LudumData

Fresh Harvest by Craig Cordeiro

[raw]
made by Craig Cordeiro for Ludum Dare 47 (COMPO)

The theme "Stuck in a Loop" inspired me to consider the term "cycles of violence". My original idea was that you'd play as a spaceship that harvests resources from various planets, murdering it's inhabitants. Then, when you return home to deploy said resources you are then attacked in retaliation by all the various species you've wrong. It was at about 3am this morning that I realized that that wasn't going to happen. So, now you just gather resources by killing the inhabitants of one planet. And they just keep coming...

Can you fill your hold with harvested resources before you're overwhelmed and destroyed? Or more likely, can you win before there are too many enemies on the screen and the game grinds to a screeching halt?

Fresh Harvest - Ludum Dare 47 - Screenshot.png

Youtube https://dev.c4explosive.games/fresh_harvest_ld47/
Youtube https://dev.c4explosive.games/fresh_harvest_ld47/fresh_harvest_ld47.unitypackage
Youtube https://dev.c4explosive.games/fresh_harvest_ld47/fresh_harvest_ld47.zip
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/fresh-harvest

Ratings

Overall 508th 3.021⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 422th 3.042⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 494th 2.86⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 592th 2.521⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 451th 3.04⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 331th 2.4⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 530th 2.52⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

SinusQuell
05. Oct 2020 · 10:56 UTC
I really had fun playing this! Though it got quite slow towards the end, with many enemies on the screen.
At the start I wasn't sure how to build things because the buttons were greyed out, but then I got it. Also, sometimes I didn't quite understand why I couldn't place something, a grid might have been useful for this.
Spodthewizard
05. Oct 2020 · 11:06 UTC
I like the idea for the game and with more time I think you could make this great, but I was a bit confused when playing it. When I launched it I didn't really have any idea what to do, a small "how to play" window may have helped, and the balancing may need some adjustment, as you could put down about ten harvesters off the bat and they kill the inhabitants as they spawn in.
🎤 Craig Cordeiro
05. Oct 2020 · 15:12 UTC
@sinusquell @spodthewizard
Thanks for the feedback!
I agree 100%. I was rushing to finish for the Compo but perhaps I could have taken the extra day and submitted for the Jam instead.
That way I could've put in an onboarding experience and tuned the pacing a bit better.
The difficulty was supposed to ramp up gradually but it ended up being way too easy for the first couple of minutes and then suddenly impossible to play because the engine can't handle that many entities.
I think I just have to learn to scope for jams better.
daitli
05. Oct 2020 · 15:57 UTC
I love me some strategy tower defense! However, this was really time consuming as enemies would come in very slow waves, after I understood how the game worked I set up harvesters in a perimeter as well as walls and then I sat there waiting for something big to come but it was just more slow enemies in small amounts. Overall I think this is a good game and has lots of potential as a flesh harvester tower defense :D

I also did not see a loop to fit the theme? Perhaps the never ending wave of enemies fits the Lodum Dare theme a bit?
🎤 Craig Cordeiro
05. Oct 2020 · 16:17 UTC
@daitli Yeah, the connection to the theme ended up being fairly tenuous. It was supposed expressed through endless repetition of violence, but it definitely got lost in the rush.
Allas
05. Oct 2020 · 16:17 UTC
(Edit: I just realized I completely missed the launch button, so much of what I said is probably not even relevant) I set up my defenses and waited, the amount of enemies at the start was really low, so I just left it running on my other monitor, then after around 8 minutes the game started having some performance issues which ramped up quite quickly as more and more enemies started overwhelming me - unable to react quickly enough with the game running at around 1fps at this point :) It would be interesting to see how it plays if the performance was addressed. I also quite liked the design of your little harvester and base sprites.
Akmon
08. Oct 2020 · 17:37 UTC
If it had second tower to build! I liked it alot. Damn I miss tower defense games :D Please make future updates on it <3 would buy
LelulaGames
10. Oct 2020 · 16:01 UTC
It needs the difficulty to ramp up, I think. I was able to set out the turrets and basically repair everything and that was it. The red cubes were pretty slow coming in. But it's a solid tower defense otherwise.
fumybulb
10. Oct 2020 · 16:36 UTC
Despite the performance issues, I'm glad to see tower defense games here!

Keep it up :smiling_imp:
MrBamboo
11. Oct 2020 · 01:45 UTC
Tower defence for the win 🤟 good job
Pandakipu
11. Oct 2020 · 20:56 UTC
Nice, a tower defense game, nice job man :)
davidcmcdonald
24. Oct 2020 · 14:49 UTC
I do not know how you even begin to make a game like this in Unity. It could be easy but I have been using Unity for years and I wouldn't know where to start. Well done and I super appreciate the balance!