Slime Garden by Flameo326
Slime Garden is a mix of metroidvania and rpg.
Like a metroidvania, you will explore and unlock new areas.
Like an rpg you will fight enemies and earn levels.
The difference is that you unlock new areas from rpg elements, like quests!
Use A and D to move Left and Right.
Use W to climb.
Use S to fall.
Use Space to attack. Enjoy!

| HTML5 (web) | https://flameo326.itch.io/slime-garden |
| Windows | https://flameo326.itch.io/slime-garden |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/slime-garden |
Ratings
| Overall | 564th | 3⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 616th | 2.652⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 684th | 2.326⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 651th | 2.674⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 556th | 2.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 434th | 2.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 519th | 2.024⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 491th | 2.738⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
Good job!
I won the game and got to lvl 109!
The game needs some balance, sometimes it's easy to kill and gain experience, sometimes it's impossible. Enemies spawning too much on the same place makes it fast to gain experience. Music is repetitive. I had no idea if i was able to kill one slime or not, there was neither a level to them nor a life bar which i could know how hard to kill they were. I had to guess their color was related to their level. I found some bugs in AI as well. They would go away from me instead of coming toward me.
I like how you can jump from rope to rope. I didn't get those blocked gates with helmets symbols. They only opened after I won the boss.
I couldn't figure out how to beat the boss (if that was it), sadly - he just kept running into the door after I hit him 6-7 times and hitting him did nothing afterwards. But I did like what I saw in the world you've built. Art and sound are quite simple, somewhat repetitive, but of course that's normal for a compo game. Having a leveling system made for a good motivator to keep going, by the way. Would gladly play an expanded version.
I had a pretty good time exploring the level and jumping around. The movement felt very... "slime-y" in the best kind of way! It felt how it should feel if I were controlling a slime with a sword. :)
I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but I did find an area where it just endlessly spawned slimes to kill, so I was able to just sit there and mash space bar. I wish I didn't find it... it's almost like that Destiny loot cave. You hate doing it but... I'm leveling up! :( I thought the color-change mechanic was really cool also. At first I thought it was time to me leveling up, but it seemed like it would change constantly? Either way, I liked it since you were the same as the other sprites except... *SPECIAL.*
I think it has a lot of potential if the combat was overhauled a bit, but the feel of the rest of the game was good!
Really dig the music.
Aside from that, I enjoyed this game. It has a surprisingly large world with quite a bit to do.
Big world, some different slimes. Looks nice!
Rather simple battle system and I can greatly understand you on this. :)
Every time on such a jam game lots of us put more effort to build the world around the mechanic than to development of a basic mechanic itself, forgetting that the basic mechanic is a most important part which critically influences on perception of the game world.
But as I said, greatly understand you on this! Building the world is just much more interesting! xD
Also for jam and moreover for compo it is actually nice polish of a basic mechanic! But if you going to continue the project your battle system will definetly need more variety.
As other people said the game is also grindy right now, but maybe it was a part of your idea of mixing 2 incompatible genres.
Talking about the theme - RPG + Metroidvania are not actually incompatible genres as for me. UnEpic is actually a successful project with such a mix. It is a Metroidvania with levelling system, inventory, quests and other RPG-alike stuff. Check it out, if you had not yet, I think you will like it.
Generally I liked your game, it is a pretty nice entry. :3
Here is my win screen:
http://take.ms/04WuK
After I finished the boss, I came back to the room where tons of slimes of different color spawns. Wanted to check if there are any additional content I may accidentally skipped.
For this time my level was high enough to kill them easily which boosted my EXP dramatically. So I ended playing on level 105:
http://take.ms/OzJpa
**Great job! :3**
Thanks for the comment about focusing on the specific rather than the whole. I hadn't really though about it but it makes sense. For example, it sounds like people loved the climbing. If I had focused more on the world exploration, I could have appealed to a more Metroidvania styled game. If I had focused more on the combat/ spawning/ stat balancing, I could have appealed to RPG. Either way, I think players would have had more fun with a 'well done' mechanic and some 'meh' mechanics, rather than a whole bunch of 'ok' mechanics.
Thanks for playing the game!