I appreciated having a nice variety of plants to grow, I wish there was a bit of a reason to grow certain ones. The best strategy seemed to be getting the most expensive seeds ASAP, but even if there was a growth rate penalty to make them suboptimal, the strategy just becomes planting the most optimal ones instead. I think a good way to solve this is with milestones. Turn up that required $2500 to way higher, and introduce some achievements like "Sell 5 of every fruit" that give you more shmoney. * Also I hate to say it, but I did not finish this game, as it crashed. I was so close to the end. These things happen.
Overall, this was a fantastic feat for 48 hours. Very entertaining, very much sold the mood and the theme. Looked good, sounded good. I don't have major issues with this one at all, really just minor nitpicks and ideas that prob aren't feasible in 48 hours. So overall great job, you should be happy with this.
Introduce some base building and underwater construction and I'll buy a copy, not kidding you.
Thank you both for reviews a playing!
@juliocezar that's super nice to hear! And I think your time is actually very impressive, because I don't think I have been able to win quicker than that, you have a natural talent. :slight_smile: And I see I already rated your game!
@swooty thank you for extremely deep and thorough feedback, I really appreciate that! Indication of plants being done with growing would definitely send this to another level, I should have thought about it. Or more like, it came to my mind couple of times, but I never wrote it down, and I completely forgot about it afterwards. Good point with better hitboxes, I'm usually trying to avoid using square ones unless they make sense, but I completely forgot here, plus I was so used to swimming that I didn't even hit them that much, so, it never bothered me to be like: "I must fix this," haha.
Balancing was quite challenging indeed, my top priority was making player able to win relatively quickly, since no-one wants to spend too much time on jam games, but you're absolutely right that there's not much of a reason to buy the last profit upgrade over just winning for at that point in game, couple of extra seconds of waiting. Also, did your game hard crash, or did everything just disappear? It didn't crash on me, but I know about the disappearing issue. I assumed it happens due to way too many nodes present, and in this case, it would happen way too late into the game. It happened to me with like 130 plants, which I didn't think anyone would be willing to do. However, I had the same disappearance issue in my previous game, which I managed to tackle in the end, but, I'm really wondering whether I'm not hitting Godot (at least current) limits and whether Unity wouldn't be worth a try.
It's making me really happy saying that you would be glad to buy a copy if I turned this into full feature game. I indeed think that with many more things to do and some base building, this could be quite good. I very often want to continue on my games after LD, but I never keep up. I really need to break this and finally turn some game into a full feature one. I think this one could be quite fun, especially since I very much enjoy games where you can chill and perhaps even listen to podcast/watch videos when playing, but I would need to untangle the absolute mess that is the code under the computer screen. Or maybe even look into Unity. Rated your game back!
Man I'm a sucker for farming games and this was an enjoyable play. I also loved the art style, the low fidelity shadeless pixel environment and graphics looked super nice. Theres a clear vision here for something even more if you want to take it there, and the upgrades/autofarming/crop placement mechanics are a great started to what could be a far more complex, deep post-jam game. I would have liked the ability to delete/move crops or slightly more direction (maybe its just me but I didn't even know about the auto harvesting till I was close to being done), and furthermore I wish I could have kept playing after buying freedom. But aside from all that, super fun game packaged in a wonderful presentation. Great job!
You did what you could within the time, but honestly, a more polished version of that, with that same aesthetic and base mechanic? I'm in! The core concepts are working. I was afraid controls would be difficult, but the very simple in-game tutorial made them easy. Nice entry, which would make us want to see of more complete version of it :thumbsup: UI is alright too!
Cool! I like the balance between venturing out to plant things and collect fruit at the cost of oxygen. It was very easy to just plant things close to the station. I was able to collect fruit without losing any oxygen. Forcing or enticing the player to venture further out would have been interesting. For example, fertilizer or additional resources like fish could have been added to the game. Well done!
Screenshot 2025-04-09 091005.png
I think it's a very nice concept to farm under water. I'd expect underwater with no light to a little more scary. I went off to see if there is anything hidden in the sea :eyes: Surprised to find out there is a Terrain of some sorts, not sure if there is anything that you can find tho since I drowned :slight_frown: . I think font choice didn't fit with the vibe you're going for. Otherwise, very nice entry and good execution!
Screenshot 2025-04-09 175429.png
Really cool game! You really did the "atmosphere" of underwater justice. The look and feel is just right. The controls might be a bit floaty, but given the location I think that's a plus. :D
Reading through the comments I see that other people have already pointed some of the issues I've noticed, so there's not much more to add for me. One thing I'd add to that is that perhaps the sound on trying to pick up fruit shouldn't be played if the fruit is still growing, only when you do actually collect it. Or maybe have a different sound to let you know you can't pick it up yet?
I agree with liquid's comment, throwing in a Subnautica easter egg could be fun. And definitely try playing it, it's a really good game and might give you some inspiration for further expanding your concept. But keeping it mostly a farming game would definitely make it something unique. :)
Overall, it's a pretty impressive compo entry! I loved playing through it several times, even if it did cause a mild case of anatidaephobia.
rooted_deep.png
Thank you all for ratings, that is so much feedback! :heart:
@chiyeon great suggestions! I thought about giving the player ability to remove plants, but ultimately decided that it's fine to miss for a jam game. However, if I decide to take this further, I will definitely include that. And yeah, pot upgrades weren't communicated that well.
@jeremyfa glad to hear that! I keep seeing so many comments about the full feature game that it is very tempting. :smile:
@nimbushead yeah, fertilizer or something like that could make this more interesting. I wanted to give some incentives for player to leave the base and explore, but didn't have enough time, unfortunately.
@chuckiee yeah, you're right, there is a whole terrain like this, which I generated in TerreSculptor, but unfortunately, it's barren and unusued, ah the plans I always have and never have time for. :slight_smile:
2025-04-09_18-00-43.png
@lcstark it's true that controls are floaty. Good observation with the picking sound still being played, I absolutely missed that. And since you're another person telling me to play Subnautica, then I sure will soon. And yes, there is always some duck watching, so, watch out!
Thank you all so much and I rated all of your games back! :heart:
Cool! Nice take on the cookie clicker formula.
The upgrades weren't really worth it as the final price was so low but it was so quickly achieved that I decided to buy them all anyways. And you only need a handful of plants to do so. Having more like 5-10 seemed like just waste as you couldn't harvest them fast enough. Usually you'd want your "win target" to be much higher and then have the upgrades be a gateway to making more easier like automation etc. I guess you know the formula...
The game looked and sounded great! Sweet cohesive art style and nice and moody sound scape, even without any music. Didn't even really miss any music, even though it obviously wouldn't have hurt either.
Controls were very good as well. There is a bit of an issue with the web version where if you're full screen and hit escape, the mouse lock is lost and you're stuck with not being able to look around fully. And I'm dumb enough to have done it twice and needed to do a full refresh to restart.
The whole swimming up and down was kinda pointless. Would have needed some reason to go up and down really. The obvious thing that comes to mind would be to have maybe the best selling plant have it's berries be high up so you couldn't reach them from the ground level. I also would have reused the same click behaviour for accessing the computer instead of adding a separate button for it.
Also having all those separate sell buttons and even the max buy buttons were very much pointless. I don't think there was any reason to ever not just sell all so one button would serve the same purpose. Unless of course you're going for the more manual labor aspect of clickers on it. Could of course be the product of planning more around it and having scrapped those out... ππ€·ββοΈ
Actually, now I read the full description and I guess there was some automation upgrades there indeed. But again, the target was so low that there was no need for it really.
Even if you over scoped a bit, you pulled it off nicely. Nothing really screams out unfinished. And of course learning is a big part of jamming experience.
And of course bonus points for using the correct "couldn't care less"! π
Good job! π
Thank you for extremely detailed and valuable feedback, @antti-haavikko! :heart:
Yeah, upgrades were definitely quite unbalanced - there's not really a practical reason to buy the last bunch of upgrades when you can just wait a bit more and just win. Though in this specific case, I just wanted people to win relatively quickly, since I have a soft rule that my game shouldn't take more than couple of minutes, so, I didn't want to make winning way too expensive. But yeah, in full game, it would be more expensive β or probably not there at all.
Glad you liked the sounds! I bought a new microphone before this, since I used to record things on my phone, but it sure doesn't feel like I utilised it much, haha. Music was planned, but I had to drop it, unfortunately. I hit such a hard wall in later Sunday hours that I felt like I couldn't even press a single extra button. So, I just decided to run with some background ambience, which is actually just me with my hands over my mouth and making those sounds. Science!
Regarding focus β I think that if you press Esc twice when pausing, and then click on Continue (instead of pressing Esc again) to continue, it should grab the focus properly again, but it's a bad experience for sure, I really need to fix that already, it's been in all of my 3D jam games so far, and I haven't gotten into fixing it still.
Creating some plant with fruits growing high is amazing idea, that would definitely utilise swimming upwards much more. Maybe next time, or in a full game! I'm just glad noone tried to swim upwards completely out of the game, I don't even want to know what are the possibilities there. :see_no_evil:
You got it right with planning better UI and then scraping that, so yeah, single sell is quite pointless indeed. And when we talk about it - maybe I should have made "Sell literally everything" button or have autosell upgrade somewhere, because there's not really a point in saving any fruits anyway. Though I can imagine some mechanics in a potential full game what would give you a reason to only sell X amount and keep some Y amount for something else.
Thank you for praising my grammar. :laughing: I'm not a native speaker, which I think makes us actually less prone to getting these things wrong, so, at least something! But I am sure that since I just said this now, I will soon write something horribly wrong somewhere.
Thank you SO MUCH for the feedback. It really means a lot, especially from a very experienced developer like yourself. :heart:
Rated your game back!
Yeah, looks like the mouse indeed locks back if I press esc again and press continue from the menu there. Don't think it's something one would try without knowing though. I think you could even try locking it with every mouse click.
Yea, for sure, I will check it out when I can!
