ntmalichi 2025-04-07 07:14
That's a really cool concept and the graphics are beautiful!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Sea Dicegarden
By zimny11
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 211 | 3.25 | 26 | |
| Fun | 225 | 2.95 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 60 | 3.77 | 26 | |
| Theme | 245 | 2.95 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 97 | 3.77 | 26 | |
| Mood | 176 | 3.26 | 25 |
That's a really cool concept and the graphics are beautiful!
firefox_2025-04-07_15-18-49.png
Nice compo game!
The UI animation were nice, I only wished for a bit of QoL like for dice dropped onto a plot to snap into their respective slot, or the ability to drop-swap dices.
With the only addition of teaching the players which combinations work, which don't, and especially why, it could be perfect. (A recipe book or I-don't-know-what) The satisfaction of seeing points accumulate is already very strong =)
I can't understand how to play this game, looks interesting tho
I should've won thanks to a bunch of die duplication glitches, but I couldn't press on the final die for some reason :( t.png
Anyway, this was... thoroughly confusing. I managed to understand the blue/yellow/red die, and after some trials-and-error the orange one as well, but I still don't get what the number on the green/purple die does. Or how to get plants - it felt like most of the time I grew nothing... Also, getting orange die was really hard for me for some reason, while I was swimming in green ones (which led to multiple bugs once I claimed my 5th one before my 2nd orange die). I think it would've been nice if the game showed you a preview of what would happen if you already tried the exact same combination once, to at least prevent that from happening.
Still, I liked all the plant animations, and whenever I accidentally discovered new types - like the tall stalky ones - it felt great! Also, the purple ones led to some pretty cool plants, and I appreciate how they sped up reaching the end significantly. And just dragging die around and seeing what happens was still fun :)
Overall, while I felt like a monkey pressing random keys trying to write Hamlet, I nevertheless enjoyed the concept!
@ntmalichi Thank you! really appreciate!
@colisan Oh wow! You went through the whole thing! Thank you for playing and feedback. I really messed up with this one. There was so much that I wanted to add... journal that reveals information each time you plant something, shop, dice progression, ability to journey in bathyscaphe to get new dices, but in the end I had to set on simple mechanic of getting new dices and making them random in value :(
@angry-fridge Thanks for trying! I will add some instruction to the description to make it clearer for future players.
@frogman Ah, sorry to hear that. The good news is you didn't missed much. Green dice in a plant type, there are 3 types for values: 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6. Those can be modified with red, yellow and purple dice based on which one you use, which one you do not use and based on values of those dices. Purple dice was last one I added and it is far less thought out... Thank you for all the feedback!
Pretty cool concept! I agree with colisan, a journal tracking your progress would be really great. Though I managed with tracking things in the notepad. :p And I definitely can understand overscoping in this LD.
I found one bug which made one (or more?) dice stuck in the top left screen:
seadicegarden.png
It also caused some of the green slots in the plots to get blocked with ghost dice, I couldn't drag any new dice in those positions. Later on the ghost dice also appeared in the top slots, as I couldn't press the blinking button to spawn a new one. But fortunately I've managed to stumble towards victory anyway. :)
seadicegarden2.png
After pressing space to restart, game started with all dice in the top left corner, and after dragging them to the slots it turned out I was only given 4 dice, without any greens, and couldn't do anything.
seadicegarden3.png
Reloading the page did help. :) I think the bug might have been caused by me adding a new die from the die creator - I had 4 green dice and I wanted to see if I'll get a fifth one if I move one down to a plot and try spawning one. Either that was a bad move, or there was some timing issue with harvesting plants when a new die was spawned. Not sure which one.
The game looks pretty cool, I liked all the plant variations and experimenting with combos to see them all. :)
I sea what you did here. I always appreciate good pixel work in compo games and those dice have some juicy depth to their look. Fun that got time to implement some fun animations and particle effects, too! :D
And can I just say something CRAZY... I literally thought to myself "man, I feel like a monkey doing puzzles" and the guy just before me commented almost the exact same thing!! Haha. I thought it might be rude to say, but you definitely got that kind of game here. It's mysterious and playing it feels like a science experiment, where the player is the subject.
At first I did not understand what I was doing but I still had fun :D Interesting approach to a farming game :)
I always look forward to seeing what you end up making! I enjoyed it a lot and feel like it could be developed into such a cozy iPad game.
Maybe it’s the old school waves, dice, board game vibes, but it really feels like a digital version of an ancient game that I’m figuring out with some trial and error. You really sold a nice experience and with good vibes.
Also, I really enjoy color coded games, it just immediately makes sense to me.(The plants are great too!)
Awesome effort, thank you! :smile:
Played it without reading the description at first and couldn't figure out what I was doing. Now with a little more info I think I get the idea. Would have loved to have an in-game instruction on what to do. The graphics looked very nice and clean though.
