Harvest Rune by TheMonsterFromTheDeep
* Please read the first few paragraphs of this description! They contain very important information! *
A combination of an RPG and a farming simulator.
Most of the game is explained through the tutorial, but there are a few points that are not very clear:
* First, and most importantly, the number and quality of drops you get is dependent on how many enemies you spawn in at once. The more enemies you have spawned in, the better and more items you get. *
Second, each kind of enemy drops some kind of item whose name is in purple text, and when you walk up to the Scientist those items are removed from your inventory and the bar behind the Scientist fills up a bit. Once the bar is filled, some text saying "You Win" should appear. ~~However, the actual text part is untested.~~ It took me about 20 minutes to win, farming Spiders.
That, sadly, is the extent of a win condition that this game has.
A few other clarifications, based on the people I've seen play my game: - The only place you can grow is the fenced in area to the left of the house with the slightly lighter-colored grass. If the grass doesn't change to dirt when you walk on it, you can't grow there. - When the tutorial says "This is your health," it outlines the left half of the orb in the bottom left corner of the screen in red. This is kind of hard to notice, but hopefully was self-explanatory enough. - In general, the inventory mechanics are similar to Minecraft. - When you walk up to the Scientist, you can buy things by clicking on them. They simply automatically go into your inventory. The number on the far left is the gold in your inventory, and the number under each item is its price. If your gold doesn't decrease, you didn't buy the item. - You have to hoe a grass tile twice to be able to plant on it. - Plants will not grow unless the tile they are on is wet. - If you can't advance in the tutorial, it's probably because you aren't completing the actions it wants you to complete. It's possible there's a bug of some sort, but I somewhat doubt it. - "Talking to the scientist" simply means walking up to him until your inventory changes to the "buy" screen. - If you absolutely hate the music, and want to try playing without it, delete the file "music.wav" from the "snd" folder before running the executable. Still feel free to rate 1 stars for audio. 😉
Known glitches: - The Wooden Club does not show up on the ground visibly, but can be picked up. It's dropped by Zombies. - The Scientist slowly moves to the right, and can eventually get past the right fence, so you won't be able to talk to him. (However, this shouldn't happen in any game of reasonable length). - Going to bed resets all your plants, even when they are in grown state. This means you can just sleep instead of clipping your plants to enable them to re-grow.
| Windows | https://github.com/TheMonsterFromTheDeep/HarvestRune/releases/tag/windows-bugfix-1 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/harvest-rune |
Ratings
| Overall | 399th | 3.611⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 381th | 3.5⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 540th | 3.407⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 520th | 3.685⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 667th | 3.352⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 625th | 2.811⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 461th | 3.093⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 549th | 3.333⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 88🗨️ |
This game is funny! I like it. I liked the tutorial because had style, personality, mostly in its humor - it has cute, nice jokes, and they sort of contrast/compliment the medievally font of the text. And the same type of humor goes on in the item descriptions, which is good, because those are the main thing you read once you've completed the tutorial.
The sound and visuals also really help add to the whole. The whole thing has a bit of a homey feel that you get from any good harvest moon game, and the simple music, sound, and art help that. (So does the humor, by the way - there are different ways to tell jokes, and the jokes in this game feel sort of calm and non-intrusive - homey.)
At first I didn't expect much from this; I expected a rather bare clone of the game of its types. But realizing I was growing monsters was a hilarious surprise, and the rest of the game's cute, calm, homey mood really characterizes it.
As it were, I didn't intend for the tutorial to be humorous at all, really, but I guess some of the parts, especially the parts I wrote closer to the end of the jam, would probably match the inventory descriptions closer.
In any case, I was definitely going for something of a Harvest Moon feel based off of the single Harvest Moon game I've played--I tried to match music but especially some sound effects, and if it at least felt similar I'm pretty happy about that.
The sound is a bit repetitive, but fitting to a farmer's life :-)
I first thought I can play the game without the tutorial, although having read the description on the game page I had no idea what to do. The tutorial enlightened me then. Took me some time to figure out that I have to use the hoe twice on a patch. This is an awesome game, however the Windows version had some technical issues on my system (Win10, 4K screen, 250% scaling): 1. the game started with a too small screen window, but after rescaling the window I could see everything. 2. the game crashed once after I clipped some plants.
I honestly have no idea what might cause it to crash. The only issue I'm aware of in the code is some alignment issues, but I believe that if they affected your platform the game would crash almost immediately.
The graphics are neat and, although I'm not much of a harvest moon fan, is surprisingly fun! Growing monsters is a cool idea and I definitely see potential for expansion in that department. Speaking of, I feel the game is lacking polish in some places; namely when fighting. For examples, knockback on enemies would be nice (it was hard to tell if I was actually hitting an enemy). Regardless, the game is very well developed considering it was made in only the time LD gives you, so I'll cut ya some slack ;)
Oh, and I love the nighttime colours.
But I have got a question.... maybe I didn't understand everything but I got stuck because I had no more golds. I mean, I had like 5 swords and 2 daggers but no more gold. Is there a way to sell it at the shop ?
This is honestly an amazing game. Good job!
@ZaneDD : I wouldn't necessarily call it innovative, but I'm glad you found it that way. :slight_smile:
Graphics are easy and nice. Core gameplay made well but I didn't manage to fulfill the task 'cause it takes too long (is there even anything after that? :smile:).
Idea was great but I'm not sure if it fits theme well.
Played a while and had fun so thanks and good job! ;)
I think I picked up a bug however - in the 'Play with Tutorial' section I could not get the tutorial text to scroll or disappear no matter what I did.
Still! The graphics were good and the text was funny. The gameplay worked well and fit the theme neatly. Nice game! :smile:
Later, it goes back to using the space.
Sorry about that.
I liked all the mechanics and the game felt quite polished. The amount of content was impressive. The use of the theme was really cool. Some things were not very clear in the game but I read the description of your game which definitely helped.
I didn't understand how to interact with the scientist though. I assume the tutorial was complete because no text was displayed and I went to bed. The game said I had to talk to the scientist but I could only purchase things from him, maybe that's all I had to do.
Also having some way to set the volume of the music would be nice.
Overall really cool game and had fun playing around with all the mechanics. Great job! :smiley:
Critic : Music is wrong to my mind.
Critic : Music is wrong to my mind.
Also, I thought the audio was fine.
Good work !
The project was obviously very ambitious with all its content and mechanics and even interactive inventory and tutorial. Yet you managed to deliver a playable and enjoyable game that doesn't feel unfinished in any way. Great work, and I hope to see more of your games in the future!
(by the way, you might think about adding a screenshot to the description above)
Well... I say little but there was actually a surprising amount of content, so.. Good job!
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
Congratulations for the game!
If possible, check out my entry at this link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/type-hero-adventures
Great work. Looking forward for your next jam entry