The Plant Shop by Conor Galvin
Hey, you! Yes, you!
Have you ever been asked to take care of some random person's plant shop while they pop out for some undisclosed reason that happens to fulfill the needs of this loosely strung together game narrative? Of course you have, we've all been there!
Game information
About
The Plant Shop is a simple, time management game available to play on the web or to download as a Windows executable.
Aim
The aim of The Plant Shop is to keep as many plants alive as you can. To do this, you'll have to react quickly to each of the plant's cries of dispair and agnony which can be translated into "please water/feed me". If you don't react fast enough, the plants will begin to wilt and then eventually die. Be careful this doesn't happen otherwise you'll have to live with the weight of being a plant murderer for the rest of your life.
Controls
Left mouse button and, oh wait no... That's it. Just the left mouse button.
Known issues
- For some reason, the web version of the game is being scaled weirdly causing the UI to be slightly skewed. The game is still playable, but I would recommend people to download the Windows executable if they are able to as I know it works as intended via that way.
Development notes
Behind the scenes
I was the sole developer of this game, but I also had a ton of help from my partner who created most of the flowers, as well as a majority of other pixel art sprites. A bit of background - I am a full time Unity developer, but I make applications, not games, so I'm super happy I finally got the chance to create a video game and release it!
This was also my first game jam... and what an experience it was! There was definitely a mix of excitement, enthusiasm, stress, depression, laughter, tears, relief and every other feeling able to be experienced. Even though it was stressful at times trying to get everything done, I'm pretty proud of what I've achieved and am happy with the result - I'll definitely be participating in future jams as well! Hopefully you enjoy playing :)
Tools used
- Unity (2019.3.10f1) (development)
- Visual Studio Community (programming)
- Audacity (trimming and editing sound clips)
- Aseprite (asset creation)
- Adobe Photoshop (asset creation)
- Figma (high-fidelity UI/marketing content)
- Pen + paper (designs/scrawling ideas)
- Trello (task management/planning)
How to play
Use this link here or the one below to head to my Itch page to download and play the game. Don't forget your mouse and your burning desire to keep plants alive.
| Youtube | https://conorgalvin.itch.io/the-plant-shop |
| Youtube | https://conorgalvin.itch.io/the-plant-shop |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-plant-shop |
Ratings
| Overall | 987th | 3.583⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1138th | 3.362⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1422th | 3.19⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 372th | 4.069⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 798th | 3.917⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1013th | 3.034⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 38🗨️ |
Overall good work!
The mechanics sounded stupidly easy when I started, but felt a lot more meaningful and difficult as I progressed, as they should.
Absolutely fantastic for your first jam game. It seems you actually found the scope to go for and thus delivered a finished product :3
Completely agree with your feedback! There's definitely a lot more I could add to increase it's replayability and your ideas are really great. I think increasing the difficulty/providing more of a score would really help this game be more impactful. But anyway, I'm super glad you enjoyed playing, thanks again!
The game mechanics are very clear, but it seems very difficult or impossible to win and I played 3 times with a pretty good strategy I think.
I guess they need food more than water??
The subject of the game seems super obvious for the theme, but surely because planting (& planting trees especially) is such an important theme to address climate change... who cares about originality when it could actually help our species survive, amiright?! haha
Thanks for playing our game, @conor-galvin
Music was great (too bad I couldn't rate it :/). Game was fun, although I would have liked it more if it was a bit longer than 60 seconds. Also I didn't understand the menu on the right that showed some numbers and plant icons. Overall good game! :)
Greato Jobu! :smile
I think a high-score counter could be a fun thing to add.
Also I have to say the music is fantastic. I left the game open in a separate tab to just listen to it loop for a while. It was so catchy.
Well done. Thanks for the chance to play such a fun game. :)
I like the mechanic, I think it could be even better if you needed to drag the watering can to the plant instead of just clicking.
What's really missing is the jazz. Don't get me wrong, I love the background music and found myself humming along immediately. Keep it. But I think the UI needs some jazz. Animations which catch the player's eye so that they have a better time seeing when things pop into view. Our peripheral vision relies on these motion cues to focus our attention. I had a difficult time scanning and keeping track of what I needed to do next, because I was never sure how long an alert had been there before I noticed it. Without this information, I felt like I couldn't properly strategize.
Another thing, if you notice in my own submission I included an in-game cursor so that the player always knew what tool they had selected without having to divert their attention. Since their attention was usually on their mouse, keeping an icon of the current tool went a long way to communicating the player's actions effectively.
These are just minor UI nitpicks, of course. The game itself is enjoyable and I played through a few times. :)