FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD59 → Hubble Horticulture

Hubble Horticulture

By soothsayer and

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3603.6525
Fun2903.5825
Innovation3653.4725
Theme4953.6025
Graphics5543.4726
Audio3553.4526
Humor4862.6021
Mood5323.4523

Comments

pavel-goncharov 2026-04-21 16:59

I wish there were some help on how to play the game, not just at the beginning. I completely forgot the key mappings, so I can't continue playing 🥲

pocketdog 2026-04-21 22:18

Cool animation! The main character reminded me of the character in my game

2026-04-21 22:21

This is hella awesome. Like Stardew Valley if it was a puzzle game. Took me a second to figure out what was going on though. I will say that it takes quite a while to even figure out what the computer terminal does, by the time I got there (at least 5 minutes) it was like 19$ per decode which was a little painful to crack all the shapes on the bottom. I feel like there could have been farming mechanics added sooner beside just the yellow seed.

jnur 2026-04-22 22:16

Looks really cool, the idea seems fun. I usually don't download any games and stick to playing HTML5 uploads, so I can't really rate this, but I'll still say that it is interesting and it's a shame the unicode characters broke. Makes the aliens a bit more immersive though, when you only see those blocks when they speak :smile: A pro tip, since this seems to be the first Ludum Dare for both of you - always try your build early on and make sure everything works and looks fine. Although I guess you'll probably remember that the next time

bigdippers 2026-04-22 22:19

I played all the way through but it felt annoyying not being able to decode the symbols on the upgrade transmitter thing. Cool game otherwise though, nice job!

2026-04-22 22:20

The art style and audio are awesome! I really like the concept, I just wish there was a bit more explaining in the beginning about how everything works

msipp27 2026-04-22 22:24

html5 seems busted =(

soothsayer 2026-04-22 22:34

@msipp27 It unfortunately is, we didn't realize the translation symbols would break in a web export.

soothsayer 2026-04-22 22:45

@jnur Learning experience for sure. We've done other jams via itch.io and there's a little more flexibility there. Didn't realize until after that we could just link an itch page! Wouldn't have helped the unicode stuff but could've solved some of the formatting issues.

zedgame 2026-04-22 22:58

I enjoyed the unique take on the classic farming game loop! Having a goal to always work towards motivated me to invest more time into the game that I normally would have with usual games of the genre.

jamesgames1000 2026-04-22 23:06

Pretty fun at first but kind of gets repetitive and slow also not very clear how to play at firs, other than that great game.

acartlidge 2026-04-22 23:32

That was really fun! I started with the broken web build then was curious enough to download it and beat it. I felt super pleased when I got enough language to discern who was buying vs selling for the first time. And then I just love farming. The only gripe is I felt like the ending was a bit flat because I wound up entering the SOS code before sprinklers or plot 3, it would have just been nice to get all the upgrades then do 1 last push to make money for a new set of symbols for the final SOS. Overall really great work, I had a great time!

jakob-meier 2026-04-22 23:41

Just played it through in HTML5, now I read the comments... I thought the broken Unicode was all intended!! :laughing:

I was confused when I couldn't decode the symbols to submit over the console. But the broken Unicode display shows the numbers of the actual Unicode, so I used that to look up the symbols. I thought it might be part of the puzzle to figure that out? Whelp, now I know it was a web export problem. Anyway, the extra layer added fun for me :D

Took me almost an hour to get through but I enjoyed it!

wakobu 2026-04-23 10:17

The audio and graphics are awesome!

The concept is cute and quite original. It would maybe lack a little bit of gameplay variation.

Great entry overall, congrats :grin:

soothsayer 2026-04-23 16:39

@jakob-meier Holy cow, thanks for sticking with it. That's really impressive lol

tomssuli 2026-04-23 22:34

What a fun little farming game. Neat pixelart, funky music and nice relaxed gameplay. I liked the combination of farming and decoding.

The language decoding reminds me of Chronicles of Teddy, but there it was even more complicated as symbols were syllables in alien language so you had to learn the alien words that were composed of the syllables.

Anyways, nice polished game. Could have done more of this... It would be a perfect minigame for a terraria-like survival game for example.

hubble_Clipboard_04-24-2026_01.jpg

yanato 2026-04-24 00:52

Looks like pre-pre-pre-alpha for ~~Stardew~~ Cosmo Valley xD

sledzik 2026-04-24 00:54

Nice entry, I played the web version without realising it should work diferently, nonetheless bought all the decodes, interesticng concept

podrez 2026-04-24 06:28

Cool idea to combine seemingly incompatible mechanics. I liked it. The style is nice too

venomousmouse 2026-04-27 10:25

Good farming simulation, with nice vibe, but i needed time to grasp everything. Also thank you for writing the controls in description. In general, nice game.

ben-morledge-hampton 2026-04-27 18:03

Very charming! Would be even better with some sound effects.

kahztein 2026-05-01 08:17

Quite a cool game! It was able to keep my attention all the way to the end, and was pretty fun.

The translation mechanic is quite nicely done, there's a bit of strategy you can use to save on money by working out the important symbols to translate.

Music and art was quie nice, some sfx would be nice of course, but you clearly had a lot to get done during the jam.

Well done to you both!