Keep the Garden Alive by gamepopper

Controls: ```
| Keyboard | Gamepad
Move and Aim | WASD | Left Stick / D-Pad
Jump/Select | K | A Button
Water Spray | J | X Button
Weed Killer | I | Y Button
Bug Spray | L | B Button
```
How to Play:
Keep all your flowers alive for as long as possible by regularly spraying them with water. Weeds and bugs will keep appearing, which will make flowers die quicker, so exterminate them with weed killer and bug spray. Game is over when all flowers are dead.

| Youtube | https://gamepopper.itch.io/keep-the-garden-alive |
| Youtube | https://gamepopper.itch.io/keep-the-garden-alive |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-the-garden-alive |
Ratings
| Overall | 691th | 3.266⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 710th | 3.063⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 753th | 3.016⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 484th | 3.719⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 689th | 3.162⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 488th | 2.813⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 541th | 3.188⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 36🗳️ | 38🗨️ |
I had to keep watering the flowers which made it hard to kill weeds or bugs. Not sure what effect the weeds had on flowers. I like how the weed killer kills the flowers too.
It felt a bit strange there were platforms you couldn't really get to. I think if jump was just space or up or so it may have been easier for controls.
Keep up the good work!
By the way, what the reward of killing weed? when I kill weed I sound a negative SFX? Anything I did wrong?
The controls were a bit hard to get used to, but nothing terrible.
It became quite challenging to keep the garden alive, but great for a few minutes and game jam entry.
I think adding a few mechanics and cleaning up the controls slightly would yield a good little game! Good luck with your results!
@chainedlupine That's fair, you could also jump with W (or if you had a gamepad the A button) but I can see the spacebar as being more convieniant.
The main character was really cute!
Only issue I had was that you cut sit next to a plant and it kept the garden alive without moving around.
Great job!
I realized that the maps are generated? for each run, so that gave it some replay-ability! the only graphic i had some issues interpenetrating where the slim gray bars, i thought at first it was some kind of status bar that was not following the camera properly until it started growing stuff on them haha
The keyboard layout was a bit funky, a long time since i have seen the IJKL format being used along with WASD, the extra jump key was a bit redundant, but not disliked haha, the aim did not always correspond with the facing of the player sprite in the left/right direction.
not sure if it was intentional, but you can hod down watering and it sprays endlessly, unless you start running, then it sprays intermittently as you run.
Liked: Concept of the bug spray and basic design. Liked the way the instructions were laid out in the tutorial screen. Challenging to travel around and spray different parts of the world.
Suggestions: I was getting the buttons mixed up a lot - I thought maybe a summary of the 4 button actions listed on the main game screen in the corner as a helpful reminder of the controls while I play would have been nice.
Good work!
Maybe add some pests that you can stop for a future version? And upgrades for your pesticide/water that you can buy when you sell flowers!