City Gardener by PacoChan

STORY
You have arrived to the city of Technopolis. The first thing you notice in this modern city is that there's nothing natural to be found. However, you manage to acquire the only piece of land left with nothing built on it. So you decide to create your own garden to bring some life to this soulless city.
HOW TO PLAY
Your piece of land consists on a 10x10 grid and you can move from square to square in a first person view. You can sow a plant on each square, and after that you must water it regularly or else it will wither and die. You can sow other plants in other squares while the already existing plants are growing. Once a plant has fully grown into a tree, you won't need to water it anymore. Your objective is to grow the highest amount of trees that you can before the time runs out.
But be careful! If you step on a square that contains a plant, you will damage it and it will take longer to fully grow. Sometimes you will have to step on a plant in order to reach and water another plant. So plan carefully where do you start sowing you plants and watch your steps to avoid damaging your plants as much as you can. Fully grown trees, along with 10 random rocks scattered through the land will block your way. They can make things harder for you!
This is the cycle of a plant as long as you water it in time: - Nothing -> Seed planted -> Small plant -> Bush -> Tree
If you don't water the plant in time or if you step on it, it will go back one step as follows: - Bush -> Small plant -> Nothing
Remember that trees won't die, and if a plant fully dies, you'll have to plant the seed again.
CONTROLS
- W: Move Forward
- S: Move Backward
- A: Rotate Left
- D: Rotate Right
- Q: Strafe Left
- E: Strafe Right
- 1: Plant a seed
- 2: Water the seed / plant
Credits
This small game has been made by Miguel Rivera (https://twitter.com/pacochan88). Most of it has been done from scratch in three days, with the exception of some plant meshes and some parts of the code that I did and wrote some time ago.
The music track is called "Street Dancing" from the Album "Osaka Lights", by Timecrawler 82. Downloaded from Free Music Archive under the Attribution License.
Sound effects are from freesound.org. "success" by grunz "UI Confirmation Alert, B4.wav" by InspectorJ
I hope you enjoy my game!
| Windows | https://pacochan.itch.io/city-gardener |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/city-gardener |
Ratings
| Overall | 355th | 3.607⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 753th | 3.073⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 466th | 3.305⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 859th | 3.159⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 69th | 4.381⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 147th | 3.732⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
It created a really good atmosphere.
What a good neon style! I love the 3d city and the tree models!
High score: 1800
Fun! It wasn't obvious to me at first that you could walk away immediately after watering a plant. I mistook the growth progress bar as an action progress bar. Maybe a short animation could have helped with that. The controls took a little getting used to. Felt bit more natural after I realized that I could use the arrow keys instead of WASD, and primarily use my left hand for strafing. Obviously keyboard only first person games aren't very common anymore, but I think there's two ways to make it a little more natural. 1: Keep the movement on one hand (WASD or arrows), and put the rotation on the other (arrows or QR). 2: Adopt what some top down games use, movement on WASD, rotate on QE. For this game, I think the first way would be better, since then the controls wouldn't be so clustered on one hand.