Root Quest by thebreakfast
Description:
Play as the root of an enterprising plant as you explore the soil beneath in search of fresh pools of water, guarded deep within dungeons filled with root-eating worms. Jump in to these water sources to make your plant grow! Be careful though, as taking damage or exploring uses water, and your supply is constantly dwindling. Lose too much water and the plant will wither and die. Find all three dungeons!
Play in-browser at Itch.io: https://thebreakfast.itch.io/root
Keyboard controls:
-WASD to move
-space to jump
-left ctrl or left mouse to attack
Controller (X-input / Xbox):
-A to Jump
-X to attack
-Left joystick to move
Video:
Some people have mentioned having some difficulty finding the first dungeon. If you're having some trouble I've posted a video playthrough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QIUo8o-AZc
Credits:
-Art and 3D models/animation by Hayden Haley and Marcio Miranda.
-Code by Marcio Miranda and Jacob Carewick
Music:
Halloween Theme 1 by Alexander Nakarada
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4735-halloween-theme-1
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Easy Lemon by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3697-easy-lemon
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sounds:
https://freesound.org/people/Lydmakeren/sounds/511488/
https://freesound.org/people/qubodup/sounds/60013/
https://freesound.org/people/LittleLuigi/sounds/364782/
https://freesound.org/people/mangiedog/sounds/213369/
Additional art: Buch, Opengame Art
https://opengameart.org/content/a-platformer-in-the-forest
| Youtube | https://thebreakfast.itch.io/root |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/root-quest |
Ratings
| Overall | 662th | 3.731⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 956th | 3.45⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 127th | 4.006⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 504th | 4⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 699th | 3.975⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1126th | 2.928⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 641th | 3.703⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 141🗳️ | 170🗨️ |
Cool game, i like that i have to search the level, like a plant has to search for water, although maybe the level are a little bit to find (and can be frustrating if you don't find any for a while): mayby dark the color of the dirt arounfirst level entrance, to direct the player in the right direction, and let know them what to look for next...
I was going to say that the dungeon crawling is frustrating as the direction wasn't clear, but the root-trail creates an Ariadne's thread style solution; very cool!
This game oozes style. The audio of the root digging is really well done, and the flailing run animation is great. I also enjoyed the route tracing, as it made retreading after a cheap death that much easier, and did a lot to make sure that, while cheap, those deaths were as minimally frustrating as possible.
@graebor thanks! I love the transition too, it feels very classic. Reminds me of entering and exiting areas in Banjo Kazooie. The falling rocks were literally added in the last hour or so haha. I wish they had a sound effect but I still like it.
The animation was also really well done and I thought the character design was pretty clever :)
Very interesting and solid entry! I look forward to more LD projects from you!
Well done! 10/10 mood :)
@marcusnystrand I wish we could take credit for the music. For the root mode we just paul-stretched an existing creative commons track, and for the side scroller mode we just added an effect to make the looping less jarring.
@zigg it definitely could use a bit of work. The attacking especially. It feels a little janky at times. I think I may have set up the animation controls slightly wrong, and the hitbox is controlled with animation events (which shouldn't be causing the jankiness but who knows).
@juliaanna I agree totally. We had talked about adding a health pickup item at least in the root mode, and I think having little pickups hanging in the air like coins would help telegraph some of the jumps a little better too. I also made a few kind of unfair "gotcha" moments.
email:m.shahiri.m@gmail.com
my LudumDare Game:
Social Distancing For Ladybugs
I with the root character was bigger on screen, because that animation is SO GOOD!
Very clever. Very neat. Nice.
I wish the attack animation could interrupt the other animations and could be used while falling as sometimes I was falling right on top of a worm spamming the attack button to no avail :P
Also with my old PC, the root trail on the character caused the browser to crash. :smile:
Maybe have it act on 'cells' instead of generating a trail wherever he moves, especially if he's in same spot for a long time, so it only creates new root, if he moves to next 'cell' .
Still, i enjoyed it, and was super inspired by the beginning section. Watching the leaves sprout upward from the plant was nice :)
Never tought being a root could be so much fun!
@johnnysix that's a good point, we probably could have had it only draw new cells while moving horizontally during dungeon scenes. Because it's attached to the spine of the character the idle animation causes it to draw I think. I'll look into fixing this if we continue. Sorry you had some performance issues, thank you for reporting them and giving us some suggestions!
@swanijam the dungeon scenes are a little large yeah. I think maybe if only the final dungeon was large it would have been fine, you're right that the first couple should have probably been shorter. Maybe more dungeons that are shorter in length would have been more fun, or mid-dungeon checkpoints could have solved that issue too. I appreciate the feedback!
@broken-robot-studios thank you! Behind the scenes I've been playing with fixing some of the jankiness of the attacks and camera. I didn't set up the animator parameters properly to allow a direct transition between falling, then attacking (because we chose not to have mid-air attacks). Oops! My bad haha. I think I've fixed that behind the scenes, but we won't upload a new version until after the jam out of fairness.
To anyone we've missed, thank you so much for the feedback!
I also loved the animation of our main character. They reminded me of a mix of earthworm jim and clayfighters.
The dungeon gameplay was limited but understandable b/c of a jam game. Might of been cool if there some obstacles to avoid on the way to the dungeon that moved or something.
Overall this was one of the coolest games I played so far
@joel-steudler thanks for the feedback! We discussed some ways to improve the game, we'll see how they pan out. I'll be sure to tag you if we do!
One thing I didn't care for was the platforming section mechanics felt a bit underdeveloped. For instance, it was frustrating to not be able to attack while jumping toward a worm. In many cases I had trouble landing on a platform with enough space to do an attack before the worm knocked me off. This was exacerbated by poor performance on my laptop, so might be partially a hardware problem.
Overall thanks for sharing the game and great job on the theme.
The game hitched from time to time but I noticed no other issues. I wasn't able to hurt the enemies from behind, but I am guessing that this was intended (worms after all)
The platforming and especially the attacking was a little rough around the edges. It was frustrating not being able to attack in the air, and it felt like there was a sizable window after landing from a jump where you still can't attack, which was annoying because there are many jumps where you need to land on a small platform with a worm and then immediately attack it.
I like the creepy-cute design of the main character a lot, though he's small and kinda tough to see in-game.
Nice entry, keep it up.
Really loved wondering around in the overworld. Really satisfying feeling exploring the environment and finding a place to go. I also really liked the trails in the platform stages, seeing the path that I took. Made it a bit easier to find my way back to where I died. :)
Really cool game! Great entry!