Me: Tree! by Groggi
A game about being a tree.
Unfortunately I had not enough time - as always - to implement any hints on how to play the game. I hope it is playable. Looking forward to your feedback! :)
It turned out to be some kind of tree idle game. There is no win condition. Your tree can die, if it doesn't have enough water. Leaves will begin falling down, if you are in negative water coverage (every leave raises water consumption of your tree). But only leaves collect energy though. If you have no leaves left and don't have enough enerty to grow any more branches (you need 10 energy) with new leaves, your tree is practically dead. So try to keep it alive!
The two youngest segments of each branch have leaves to collect energy, the two youngest segments of each root collect water. There are little puddles (yellowish dots) in the ground that boost your water collection rate but deplete after a while. The brighter blocks in the sky are supposed to be sunrays. They will boost your energy collection.
There are two versions of the game: 1) The oficial Ludum Dare release, it is published here: http://ld46.spielfeld.studio 2) An updated post-jam version with all future updates: http://metree.spielfeld.studio
Credits:
Music by Sergey Cheremisinov (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Sergey_Cheremisinov)
Sounds from freesound and opengameart
Update 1: The post-jam version of Me:Tree got an update:
added new ressource: nutrients
added music and a few sounds
added growing animation! Yeey! :)
total balancing overhaul, with new game rules:
- you need 10 nutrients (instead of 10 energy) to branch out
- if you run out of energy, your roots stop collecting water or nutrients
added ressource icons and UI ressource overview
Energy 
Water 
Nutrients 
right click now aborts node selection for branching out
new system for sunrays and branches now stop sunlight from passing
level design:
- The world has now top and bottom ends, with surprises
- ressources generate when you keep going down
hopefully better performance, but still working on it ;)
| Youtube | http://metree.spielfeld.studio |
| Youtube | http://ld46.spielfeld.studio |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/me-tree |
Ratings
| Overall | 1394th | 3.423⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1534th | 3.167⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 221th | 3.885⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 408th | 4.051⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1263th | 3.603⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1146th | 3.436⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
Anyways, I like the idea and I think with some more balancing, and perhaps a bit more interesting gameplay underground for getting the water, you could have a pretty fun sort of idle game, for the types that enjoy them. Just as a quick idea, maybe you would be forced to micro-manage the flow of the water too, so the bigger the tree was, the more of your attention it'd take, and there'd be a more engaging aspect to the gameplay.
@offz Thank you so much for your detailed feedback and ideas. Yes, definately the balancing is way off and the gameplay needs more variety. :) I will try and imrpove on things in the near future and post a link on an improved version.
It felt really good how in the beginning you're really struggling, but eventually you gain a foothold and things start going better.
Having to warp the tree to get as much sun as possible and reaching down to find water pockets was also is neat.
@emperor-eagle @pee-thief @loveapplegames Thanks to you all for playing the game! I definately have to tackle the performance for when the tree gets bigger.
the art is simple but it's great. will you implement sound?
some thoughts i had on the game, i don't know exactly how did you make it, but here is how i would aproach the system
you may optimize rendering by getting rid of all the update methods, maybe a custom event system? i work with that strategy when having loads of objects
here is a video that helped me
https://youtu.be/gx0Lt4tCDE0
i supose you could leave just the sprite renderer for the leaves and roots, and manage the stats on a single instance of your game manager,
that implements the update for calculating stats and/or playing animations on the leafs
i don't know but i hope it helps
thank you for your game!
Liked the concept and played it two times, because I couldn't find the right balance between root and leafs.
If you finally get that right balance, I think it is really strong. Liked the details of the branches and roots getting thicker ;)
1st. Make it so that the water has a purpose other then removing leaves. Maybe [I admit this would have taken more work but] you could have had something like a rock-paper-scissors system, where there are 3 elements, Energy, Water, and something else, maybe sun or something, and you get Water by spending energy, you would get energy by spending sun, and you would get sun by spending water or something.
Writing it out loud it doesn't really seem like a good idea but basically what I'm trying to say is it would be nice if you could use water to expand your tree!
2nd. Another Idea is that you could make it so that depending on the size of your tree, you would spend less/more energy on creating a new branch. So for example at the start you would need only 3 energy to create a new branch, and as your tree grew, so would that number, so when your tree is bigger it would require 10 energy to create a new branch or something like that.
All in all I think this game has a ton of potential, and could be made into something awesome! you would just need to carefully balance the variables so that it's not too slow at the start but it's not too fast either.
My second problem was the performance. I'm not sure what's going on, but after a few dozens of "nodes" the whole thing started lagging so bad it pretty much grinded to a halt. And I couldn't play anymore... There must be something really wrong with your implementation. I might take a look into the source code to see what's going on, if you'd want :)
Also I think the post-jam version is more broken than the jam version :P
@despdair Thank you for you feedback! I am thinking about expanding the UI a bit further, but for the moment branching is always the same cost, so not much to see there. :)
@acgaudette Thank you for your nice feedback and valuable thoughts!
@sinci1 Thank you for your kind words and ideas! In the newest version I added the new ressource nutrients, since I felt I needed that to get a better balancing. Still work in progress though. I thought about your idea to increase the costs for branching if your tree gets bigger. Definately something I will consider.
@the-martijn Thank you so much!
@blackmoodgames Thank you for your feedback and tips! I improved performance in the newest version, although it is still getting laggy later on. I didnt dive into performance boosting strategies to much but I will in the future!
@infinite Thanks for your thoughts! Actually the slower beginning is intentional, but I see that in the jam version the balancing fot that is still off...
But I imagine without the balancing issues, this would be quite a nice game!
I left it running a bit to gain resources while trying another game in true idle-game fashion =P Nice to try and build a functional tree and try to make it look decent, too (or build a crazy tentacle-mess?).
The newer version cranks up complexity a bit, so it may need a bit more introduction (the original version was fairly intuitive I think, but of course only gets so far without new mechanics)
You should definitely keep on developing post-LD. Great job!
it's perhaps a bit too slow in the beginning, and some sound effects and chill music would really help sell the atmosphere more!
I love your color choice! And I love that you can play this in a browser, that's perfect for this style of game. Maybe I'm dumb but I'm having trouble getting started. I can't seem to figure out how to start gaining energy. I have 15 leaves but I'm gaining zero energy and then I just die..? I'm a bit confused about that. But from the screenshots it looks like it gets pretty wild in the late game
Also I can very very very faintly hear music when I play. But it's soooo quiet and my volume is cranked all the way up. Is there something wrong on my end or is the music really quiet? It's fine to have quiet BGM but I think it's _too_ quiet. If I had my volume any lower I wouldn't even notice it.
Really cool submission!
Feels really crazy how similar our ideas where. ;)
I'll try to get connected on twitter, maybe we can chat on. See you.