LudumData

Harvest Blood Moon by evandowning

[raw]
made by evandowning for LD 41 (JAM)

A farming tower defense game where you protect your home from exploding zombies!

Dig up bones with a shovel and plant those bones in dirt! Water them with cursed water to unleash a vengeful spirit (Vengeful spirits kill zombies) for protection. Cut down trees with an axe and use your hammer to build barricades and repair buildings -- last as long as you can!

screenshot2.png

Controls:

WASD or Joystick for moving G or A button for actions

Credits:

Evan Downing for coding, design, half the sound effects and graphics.

Other half of sprites from Ansimuz's Tiny RPG Town Environment pack on the Unity Asset Store.

Music from soundimage.com by Eric Matyas, specifically "Bell of Weirdness" and "Zombie Game"(looping).

Windows https://evandowning.itch.io/harvest-blood-moon
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/harvest-blood-moon

Ratings

Overall 554th 3.477⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 673th 3.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 694th 3.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 603th 3.591⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 627th 2.8⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 369th 3.523⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

Therdre
24. Apr 2018 · 02:45 UTC
Fit the theme perfectly! I found it pretty fun once I figured out all the actions I could do, was very challenging too.
Luciax
24. Apr 2018 · 03:32 UTC
Really a lot of interesting mechanisms, though it takes time to remember them. But once get used to it I had a lot of fun making different actions to produce things and defend the zombies. Also great graphic works and music.
I thought it might be a little bit of inconvenient to find place and change tools every time. Usually when I was still thinking about what should do next, my home is already destroyed lol.
Riddhee Dutta
24. Apr 2018 · 14:40 UTC
Another great piece of 2D Art. Great Job. Feel free to drop a review at our game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/boomball
Aerynus
24. Apr 2018 · 14:42 UTC
Cool, complex mechanics. The main issue I had was that I found it REALLY difficult to line up the character to pick up or drop a tool. This wastes a lot of time trying to align the character properly, which made it a bit frustrating. Cool concept though!
🎤 evandowning
24. Apr 2018 · 14:57 UTC
@Aerynus Agreed -- I wanted to make it easier to line stuff up, but when the collider was bigger I ran into weird issues where you'd be touching two colliders at once (e.g., grass + tree) and you couldn't tell what you were targeting.

If I had more time I would have probably made it grid-based movement to make it easier to line stuff up!
Imanol Pina
24. Apr 2018 · 15:14 UTC
Beautiful pixel-art and good game!
Lyrcaxis
25. Apr 2018 · 09:39 UTC
It was too hard to pick up stuff.. Instead of detecting what's in the selected tile, maybe make it check priority items close to the player(for example, tools>usable things based on equipped tool>return)
All and all I liked it!
🎤 evandowning
25. Apr 2018 · 16:56 UTC
@Lyrcaxis Agreed! My original plan was to replace movement with a tile-based system for the player (which would remove all the issues) but I only had about 24 hours in total to work on this game. I probably should have anticipated this and made a priority system that weighs tags or proximity for sure. :D
nardandas
25. Apr 2018 · 18:15 UTC
Best I got was 104.11. The only problem I had was lining up with tools, the rest was great. A lot to remember, but great. It was a ton of fun playing the game though!
Gonz0
26. Apr 2018 · 00:12 UTC
Beautiful pixel art. Super complex game too . wow that's a lot of depth , Kudos for managing all that. Super hectic and fun to play!
GiovanniBarrottu
26. Apr 2018 · 08:14 UTC
Interesting concept mixing farming and tower defense, it was very hectic and kind of hard.

It was kind of annoying that using/picking up items didn't really work well sometimes, it seemed like you needed to be perfectly lined up to use things properly, which is annoying in a fast paced game.

It also seems maybe too hard. You need to keep walking back and forth to pick up the tools, but the zombies move so fast that they destroy things before you can pick up axe > walk to get wood > walk back > pick up hammer > build something.
Latrabili Noctu
26. Apr 2018 · 19:10 UTC
Very cool game. Aside from the pick up issue I find it surprising polished and nicely designed. It is really really fun to play, although maybe a little bit too hard. Congrats!
WFMG
26. Apr 2018 · 20:06 UTC
The game looks and sounds really nice, but I found it difficult to figure out how to defend the houses.

I had to restart the game to figure out that the action key is G, and then I couldn't fight against the exploding zombies. I could extract bones from the ground and wood from trees, presumably to rebuild the houses, but I couldn't figure this out. It wasn't very intuitive, and the player placement for performing actions was a bit too strict in my opinion.
CalebLewis
26. Apr 2018 · 20:47 UTC
Really interesting idea! I've been super interested in deconstruction of what I call "slice of life" games (things like farming sims such as Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, and games like Animal Crossing and stuff as well) and I feel that games that do so could have a lot of potential.
🎤 evandowning
26. Apr 2018 · 21:05 UTC
@CalebLewis Thanks! I started off building this with the idea that the farming sim genre was basically built around inconvenience. You have a simple problem with a simple solution (e.g., bone needs water, water the bone) but a series of inconveniences make it interesting to juggle (water runs out, water is far away, water runs out after 4 uses but the most seeds in one area is 3, zombies exploding in the meantime while you also need to build barricades and repair and also need to shovel to get more bones to water...).
Flameo326
28. Apr 2018 · 01:50 UTC
It sounded and looked cool, but it took me 2 attempts to actually figure out how to play the game. I don't understand why the action button is 'G', why not 'F' or even Space, or Left Mouse Click? 'G' doesn't really make sense.

Also, it felt weird having to go pick up my Axe? to plant some bones, then my Watering Can to water them. What about having a way to switch between them?
🎤 evandowning
28. Apr 2018 · 03:40 UTC
@Flameo326 sorry G didn't work for you! If I had more time I would have made more alts. :(

You did not need the axe to plant bones, but the picking up items and having to go swap them out with others was intentional as a design choice. Forcing the player to complete a task, go back to get the next tool, repeat.
hiki911
05. May 2018 · 17:37 UTC
hmmm, action button really is not working properly, this makes game almost unplayable =(
what is the logic behind action button and square cursor?
🎤 evandowning
06. May 2018 · 20:25 UTC
@hiki911 its a trigger set inside it -- unfortunately I didn't have enough time to quality test it as much as I'd like, so if the square isn't on the object itself it won't work properly. Stuff like buildings and trees are easy to target, but it can be difficult with the tools (which is important!).

If I had more time I would have fine tuned it or made the logic grid-based, but I only had 24 hours to make this :(
hiki911
07. May 2018 · 05:51 UTC
@evandowning yeah, it's a pity, but maybe next time you could think about setting by default bigger trigger boxes and maybe adding some sound effects that will notify player that his/her action succeeded or failed
🎤 evandowning
07. May 2018 · 14:33 UTC
@hiki911 the sound effect is a good idea! I don't know why I didn't think about that for picking up items.