LudumData

gaarden by Jezzamon

[raw]
made by Jezzamon for Ludum Dare 45 (COMPO)

Take a break. Come play in the gaarden.

preview.gif

gaarden is equal parts about interaction and observation.

Controls: Mouse

Come play! (Web, HTML5)

From Wikipedia: "4X is a genre of strategy-based video and board games in which players control an empire and eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".

gaarden is designed to be the opposite of that. In gaarden you have no empire, and to start with, there is no world. There is no win condition or ending. Just a blank canvas. But there's life waiting to be discovered...

If you're looking to see everything, here's a list of all the things you can find:

  • Egg
  • Tree
  • House
  • Mountain
  • Human
  • Baby Human
  • Animal
  • Giant

Have a nice day :)

Post-compo changelog:

To port to mobile I made the following changes: - Handle touch events as well as mouse events - Make the touch targets of things larger - Make the game larger on smaller screens - Separate game update loop from rendering so slower devices can run the game

Youtube http://jezzamon.com/gaarden
Youtube https://jezzamon.itch.io/gaarden
Youtube https://github.com/Jezzamonn/gaarden
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/gaarden

Ratings

Overall 129th 3.674⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 200th 3.348⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 44th 4⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 28th 4.261⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 66th 3.957⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Audio 52th 3.75⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 158th 2.921⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 12th 4.159⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 16🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

xart2012
07. Oct 2019 · 01:47 UTC
fun, but very hard not to miss, when map is large.
torcado
08. Oct 2019 · 02:56 UTC
ooohh yess, really good style. love the whole aesthetic and the animations especially. I wish i could see whats in the egg... (unless i missed something!)
very nice and relaxing :blush: :egg:
Sheepolution
08. Oct 2019 · 09:12 UTC
Interesting game. Certainly relaxing. Maybe a bit too slow for my taste. Also it's sad that there aren't more elements to it or more ways to interact. I like the art style though. The minimalism of it works really well.
jharler
08. Oct 2019 · 14:48 UTC
This is very zen. I love the minimalism about it and the sounds are soothing. At least until you have a lot of giants growing trees. Then it gets slightly chaotic. :)

Very nicely done.
🎤 Jezzamon
09. Oct 2019 · 06:38 UTC
@sheepolution Yeah, I agree! I didn't manage to add more into the world during the jam, but I think that would've been fun!
Local Minimum
09. Oct 2019 · 18:02 UTC
:egg: :mountain: :house: :evergreen_tree: !!
I wanted this to just keep growing, expanding and becoming more finding more and larger things! A really great feeling in this game. I liked making mountains most, because the sound there was very nice. The egg was also really nice sound but it didn't feel like I could do much to it. So besides perhaps hiding the smaller things and focusing on a larger scale once the world had grown a bit, the most important improvement to me would have been if the game also felt like it was building up more and more sounds, becoming a bit of a musical instrument. But then the sounds would have needed to be longer or been repeating or echoing a while.
Upsitesdown
10. Oct 2019 · 20:04 UTC
This is the most relaxing game I played so far. Really well done, love the sounds and the graphics. I would love you to expand the gameplay and the things you can discover. Please do that and please let me know if you do it :D

If you want you can take a look at our game, maybe you'll like it as well :)
crneumre
12. Oct 2019 · 12:46 UTC
Really interesting game, it's fun expanding the world and discovering new things in it.
The only thing that stopped me from continuing was the game started lagging once I reached a large world. Also I wish I had more interaction with the world.
Overall Great minimalistic art and relaxing game play, Cool entry!
Evepto
16. Oct 2019 · 13:37 UTC
Very relaxing game. Plz play and rate my game too https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/the-slime-slayer
dob
20. Oct 2019 · 03:53 UTC
This is very fun. I thought at first there was a goal (didn't RTFM) but eventually realized it was just a cool toy with lots of stuff to try. I eventually got it so big that I couldn't tell if stuff was bits I should click or dust on my monitor. Really neat and meditative. Cool entry.
ThePirateNun
21. Oct 2019 · 00:00 UTC
I really like this game, and I found myself continuing to play it after I had discovered everything just because it was nice. The visuals were charming and simple, and it felt like I was making my own music. I just think this super cool! Can't wait to see future development!
mharring
21. Oct 2019 · 02:15 UTC
Very calming experience. The sound effects set the mood well. It would have been neat to have some color find its way into the art, but overall well done!
ick
21. Oct 2019 · 03:25 UTC
awesome game
Budaniel
21. Oct 2019 · 04:53 UTC
The sound choices, along with the blank aesthetic, gave this a very calming vibe. The frame rate kinda crapped out on me around this point, though:

![gaarden.png](///raw/2a/z/29c2a.png)
LeviDSmith
21. Oct 2019 · 05:46 UTC
I liked clicking on the Xs to make trees, people, houses, and mountains. I couldn't ever figure out if there was a way to crack the huge egg, but it was fun to click on it to make different sounds.
Meta-link
21. Oct 2019 · 11:14 UTC
Amazing game ! I loved everything, from the calm pace to the minimalist graphics.

Good job !
Coda Highland
21. Oct 2019 · 13:07 UTC
I was pleasantly surprised by how chill this is.
🎤 Jezzamon
23. Oct 2019 · 16:12 UTC
@levidsmith sadly no way to hatch the egg... *yet*...
Jupiter_Hadley
23. Oct 2019 · 16:45 UTC
Lovely game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/ZxefAL2rBy8
ohsqueezy
25. Oct 2019 · 19:15 UTC
even when you turn off the computer the egg is still there hopefully it won't eXploit and eXterminate once it hatches
exilegl
26. Oct 2019 · 16:21 UTC
Love the cute little transformation animations and sound effects. Perhaps some of the little dudes running around could help you find things, creating a little village of teamwork, and you could keep them going by finding food.

I've got quite a bit of stuff going here :evergreen_tree:

![Screenshot from 2019-10-26 11-20-07.png](///raw/3f2/z/29dab.png)
🎤 Jezzamon
27. Oct 2019 · 08:27 UTC
@exilegl Nice! Although looks like you missed a few things! The people in the game do actually interact a bit, but you can only really notice it if you slow down and watch for a while rather than making trees all the time :P
exilegl
27. Oct 2019 · 13:29 UTC
Ah I see, will have to give it another go then :)