I love board games and this game has some board game vibes which I really appreciated :smile: I could even see this being further developed to a vs game where the player with the most points win, and similar to a lot of "euro" board games you are trying to balance building your engine and scoring points.
Like a lot of people already mentioned, the trial and error part was a lot of fun. Just an overall pleasant entry! :trophy:
@lcstark Thank you for trying out my game! Sorry to hear about the bugs you encountered, I clearly missed some resetting on restart. I didn't test much, because i completely run of of time to do so. But I'm happy you managed to finish anyway! Thanks for the feedback.
@langotriel Yea... I started to add some effects early on, which might have been a mistake, looking on how much I did not added. I wanted it to be experimental, but for this being received well by the player I would had to add much more plants and interactions, so I get the feeling of "monkey trying random stuff" :) Thanks for playing!
@xoreaxeax Thank you! I was ready for both Depths and Garden theme with this one XD
@belle Thank you so much for your kind words! Yup, recently I got really into board games and even before LD started I knew I will do something resembling one and with dices. Happy to hear you had fun!
@grid96 Thanks! Oh I wish I had time to add tutorial. I'm always leaving that (and music/sound effects) as last, and since this time I completely run out of it, there isn't much to guide the player...
@simon-rahnasto I too love board games :D And since my favorite one recently is Scholars of the South Tigris, if you ever saw it, you will instantaneously know why colorful dices are in the game :D I wanted to add more uses for dices than just planting (shop and expeditions in bathyscaph were in my mind). I need to try doing Jam version with a team next time, since Combo does not serves me well recently with my game scoping XD Thanks for playing!
Nice mystery! I took some notes about which combinations did what, but did not manage to become a successful sea-dice-biologist, but I had fun doing it. The art looks great and there seemed to be a nice variety of stuff to grow — unfortunate that I wasn't great at getting much to grow at all, haha. Still, always appreciate a good mysterious entry.
Despite of duplication dices issues (I don't know why I can get another dice in a given color when I already have four of them), and the inability to get the last purple one, I manage to finish the game :smile: Screenshot 2025-04-23 at 22-33-12 Sea Dicegarden by zimny11.png I would have appreciated more feedback on the combinations I've already tested, maybe sort of "receipe" list with only already known combinations, or something like that. As is, I mostly "frolics" randomly upon the different combinations, until I found something useful :sweat_smile: It was fun to try tho, so good job anyways!
A very relaxing little game. Love the visuals. Feels a bit unfinished. But overall a pretty good compo game.
Neat little relaxing... thing. Not much point to doing this, but I had my fun. Your art looks really nice
I played without reading the info first, just how i like it :D
The presentation is really nice, very pleasant. I'm always intrigued by nice animations where i want to find out what can happen if i do the right thing or progress. I missed sound or a bit of music, as usualy, but i can understand it :D
Now the gameplay was quite obscure. I didn't have much choice for the first 15 or so runs, because i had exactly one more die than i needed. I didn't understand why i have different tanks - i thought they grow different plants, but it later got clear they didn't. I simply filled up all dice that i could, and let it grow. This also meant it took very long until i gained new dice.
I'm wondering if the representation as dice does a disservice here. I'd expect some kind of combinatoric behind this, like i want to match the same die values, or never repeat a value (so do sth like a 4-4-4-4, or 1-2-3-4-5). From the description it sounds like the numeric value doesn't matter. I think then the game would be much clearer with symbols - like 6 different seeds, and 6 different temperature settings. In that setup you'd also be free to not have to make 6 values for each setting, but you could also do 3, or 4, or 20 :)
I like the game, definitely interesting to experiment with.
@neon Thanks for playing my game and for your kind words. I wish I had time to implement in-game journal to track stuff, but oh well.
@lereveur Thank you for playing! And thanks for the feedback! I think I figured out why the duplication happens, sadly when I did play test (really short one...) I did not found it. Happy to hear you managed to finish game anyway.
@jk5000 Thanks! "A bit unfinished" is really generous statement XD
@dock-frankenstein Thank you! Yes, it is not even near to be finished, sadly.
@rongo-matane Thank you for playing and feedback! The starting idea was to have dice start at 6 and degrade slowly after being used, but still having other uses. For example yellow dice (responsible for light) would start at 6 (a lot of light) and slowly drop to 1 (adding shade). And some plants would like a lot of light, some will like shade. Add to that ability to spend color drops to rise/lower value of dice and there would have been system fully controled bu the player. Sadly it turned out, that was not doable for me in Compo (even Jam would have been probably not enough). So I dropped it (with a lot of other ideas like shop and bathysphere expeditions to get different dice/plants) and just made it random since it was way faster to implement (and also far worse as a game system :/ ).