EXTREME Garden Simulator by VectorWolf
Well. You are a simple man, with simple taste. You love your flower pots out in the sun. But it's hot. Like REALLY hot. So you have to constantly water your plants so they don't die. You gain points by keeping your plants alive and lose points by letting them die (not taking into account the emotional damage of seeing your plant buddies WILT IN THE SUN!). Make sure to refill your watering can often so you don't run out of water.
Multiplayer Mode:
This mode is REALLY the most fun / heart of the game. It can even get quite tactical, but PLEASE don't let it end like the average game of "Mario Party"...)
Plants belong to the person who last watered it. This means they grant points to this player while alive, but also deduce points when dying. Try to score the most points by shoving and keeping the other player from watering and keeping your own plants alive.
Controls:
Player 1: * Directional movement: w, a, s, d | D-Pad | Left-Stick * Spill water from your watering can: space | a-button * Shove the other player: left shift | b-button
Player 2: * Directional movement: arrow-keys | D-Pad | Left-Stick * Spill water from your watering can: right shift | a-button * Shove the other player: keypad-0 | b-button
Select stages by clicking on them. Return to menu by pressing Escape. Gamepad support is through SDL2. All major gamepads like 360 should work. My crappy age old ps1 ripoff controllers worked :-D
PLAY THE GAME AT ITCH.IO
Tools:
This game was made with my very own handcrafted C++ 2D Game Engine, called the RawSalmonEngine. The Web Build is brand new and should work now somewhat reliably. I didn't know that even gamepads work with browser nowadays. That's what I call magic :sparkles:
I made all the pixel art with Krita. All sound effects are made with my mouth, recorded and cut with Audacity. The music was done with the awesome LMMS using only its gameboy sound. The map was built wit the Tiled Map Editor and my IDE of choice is Code::Blocks.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Ratings
| Overall | 686th | 3.271⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 540th | 3.25⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 791th | 2.958⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 270th | 3.938⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 656th | 3.208⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 295th | 3.396⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 332th | 3.152⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 608th | 3.104⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
In general my only piece of feedback is to make it a bit more forgiving :see_no_evil: - basically if you don't precisely place yourself next to the plants and aim perfectly, you end up watering the floor, which... tbh is probably my fault because I'm just bad, but considering the multiplayer element and the fact that it will be quite hectic and you need to be fast, it's probably a good thing - will help balance.
The music and the art are quite cool, and the theme and mechanics definitely have a lot of potential! Overall, very nice entry!
1. HUD is hard to read.
2. Free movement causes problems, as I missed actions. It would have been better, if you had made a grid movement.
Grid based over free movement is a bit debatable. Missing actions is a key point of the game. Spill water all over the place to be sure you watered the plant but you may have to refill more often, or try to be more precise albeit being more slower. Also pushing each other around in multiplayer wouldn't be any fun on a grid at all. But I think I got your point. Especially in a jam game there is rarely much incentive of players to master the controls of one particular entry. But I can assure you, it really doesn't take many tries to get the maximum score in all three SP stages.
Thank you and I wish you all the best :-)
Since it's a compo game, I guess, there was no time for some character animations, that would really go a long way.
Keep up the good work.
Congratulations on all the work you put on the engine!
I liked the sfx, once i learnd how to collect water it got very funny to play!
Maybe the range for watering the plants could be a bit longer, sometimes i had difficult finding the right spot!
Overall a funny game! Great concept! Congrats!
My only complaint is that it took me a while to find the pump(s). Something about the brown on brown made them quite hard for me to see, and the first time my eyes allowed me to see them I still mistook them for trees. :sweat_smile: Making them silver or otherwise decorating the few tiles around them would make them much easier to find.
Unfortunately my gamepad didn't works so, I suspect there's no dead zone for stick input in your engine so if my gamepad was plugged in my man walks down and to the left. I had to unplug it and use keyboard and mouse because I couldn't get the dude to stand still under the water pump.
But otherwise it's a great entry! Daring move to write your own engine but it worked fine, I played a few levels and beat my own high score once or twice. Regrettably I'm in isolation and don't have another player, but I can see how that would be fun, too. GG!
@fernando-tonon-de-rossi The watering range was one thing I wanted to fine tune in the end but didn't have enough time to do so. I'm not 100% content with it either.
@pennycook Same with the pumps. Actually I wanted to make some dedicated concrete tiles for them so the rusty brown stands out better from the ground. The walking animation was also cut. I think I slacked a bit too hard this jam. But it's the first time I did all the art of a game so I just expect it to take less time next time.
@cheesepencil Oh god! Thank you for your insight! I DID forget adding deadzones to the analogue input of gamepads. Didn't really notice because my gamepads sticks seem to be perfectly centered from the software side. I will will remember this definitely next time :-D and thank you again :heart: