It Makes Plants...

My brain might just be fried after being stuck in a loop all weekend on my own game, but I can't seem to do anything. There's nothing to vacuum up. Just grass, water, and a patch of dirt that I'm guessing I'd plant in if I could find stuff to vacuum.

The game has a interesting concept and mechanics but is kinda unintuitive sometimes and buggy, decreasing the enjoyment of the experience.

Sorry for the confusion. I worried that the concept was a bit exploratory and slow for a jam (I too rarely sit for a long time testing game behaviors in jam games).

I added some gifs as hints to the game page to give folks some ideas about interaction.

I think, given more time to tinker with it EVERYTHING will be vacuum-able :grin:

Cool game concept. I feel a bit like WALL-E trying to maintain a planet all by myself! I think this game is a solid foundation for adding additional challenges or ways to interact to grow the environment. Nice job.

@pizzasgood : Due to what I assume is a bug, you have to right-click yourself to vacuum an object: it's not sufficient to just right-click anywhere, even though that also makes a vacuum sound.

I like the idea and the pixels, but I couldn't figure out how to cross-breed plants. I tried shooting the fruits of trees at other trees, putting multiple type of fruit into the vacuum at the same time, and shooting fruit at the seedlings of other fruit, but nothing seemed to work.

the bug sounds strange. I haven't been able to replicate it regardless of platform =/

To hybridize plants, they need to be combined before they begin their growth.

Ah, I see. I didn't realize I needed to right-click directly on the stuff I wanted to vacuum. I assumed I could just hold it down to keep the vacuum running while I walked around vacuuming stuff. Changing it so the vacuum sound and animation just play in a burst instead of looping would make that more intuitive.

@indigo Shoot the seeds of the one at the dirt-patch of the other, before it sprouts. I don't know if the order matters; I used red seeds on a blue patch and that worked for me.

@pizzasgood yeah, I could really use a change to the effect for vacuuming objects up as well to make it more clear. I'll put that one on the todo :smile:

Thanks for poking at it! I REALLY appreciate you taking the time to work with it and provide such thoughtful comments.

I love feedback

This is a neat concept that you could easily take further in the future! Some kind of in-game tutorial would be nice. I really enjoyed the graphics and especially the audio!

@arttu-halonen thank you very much. I like it a great deal as well, and it needs more "World" but I will work on it. My eventual goal is a world that's lost and empty and is slowly rebuilt by our sad little robot for a humanity that does not live there anymore.

Maybe that's too grim...lol

Making the audio was such a mess! I have never made audio from scratch before and at 2 hours until completion, I was hastily reading Audacity tutorials online. I generally rely on others work for audio, but this really made me more curious about it. I think in the future I will do a LOT more of my own audio

Nice game. Managed to beat it. Would've been better put the combine mechanic into the vacuum. So for example if I got a red seed and suck up a blue one I get the violet one. Other than that I really enjoyed your game!


@rhewid thanks a ton. Yeah, the combine was really a toss up. On expansion, I'd likely move the combine to the vacuum tank.

Much appreciated!

Nice game. Could use a bit of polish and maybe a tutorial but overall good job. was fun to play :)

@convg Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it. There is a bit of a need for more readability regarding whats possible I think, and perhaps some light tutorial. I’ll work on those as it goes forward. Thankls for the great suggestions.

Nice game, you could've added a tutorial and made my ears hurt less with the vacuum sound.

@beavergames Lol, yeah, the sound is a bit awful. This I attribute to doing sound in the last half-hour of time and having 0 clue what I was doing. That being said, it was really interesting and I think I’ll do more sound work in the future. Looks like a fun skill to work on.

Really great game! I had a lot of fun playing with it, the concept is very unique and great, some better polish with the vacuum would be nice, but anyway I really enjoyed it! 4,2/5 for me!

Also we are Construct 3 users, lol

@enzoup thanks! Yeah post-jam step one was reworking the vacuum to make more sense, be more clear in its use and have more function.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Fun game, but there are some growth problems with the sprinklers and suction issues with the vacuuming.

Hey really cool game! such a cute concept, almost Wall-E like. I had to look through the comments to find out about the vacuum bug. Seems to only effect the first level I think. But I had a lot of fun with this! I love that you can blend trees oo that just hits my farming sim game sweet spot! Nice one!

Nice game, it lacks of a tutorial but it's pretty fun. Good job.

I like this concept a lot. I had the feeling it did not always suck perfectly but that might be that i pointed wrong/ The only think that would really improve this is making the spacebar jump instead of W for me personally that worked less good and i kept pushing space to jump (which of course did not work). Art and sound are also very good. A solid entry

thanks @aterlamia @quentin-wittevrongel @chickencastle @peace-of-cake-games for taking a look and rating. I really appreciate the feedback.

As this progresses to a true game, rather than a jam idea, A lot of these ideas are being implemented:

- controls are being reworked and modifiable
- the vacuum effect has been reworked
- fixed some collision wonkiness
- readability is being improved and a true tutorial is being added

- a lot more variety is incoming, specifically shade as an effect, vine based pants, underwater only plants larger more complex areas to grow with greater environment effects, and levels affected by a time of day mechanic

Thanks for the input! every comment makes me better at this!

Nice game :smile:

@turegrappa Thanks!

Can't wait for a full version of this!

I wish there was a tutorial that would help me get into it. It was quite buggy at times which didn't help much. I often got the vacuuming feedback without obviously hitting the thing I was supposed to vacuum so I was all confused. Liked the art though!

@tamail I think there is a misconception regarding how the vacuum was designed to function in this simple implementation. I’ve changed it since then (though of course those builds aren’t represented here), but I think folks had the impression that the vacuum worked on a collision.

In the design that is implemented here, the vacuum effect takes place at the location of your right click, regardless of range. It was not ideal, but in a 48 hour span, it was easy to implement. In fact you can vacuum all the way across the room regardless of line of sight. Not ideal obviously, or realistic, but that’s why I changed it.

It really confused people.

I have altered the vacuum going forward to behave more like I think people expect it to. It has a vacuum graphic and that graphic is indicative of the collision space.

Its weird, because its so obviously a bad design, but I totally didn’t see it while building in the depths of the jam, but now I see how weird and confusing it was.