Grove by doodlebrisk

A nice, little relaxing game about taking care of your house plants. I was inspired by my partner's love of houseplants and her constant struggle to keep them alive. She consults apps, friends, the internet, and professionals, but ultimately, it's comes down to her ability and love of her green grove.
Check out the itch.io page for a web playable version.
Instructions: Click a pot to focus on that plant. Click the soil to water the plant. Press 'space' to return to the room. Hold '1' to bring up your plant care guide.
The engine is Unity. Blender for modeling. Gimp for doing some textures. Combination of Adobe Audition and Audacity for audio editing. Garage Band for music.
I want to thank savannah.smackdown for some help with the audio.
| Youtube | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUpiwVXxUDzhZZyCk7xLrGzHbX4JVXbg/view?usp=sharing |
| Youtube | https://quixoticdicker.itch.io/grove |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/grove |
Ratings
| Overall | 1329th | 3.458⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2128th | 2.816⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1540th | 3.125⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 406th | 4.052⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1028th | 3.76⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 683th | 3.521⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1849th | 2.205⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 327th | 3.915⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 65🗨️ |

I do like the graphics though!
Edit: I can't see any menu, I guess the webbuild doesn't work correctly on my pc/browser
maybe put the name of the plant on the pot because i only knew which were the cacti but after making a mistake once i could see which ones i had to water or had to stop watering so i guess it isn't that necessary.
good game!
I really like the guide and how you focus on taking care of the different plants. Super cute game.
I do wish you said somewhere that space bar was how to exit looking at a plant though. I eventually figured it out.
As for the water particles: I have a game object at the end of the spout of the watering can. As the mouse is being pressed, I begin spawning the spheres at that game object. I then get a normalized vector pointing from the center of the watering can to the spout object. I multiply that by a random vector along with a velocity. I then attach a rigidbody, so the drop is affected by gravity and I can give it an initial velocity, and a material so it's blue and semi-transparent. Finally, I call destroy with a half-second delay. See the code below, and feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.
```
void FixedUpdate () {
count++;
if (pouring && count % (50 / rate) == 0)
{
Vector3 dropDir = transform.position - transform.parent.position;
dropDir.Normalize();
dropDir.Scale(new Vector3(Random.value * velocity, Random.value * velocity, Random.value * velocity));
GameObject drop = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Sphere);
drop.transform.SetParent(transform);
drop.transform.position = transform.position;
drop.transform.localScale = new Vector3(0.001f, 0.001f, 0.001f);
Rigidbody dropRb = drop.AddComponent<Rigidbody>();
Vector3 dropVelocity = dropDir;
dropRb.velocity = dropVelocity;
dropRb.drag = dragAmount;
drop.GetComponent<Renderer>().material = WaterMat;
Destroy(drop, delayToDestroy);
}
}
```
Seriously though, I played this for way longer than I was expecting to! Nursing plants back to health was super relaxing and felt rewarding. I was about to suggest having a label to differentiate plants from each other, but I actually found it kind of satisfying figuring that out through trial and error.
This is a really neat and relaxing experience, and I say you nailed the tone in spades!
I used to use an old Windows app called "Microsoft Bob". It basically had different desktops with links to apps/folders contained in a collection of cute and interactable themes. This feels like it could be one of those themes in a modern MSBob!
OVerall though, I enjoyed my time in the Grove :)
Turns out, I'm as bad as keeping plant alive virtually than in real life!
The only downside I can think of is that the menu could be a bit better in terms of visualization and input feedback.
For one person to do this in a jam, I think that this is a good entry. Well done! :hugging: