LudumData

Hesperidian Trees by jlauper

[raw]
made by jlauper for LD 40 (JAM)

Garden

You find yourself in the garden of the Hesperides, and were able to harvest the golden apples. But why stop there, plant them and watch them grow into trees carrying their own apples. Be careful though the Hesperides are not happy for your intrusion and want you dead.

The more apples you spend and trees you grow the stronger the enemy becomes.

  • Move with WASD,
  • plant an apple with T,
  • press F to open the upgrades menu,
  • press Space to harvest the apples of a tree when grown
  • eat an apple to fully restore your health with E.

  • pause the game with P or ESC

  • You can deal damage to your enemies by leftcklicking your mouse, unfortunately the only indication that it work is their healthbar.

Do have what it takes to lead the scoreboard?

Disclaimer: highscore may not actually work and if it does who knows for how long because i'm using an old phone as server. Also it might take a few seconds to make the connection.

The game is a jar so it should hopefully work for non-windows to.

Windows https://athar.itch.io/hesperidian-trees
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/hesperidian-trees

Ratings

Overall 1098th 2.658⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 955th 2.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1035th 2.526⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 955th 2.868⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1030th 2.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 705th 1.75⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Humor 919th 2.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1039th 2.395⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 4🗨️

Feedback

michaelsonbritt
09. Dec 2017 · 22:31 UTC
The collect-expand-collect reward cycle works well here, the upgrade system makes sense and I like how the monsters upgrade as your character progresses. It's a solid foundation of a game.
Dillon
15. Dec 2017 · 02:57 UTC
I see what you were trying to do with this game, however I feel an implementation details got in the way of it truly fitting the theme. Namely, the later monsters, while they do more damage, moved slowly enough that I could simply avoid them. It got to the point where I managed to fill the entire screen with trees, and harvest them without taking a single bit of damage, which contrasts with the initial monsters which were fast and I had to deal with. The upgrades therefore only really helped in the initial stages where you couldn't avoid the monsters.

There was a bug I did notice with the menus: If you pause w/ Esc on the upgrade menu, then unpause, the game will resume while you stay in the menu.

I do think that if the monsters weighting and difficulty was changed it'd fit the theme a whole lot better.
BryceLTaylor
15. Dec 2017 · 04:39 UTC
This launches on a mac but it is just a white box with no game.
gustavo.christino
23. Dec 2017 · 12:35 UTC
It would be nice if the screen had indications of the existing controls, since there are menus and hidden features.
TheMonsterFromTheDeep
27. Dec 2017 · 06:31 UTC
I like a lot of this game. The core concept is strong and everything works well together. Currently, it is simply too easy!

I ran into two potential problems: First of all, at one point, when I was planting trees, my computer started making error noises -- and I'm guessing this means that I was planting seeds where I couldn't. Later, while planting seeds, the game simply froze. Perhaps I had too many trees.

Also, if there was audio aside from the aforementioned error noises (you left the voting category open), I didn't hear it.
alexrose
28. Dec 2017 · 03:39 UTC
The economy needs improving, e = instant health back, but it gets to a point where you can just walk round your grove of 80000 trees spamming space and f to simultaneously plant one and harvest like 100. By the end I was basically invincible and could one hit kill everything, and those orcs are so slow that I was completely in control of the action economy, I didn't even have to confront them until I was like the level 99 last boss of the multiverse.

I played it until it crashed from having too many trees lol. Decent entry, need to work on your balancing though :P
aurel
28. Dec 2017 · 06:26 UTC
Once I figured out the main premise of the game, it became a bit too easy. I think a bit of balancing could go a long way to trying to get just the right level of difficulty - maybe have the enemies scale up over the course of the game?
abcdef65g
28. Dec 2017 · 07:47 UTC
Like others said, it's easy to break the game - that said, it is fun enough that we bothered to try it, haha! I like the main loop of the game, and while I completely forgot there was an upgrade option, the enemies were always easy enough to kill, or too slow to even have to deal with.

Also, I didn't reach the point where the game crashes due to too many trees, because strangely I got a Java exception and everything stopped working, which I initially thought was me accidentally hitting the pause button. The exception was a ConcurrentModificationException at dungrove.Spawner.draw(Spawner.java:46).
Dumivid
28. Dec 2017 · 12:41 UTC
Sorry, can't let a quality review, don't have enough time, just want to help to get out of danger zone. Overall i think game is good, keep going. Happy Holidays.
ProdigalSon
28. Dec 2017 · 19:04 UTC
The screen was really tiny for me and the immediate goal is not too obvious. I felt like the game mainly became a clickathon to kill enemies but not sure if that's what I was supposed to do and it was really hard to see. Sorry, wish I could provide more feedback but not sure what the aim for the game was :(
vfabien21
28. Dec 2017 · 21:12 UTC
The idea of mixing gardening / harvesting / fighting is interresting. But there still are many rough edges in the game.

You very good point though, is that you all important system systems implemented : planting, growing, harvesting, monster generation, upgrades, fighting... that's an impressive list for a jam. Good job !