Cool Plants / Chill Beats by Witdarkstar

[raw]
made by Witdarkstar for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

Hearkening back to the days of Tamagachi and recent idle games, jump into this chill relaxing game to raise some plants.

coolplantshot_01.jpg

Relax with some cool tunes as you get more plants and take care of them. The longer you keep them alive, the more money you get to get new plants. Don't want to leave the game open? Just save and close it. Progress is tracked in real time so you can play at your own pace. Just don't leave for too long or you could lose your plants.

Look out for interactions that pop up to get even more money to get more plants.

The majority of assets are from various asset packs from the Unreal Market Place with some help on a few extras. Game creation all done by me.

Created in Unreal Engine 4.

Ratings

Overall 922th 3.611⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1732th 3.078⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1285th 3.256⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Theme 843th 3.822⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Given 40🗳️ 60🗨️

Feedback

Garett Cooper
20. Apr 2020 · 03:57 UTC
Great little experience, very zen. It was fun to discover that I could interact with some of the items, like turning the light on and off and strumming the guitar.
DarriasArt
20. Apr 2020 · 06:08 UTC
I really enjoyed it. Top notch atmosphere, great job
DrunkardWolf
20. Apr 2020 · 06:11 UTC
Very cool plants. Very chill beats. Really nice mood, great work!
doodlebrisk
20. Apr 2020 · 19:29 UTC
Definitely some chill beats! I kept killing my aloe :|
AstroLabe
20. Apr 2020 · 20:20 UTC
Very cool and chill, just what I need after all this stress
🎤 Witdarkstar
20. Apr 2020 · 20:27 UTC
@doodlebrisk I may have made the threshold for over-watering plants a little too low. No need to immediately water plants.
Geegaz
20. Apr 2020 · 20:55 UTC
I love the general mood, great work on the ambience ! Although I kinda felt without a purpose at first.
Maksym
21. Apr 2020 · 01:24 UTC
Nice and cozy game! Perfect tho I am not a gardening fan :D
Dreamer
21. Apr 2020 · 01:38 UTC
I like this atmosphere, I like quiet, I like to raise flowers to spend the day,
parahunter
21. Apr 2020 · 09:44 UTC
Nice atmosphere and graphics!

Found a bug where my plant wasn't visible when I returned to the room view or maybe I watered it too much and it died but there wasn't any feedback for that.
Slurp1e
21. Apr 2020 · 19:46 UTC
Nice and peaceful game , the atmosphere is and vibe it gives off is great ! 5/5 for mood xD
indieaustin
21. Apr 2020 · 21:24 UTC
Very peaceful, good music, and amazing atmosphere.
png
21. Apr 2020 · 22:19 UTC
Beautiful assets well arranged! I think i missed something with the watering mechanics. I assumed the effect with waterdrops around a plant means they need water, but after watering it the whole plant disappeared.
🎤 Witdarkstar
21. Apr 2020 · 23:55 UTC
@png yeah sorry about that. There is a threshold that will kill your plants if you overwater, but it's way too low. You want to water when there are only a few water droplets, if you see a lot that means it has a lot of water.
Bongooo
22. Apr 2020 · 07:04 UTC
Just played! very nice! Probably I will tweet about this in the next day on this page https://twitter.com/Free_IndieGames !
OhFiddleDiddle
22. Apr 2020 · 07:35 UTC
I didn't rate the game, because when I launched it everything was fine, but when I press "New Game" it loads, but then I only get a black screen. I hear about 0.5 seconds of music, and I can move the mouse but it's locked to the centre of the screen.

No one else seems to be having any issues but I thought I'd let you know. :)
I'm running Windows 10, on a pretty decent machine. I tried restarting, changing resolution and changing the window mode, but nothing worked.

But by the sounds of the other comments you did a great job, so keep up the good work. :)
Bastian Bresson
22. Apr 2020 · 07:56 UTC
Nicely put together. The interactions in the room was a good idea. My plants never seemed to need water (the drops never got smaller?), but I watered them a few times anyway. Did better plants/pots give more money per second? If so, it was difficult to see.
🎤 Witdarkstar
22. Apr 2020 · 20:12 UTC
@ohfiddlediddle Oh man I'm sorry. I wish I knew what was happening so I could help fix it. I'm guessing you don't have these problems in other UE4 games.
🎤 Witdarkstar
22. Apr 2020 · 20:13 UTC
@bastian-bresson They do. I didn't get around to surfacing that information. More expensive plants generate more. More expensive pots multiply the plant generation more.
JamieOK
22. Apr 2020 · 22:21 UTC
Real chill vibe my dude. You got the mood down pat with the music and lighting and such. Polishing it up with cleaner UI and camera movement and it would totally be the kinda game I check in on every day to try and get fancier plants. Great job :)
GreenDinoGames
22. Apr 2020 · 22:42 UTC
Nice game, music is really relaxing and adding to the mood of the game :)
Jason Woerner
23. Apr 2020 · 01:13 UTC
Really wanted to try this out, but I get this error when trying to run:
![cool_plants_bug.jpg](///raw/abc/d2/z/329f5.jpg)

I tried moving the exe to different directories, and got increasingly confusing errors, in which it was looking for folders within folders. Not sure why it isn't working for me, as others seem to be able to play it =/ I'll try downloading it again tomorrow and see if it decides to work for me then!
🎤 Witdarkstar
23. Apr 2020 · 03:59 UTC
Hey @jason-woerner. The best info I could find is it could be one of two things. Either it didn't unzip properly or your antivirus is messing with the .exe I hope that points you in the right direction.
Wassim
23. Apr 2020 · 04:34 UTC
Awesome game, Loved the Original Idea and the Time Speeding mechanic in the Clock however I'm not sure what the guitar playing dose to the plant, Awesome game and I wish you the best of luck! :slight_smile:
MrsTari
23. Apr 2020 · 11:48 UTC
really awesome! :heart:
Jason Woerner
23. Apr 2020 · 22:03 UTC
I tried it again today and it worked! And yeah, my antivirus has been messing with pretty much all the executables, but I don't think that was it. I'm betting it was some weird Windows 10 permissions thing. Whatever the case, I was able to play today, so all good.

I enjoyed the zen experience. No pressure, nice music, great scene and lighting. The UI had one of the cleanest presentations I've yet seen this jam. Really great job making that look professional! I liked the few little easter eggs in the room too. Being able to play with the scene was fun. I never did figure out the watering. I over-watered my first plant and killed it, and after that I just stopped watering altogether, and the plants seemed to be fine ;)

I ran into two bugs while playing:
* When buying a new plant/pot, sometimes the 'Total' listed was incorrect. I would get combos like a 1000 plant + a 1500 pot totaled 1001. It did not affect the actual cost of purchasing the combo, just the display of the total cost. Always seemed to occur when upgrading to a new plant type.
* After zooming in on a plant and selecting a new plant type and pot, but not purchasing, I zoomed back out. When I zoomed in again, the options I had selected were still selected, but instead of showing me the new plant/pot visuals, I still saw my current plant. After purchasing, the appearance changed correctly.

Good job with this. I think you hit the experience you were going for =)
thelemba
24. Apr 2020 · 18:28 UTC
such a big mood!
CrumblyBread
25. Apr 2020 · 00:53 UTC
Really good experience, I would love to have something more of a story in there.
The music is also really good. If you made it yourself, than dude hat off to you!
🎤 Witdarkstar
25. Apr 2020 · 05:25 UTC
@jason-woerner thank you so much for the in-depth feedback. I really appreciate it. Yeah the watering mechanics could have been better, but it take like 30 minutes of real time for the plant to die so unless you're really taking time you won't see anything change. Overwatering may have been a bad idea. lol

thanks for the bugs, wish I had caught them a little sooner.
🎤 Witdarkstar
25. Apr 2020 · 05:44 UTC
@crumblybread thank you so much. The music was just some good royalty free finds on the internet.
SpiRiTs
25. Apr 2020 · 12:07 UTC
Relaxing Idle clicker game, And love the fact that it save progress and plants can die if you don't return to take care of them in time. Great Job
jk5000
25. Apr 2020 · 12:14 UTC
A very relaxing experience.
ZaiusPanda
25. Apr 2020 · 19:54 UTC
So chill, just what I needed!
sydream
26. Apr 2020 · 10:02 UTC
Nice atmosphere, and cool idea for an idle game. Though I don't quite get how it works, I've placed my Aloe plant, had those little icons orbiting around it (looked like water droplets), so I watered the plant. It kept having those things so I kept watering... Until the droplets disappeared and so did the plant, I guess it died.. (Aloe doesn't like too much water by the way, I know I've killed mine IRL). Anyway the music selection is cool, the graphic is very well executed though a 700MB package it's a bit too heavy for my taste.. why is it that large? Well done anyway!
ultrarat
27. Apr 2020 · 03:36 UTC
Good work. I think it nicely adds to the chill feel that theres other things you can interact with. Desk lamp on, Desk lamp off.

When I read idle game I made an assumption I could somehow buy upgrades that would eventually water my plants but I don't think thats the case here.
🎤 Witdarkstar
13. May 2020 · 04:16 UTC
Thank you everyone for the feedback and comments. This was a great first LDJAM