Interesting deep sea cookie clicker! I like the mood. Also, I enjoyed the sounds out-of-breath sounds, signalling that the player is almost out of oxygen and should get back to the safe station. The instructions were clear. Sometimes, trying to harvest the fruits made the collecting noise but I didn't actually collect them. I guess that meant the fruits weren't ripe yet. I wished I could see which ones were ripe.
On my first run, I managed to get to the end. I didn't notice I had spent already 15 minutes!
RootedDeep1.png
On my second try, to see if I could speedrun it a bit more, I was transported far away suddenly, but that did mean I saw the other ending as well. :slight_smile:
I didn't use swimming up and down that much on my first runs, so in my last run, I just planted everything really close to the safe station and collected by swimming above the plants. I didn't buy any upgrades, and got to the end much quicker this time :smile:
RootedDeep2.png
Overall, well done!
Thanks for dropping the link in my stream the other day. Fun concept. I liked the artstyle you went with
@papaver thank you for the feedback! Yeah, I overlooked the picking fruit sound, and it's quite nice that you spend 15 minutes playing it, didn't expect anyone to play for that long. Kinda surprises me that it's possible to win in 6 minutes with no upgrades, I definitely didn't balance something there. :laughing: Rated your game back!
@alvaron thank you for playing! I am sure you had a huge backlog of games, so, I am glad you got to mine too. Already rated your game. :slight_smile:
Oh, that's ambitious! A lot of systems to do in two days. Impressive! Loved it.
I love how the goal is clear from the start (and somewhat optional), but you can take different roads there. Let me outline my road, which was exploring-and-chilling-oriented. First, I checked out everything on the computer. I planted one pot of every species to check out how they look like and behave. Not being sure what plant gets you better profits (the cheap one felt faster), I didn't focus on a single one. I upgraded their pots and doubled down on plants. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time outside, so I only bought a profit upgrade. I realized that the upgrade probably wasn't worth it and that I'm already on a realistic pace to the ticket outside. I watched my plants and the environment, analyzed the upgrades, and took off. Then I saw that it was timed, and I appreciated how it is not trivial what the fastest strategy is. Nevertheless, I decided I don't feel like speedruning, I liked the experience for what it was.
I loved the atmosphere, the graphics, the general idea of this game (and the splash screen that is insane quality for ludum dare). That crazy bug didn't bother me much, even though I got launched real far away in an instant once, and was very close to not making it back on time (it was exciting and funny ^^). What I would want of this game is a mouse sensitivity option, the default is way to low for me and my movement felt kinda hindered and clunky because of that. The upgrades could do with a little bit of balancing, but tbh, for a game like this, it would always be the case whatever you would do.
Oh, and I feel a need to apologize to you for not sharing with you how my last dare's amoebas work. It just so happened that the next day after my game rating marathon I got hit by weird ass heart issues (the health kind, not the romantic kind, lmao) and it was super-super scary and it stole a few months of my abilities to focus on anything else. It's a lot better now though (never underestimate the power of sleeping regularly, damn). What I want to say is, I didn't forget. I want to find a moment to get over my chaotic nature and write to you one day, when I'm hopefully done with all of the more pressing matters. Cheers!
Thank you for a very detailed feedback, @thelastslowpoke! No need to apologize; life taught me very well that health is the most important thing to focus on, because we only have one. I hope you're doing better now! I know pretty well how damaging the lack of good sleep is as I too had a life period of constant tiredness, and it didn't do any good for me. So, I hope your heart and your sleep are both in good shape now. :heart:
Glad you liked the vibes and went for the relaxing way. The amount of people who just enjoyed relaxing experience makes me very happy and I am quite sure that I will continue working on this game afterwards. I am always thinking about that after LD, but I think this one is a really nice opportunity, and nice mix of things that don't make next development too challenging.
I really gotta figure that launching bug out, though. It didn't usually launch me very far away, but you're not the only one who mentioned that they were launched very far, and it's super annoying to have in the first place. And mouse sensitivity for sure, I learned the hard way here, as it's mentioned very often. :laughing: And balancing, yea, that's gonna be even tougher challenge.
Thank you very much, rated your game back! :slight_smile:
Very interesting entry, addictive yet simple, and that auto-collect upgrade is a great idea One of the best entries I played
Thank you very much for comment, @koalabear, makes me super happy to hear that! Rated your game back. :slight_smile:
**DISCLAIMER**: I will not be available anymore until the end of the rating period (next 6+ hours). So, while any additional feedback is very welcome, I most likely wonβt be able to rate any more games in return before deadline. Best of luck to everyone! :heart:
This one is really nice and has a good idea executed very well. Especially impressive for COMPO.
Price of upgrades felt a little bit off to me, though, but i can't put my a finger on why exactly.
Thank you for playing, @mod-wiz! Unfortunately, couldn't get back to your game soon enough (as I warned in the message above), but thankfully, you had enough voted already; I would feel very bad if some game didn't get through because of me.
You're right with upgrades, not like they were optimised super well. If I decide to work on this full time, they will have to be reworked heavily for sure. Played and commented on your game. :slight_smile: