Bidimensional Landscaping by adharris

[raw]
made by adharris for LD30 (COMPO)
This is my first LD Submission. It's a score-attack puzzler where you control two instances of the game at a
time.

You play as Kent, the bi-dimensional landscaper. He exists in two dimensions
at once, and is expected to build beautiful towns in both.

## How to play

Control Kent With WSAD or the arrow keys, and place the current item with
space.

Items placed in the world are awarded Aesthetic points based on what is in the
tiles to the north, south, east, and west of them, according to the following
rules:

* Trees get 1 point for every adjacent tree.
* Paths get 1 point for every adjacent path.
* Houses get 1 point for every adjacent path or tree, but lose one point for an adjacent house.

The goal is to maximize your points across both towns. There isn't a formal
end/lose condition, but eventually you will trap Kent with trees or houses, so
let's call that the end.


## About

This is my first #LD48, as well as my first released "game". As such, I stuck
with what I know, which is web development.

As such, everything here is HTML and pngs (no svg, no canvas). I used AngularJS
for the javascript.

I only really tested this in Chrome.

## Things I Didn't Get To

I had planned for more items, (i.e. signpost which gets bonus for being at a
forking path, flowers placed at the base of trees, wells in path intersections,
etc) but ran out of time. Much of the logic for adding multiple items to the
same cell is in place, I was just missing the sprites and the scoring logic.

Originally, my goal was to have more than 2 towns. There would be a limit to
the number of active towns you could have, and a town would be removed when
it got a certain number of points. The goal would be to get a high score in few
moves so you could keep the number of villages down. There were far too few
hours to do this.

Ratings

Coolness 47% 1319
Overall 3.58 204
Fun 3.31 327
Graphics 2.92 676
Innovation 4.27 14
Mood 2.82 700
Theme 4.08 40

Feedback

43iscoding
25. Aug 2014 · 14:49 UTC
I like puzzles generally, and I enjoyed this one aswell!
INC$D021
26. Aug 2014 · 14:13 UTC
Brilliant.. One of the best ideas for the "Connected Worlds" theme. Very nice.
A lot of stares from me. :)
eyeofbri
29. Aug 2014 · 14:14 UTC
This game rules. Simple, yet really satisfying game mechanic. Perfectly fits the theme too!
pjimmy
29. Aug 2014 · 14:44 UTC
5 stars for innovation, well done
Stan Sypek
31. Aug 2014 · 23:34 UTC
Got a 42 and 79. Would have been a lot better had I figured out sooner how to split the Kents up. Not to mention that built myself into a corner on the lower one. I know the score could be a lot higher, but have to come back. More games to rate! this was great and one of the best themes so far. Can't get more connected than that. Only down side is lack of audio.
Nuclear Napalm
01. Sep 2014 · 05:46 UTC
Really brain-twisting puzzle! Nice job!
fauge
02. Sep 2014 · 00:54 UTC
very simple yet great puzzle! graphics seemed to match the theme of the game very well!
colludium
02. Sep 2014 · 02:25 UTC
Awesome game - very well done!
vividhelix
02. Sep 2014 · 03:01 UTC
Very original idea, I liked this one a lot!
jukimv1986
02. Sep 2014 · 03:22 UTC
Congrats on your first entry to a Ludum Dare! Its mechanics are simple yet extremely clever. Not an easy feat to balance both worlds aesthetics. Well done!
Ted Brown
02. Sep 2014 · 03:53 UTC
A fine concept for a game, and well designed! Good job keeping the first part of the queue matched up, then switching it later. If you expand the project (and I think you should), consider coming up with ways that the gardener can modify the queue, or have additional trade-offs that aren't just based on points. Good compo!
pikkpoiss
02. Sep 2014 · 04:01 UTC
My favorite take on the connected worlds theme so far! The different queues of items for each world, the ability to have the two players get out of sync with their locations, and the need to maintain a path for the players to be able to walk around on made this a really challenging, and interesting puzzle game. Thanks for sharing!
tcarter
02. Sep 2014 · 04:02 UTC
Clean and simple. Very nice! When portraying people from above, it's usually nice to show the side-view as you've done for the houses and trees.
BMacIntosh
02. Sep 2014 · 04:06 UTC
Got 125-100 :). Great idea, really enjoyed it.
PowerSpark
02. Sep 2014 · 06:29 UTC
Very innovative, you should continue working on this.
Endurion
02. Sep 2014 · 07:08 UTC
Can't vote as no keypresses seem to register. Using IE 11.
micahcowan
06. Sep 2014 · 17:18 UTC
Really cool idea! Nice interpretation of the theme.
DeltaF1
06. Sep 2014 · 21:11 UTC
Same as @Endurion :/

No keypresses are registering. Using Firefox 31
DeltaF1
06. Sep 2014 · 21:12 UTC
@Endurion

Try using Google Chrome. It's working for me in Chrome.
DeltaF1
06. Sep 2014 · 21:22 UTC
I got 93 and 49 before I couldn't do anytinhg else. in one world I was stuck, in the other I only had houses in spaces all next to houses.

5 stars! The graphics were simplistic, but nice. The theme was brilliantly implemented, and this kind of optimization puzzle is REALLY innovative. Congrats for thinking this up! It was really compelling, and I played the whole thing through, totally concentrated. 5/5, 10/10, 9001/9000, any way you measure it, awesome game!