Three words come to mind when I reflect on this game. Soothing, engaging and beautiful.

I heard about Zen Roots in the IRC chat from Lindar and told him I'd check it out. Well I'm happy I did. As I told him in IRC, I love the Zen Roots song, and it's extremely fitting for this game's mood.

The simple yet elegant graphics are nice, and I like all the little touches you put in like the off-shoot roots and the details on the rocks. Even the credits screen has the nifty feature of growing trees as you wait. The whole game exudes the feeling of "zen".

The gameplay is engaging too. I found it a lot of fun. My main complaint (a small one) is that I died early on due to mistaking a tiny rock for one of the white pickups (I hadn't yet found a legitimate one yet). The other is that I feel the white pickups are too rare. I got to 361 which I felt was decently far and had only seen a single white pickup.

That aside, this was a lovely game and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's just what I needed to relax after all the stress I've had today. Thank you, and excellent work!

What a delightfully soothing game. I loved your choices in aesthetics, music and mechanics to really bring the theme and mood together. Thanks again and keep on growing :)

Great work, it's very pleasant to play, the music is smooth, and I like the graphical choice, even if I have some doubt about the color contrast. Thanks!

Paceful, smooth and relaxing game.
The music matches the game very well.
Good Job!

What a great game ! So peaceful & relaxing ! Great aesthetics, music and pace to the game.

Well done !

Lovely game! Indeed very zen like, very cool to play. The controls are great and the music is extremely soothing. The whole was also very coherent, with the music fitting the athmosphere of the visuals, and even the controls :) Best I've played from the 20 up until now!

Did you publish the source code somewhere? I'm very interested in how you implemented the line effect. Well done!

Very relaxing! It took a while to ramp up, but that seems to be the point. One minor technical note: Sometimes the collectibles would spawn inside rocks. That's really the only bad thing I have to note. Great job!

I fidn't find the game too fun. The theme matched the Ludum Dare very well though.

I also found the graphics far too bright to the point of it hurting my eyes.

The music was by far the best piece of the game.

Thanks everybody for the kind words and valuable feedback. All graphics were drawn using the unity LineRenderer component.

For the people finding the game to bright. I noticed the HTML5 version renders it way to bright but haven't been able to find a fix for that.

Tranqulity.

NICE GAME! relaxing... and nice... really nice :) the right gamejust after playing so many games

Wow. This made me really relaxed, very well done!

beautiful but i think is to slow

Nice mood. Tranquil and calming, which is what I needed after my 20-hr day yesterday :) Nice look and feel, well done!

Loved it. Very calming and zen. My only suggestion really would be to make the rocks a bit easier to see. Other than that, BRAVO.

Would love to see this developed further. Very nice game.

However years of playing top down driving games really made the whole "left to turn clockwise and right to turn anti-clockwise" thing confusing.

Great game, lot's of zen gaming in view with this one. Thanks

So soothing and highly zen-inducing, just what I needed after the jam! The name is very fitting. Love the controls and the mood set by the music, good job!

Great construction of atmosphere, the music, graphic style and gameplay mix together exceptionally well.

I was confused at times because when I press the right arrow, the root actually turns left (from its POV) so that cost me a few games (it may be just me though).
The heavy bloom (I think?) seemed to make the view have very little contrast. While it definitely added to the soothing feeling it made it a bit hard to see.

The way roots grew was really beautiful!
Music and sound effects fit each other well.

Good job!

Hah, growing root, that's innovative :)
Warm, nice colours and relaxing music match very well.

Very zen indeed :) good work!

I remember playing your little demos of this in IRC the other night! Feels good to finally be able to play it.

Lindar's music for the game is absolutely phenomenal, very relaxing. You've done a great job at polishing the hell out of this as well! The concept is really simple but that's the beauty of it.

The game itself made me feel some chills from how calming it was. This would work very well as a mobile phone/tablet game for waiting rooms.

As others have mentioned before the music and game in general are very relaxing. I enjoyed playing it but so far haven't been able to catch one of the white thingies. I only came close to the first one I saw and the second one was in the middle of a rock =/

Very calm and soothing, a very relaxing experience. The background music is very serene :)

Very good entry, good luck!

Saw your post mortem blog post and decided to give it a go - glad I did! It's very relaxing, even if I think the background colour is a bit too bright. The graphics are really good, and they fit the zen theme you were going for perfectly. I also liked the random root parts that would spawn from the main root, and it was weirdly satisfying to manage to lump a lot of them together. Well done!

Very zen indeed, the music and the graphics work great together to make the game very enjoyable. It fits the theme very well as well. Well done!

This game is great! I really like the pace and you really were able to set the mood with the graphics and audio. I made a game with a similar concept a few jams ago, but not nearly as good as this. great work!

Well it's pretty zen alright! I like it, very smooth, nice relaxing gameplay, only gets confusing sometimes if you're trying to chase one of those sparkly things around and you get lots of side-roots in your path :D

Cheers,
Ionut(Tyrants.not.found team)

Gorgeous game.

This game is very relaxing :D
I like it!

Really great concept. Love the idea of the roots growing and you have some control over the direction. Great use of the theme!

Zensational <3

Great Zen-like music, but the game is so fast at the end I'm more panicking than comtemplating. It's not a bad game, probably it's just because I went too deep too quickly.

I included your game in my Let's Play Ludum Dare series as thanks for commenting on my game!

You can check out the details here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/12/19/lets-play-ludum-dare-34-episode-01-is-now-uploaded/

Very relaxing and beautiful game. Played very smoothly in the real web version. The growing was very smooth and just felt right. Good job!

Excellent mood in this game. Very chill. Love the minimalist graphics and music. Gameplay is paced well and matches the presentation in a nice way too. A minor gripe I have is the colour choices are a bit harsh in the beginning of the game, the roots and some of the rocks contrast a little unpleasantly with the background. This is less of a problem later on as the background darkens, though. Good work overall.

Great atmosphere and the gameplay, simple yet very fun and entertaining! I loved the little roots growing off. It was a very fun game! Much enjoyed! :D