Mycelium by BlobRoss
Plant friendly fungus to defend against hordes of eldritch horrors! Use your mighty watering can to heal your friends with the blood of your enemies. Make sure to keep the mother mushroom healthy to aquire the most uncanny of shrooms to aid you in this chaotic tower-defence-like game! The game may be a bit too hard at first but I believe in you <3.
The highest score I have ever seen so far is 7916 by * Ausstein*!

different species of mushrooms to discover and befriend!

Horrible eldritch horrors!

Controls:
W A S D or Arrow keys to move.
Mouse Click to water. Keep the mother mushroom hydrated for better spores!
Gather spores and throw them with Mouse Click. Make sure to give them space to grow!
Changelog:
fixed issue where game wouldn't restart when losing.
| Youtube | https://blobross.itch.io/mycelium |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/mycelium |
Ratings
| Overall | 78th | 4.179⭐ | 136🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 107th | 4.068⭐ | 134🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 212th | 3.893⭐ | 133🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 153th | 4.225⭐ | 133🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 37th | 4.645⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 193th | 3.98⭐ | 78🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 872th | 3.15⭐ | 115🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 295th | 3.944⭐ | 128🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 160🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
-A tutorial would be really nice to acclimate the player on different concepts
-I played a bit and thought there should be more water earned from killing enemies, or maybe even perhaps generating water over time all over the level as if it's raining (maybe there could even be times it rains and gives more water)
-I found a bug where dying or letting the center mushroom die does not bring the player back to the menu.
This idea is brilliant, and I definitely see a successful released product within it! I'm glad I got to play it. Thanks for submitting :)
If you're looking to make Mycelium quicker to understand for new players, some more visible information about the timing and size of enemy waves would be a neat touch.
The first time I played it, the controls didn't work (the throwing), but after restarting it did.
I just spend a few good minutes playing it. It took a little while to understand how things work, but I love it!
I love defense stuff like that. I tried to do something similar with my own game, but I didn't finish on time to be "good".
Great game, I love it!
Cheers!
The pixel art is amazing.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/dark-soil
The graphics, as others have mentioned are amazing. Music was fitting and the controls were tight. It took me a minute or two to cotton onto the mechanics though, but once I got going it was a lot of fun! Great work :)
The visuals and audio were on point and I greatly enjoyed the game!
Awesome entry!
I ended up blocking myself by throwing a lot of mushrooms a little too randomly :laughing:
It was a little annoying to get caught on your shrooms when walking around, and the concept took a minute to grasp. Other than that, I wanted to see the game transcend somehow-- a boss, or you can start making new mother mushrooms. Really, I just want to see more. I want this to be a full game. You should be proud.
Unfortunately, I found it a bit too slow paced, especially player and camera speed. Also, my "main plant" died on first try and since I didn't get a "you lose" screen, I continued playing whereas later I figured out that restarting was the best option as there was no way to get new plants again.
Again, this is an awesome entry and I loved it! :)
https://youtu.be/AuaQr2MJmnc
The music and sound effects were really good. They worked well with the art style. It was a bit hard to understand what you were supposed to do in the beginning and then on my second try I lost the big plant that made me smaller ones. Then I just had to wait until I inevitably failed. So maybe it should have been game over already. I would like to have seen some sort of way to do damage to the monsters with the water like I thought it did in the beginning. Then there would have been an option to either heal or deal damage with your limited resource which could have been quite interesting.
But all in all a really nice game.
I love tower defense and you used the theme in a very smart way. The pixel art is beautiful and the soundtrack goes well with the mood. I will leave the game saved on my pc to play with my children later and dispute who has the most points.
Congratulations!
PS: What do I do after the big mushroom dies? I pray?
Maybe some finesse with the collisions, as I kept throwing mushroom 'eggs' ? under the power-core mushroom and couldn't retrive them. I also died a load before got the belching mushrooms.

Very nice aesthetics. It was a little annoying that I could not quite get all the drops, perhaps they should be higher value and despawn? A larger pickup radius? Not being able to water while holding a seed was also a minor gripe I had. The difficulty scaled pretty well. Maybe there could be an indication of what type of seed I am holding (a little preview of the mushroom that will spawn)?
The game which reminded me of yours, which I was trying to remember during the stream was [Atomicrops](https://www.atomicrops.com/), although that game is primarily a twinstick shooter and the crops are not turrets (although you can get turrets I think).
Now that was absolutely fun and addictive. Great setting as well =)
Great choice of palette and absolutely beautiful sprites.
Sometimes it felt like the game was impending me (namely, when I tried to aim to that one sweet spot and spore flew somewhere else), but the amount of spores and ease of their deployment helped alleviate that. I also liked the fact that deploying towers was costless.
At first, I didn't completely get it, but you're able to find out the gameplay mechanics pretty quick!
Makes you want to com back for more!
graphics were amazing. Controls easy (which is a big plus!) I've been meaning to try this out since I saw your post like a week ago. the fat mushroom who attracts the attention of the enemies is ADORBZ! :3 at first I thought he was the protagonist, hehe. :3! (The actual protagonist is cute as well! <33)
The music and programming was nice too!
I'd maybe just try to make it a bit more readable, as in giving more feedback if you've done something good (like watering the plants, maybe make some.. idk "Health icons" apprear to indicate you're doing something good, or like with a noise, also it might be a good idea to distinct the colours between stuff you can interact with and only environment :) (like make the one more detailed, less saturated, a bit of a difference in tone etc.)
All in all a great entry! <3
And the gameplay is interesting, although a bit on the hard side. It's great that you can exactly place new seeds and water from afar. The movement speed feels slow sometimes and small mushrooms are gone too quickly I think. Would be great to have more mushrooms with defensive capabilities. But other than that, good job!
I love all the unique things about it:
- the setting is way out of the ordinary
- the cute sprites (I like the thiccshroom the most :3)
- the colourscheme (lovin' the purple),
- the sounddesign and music is awesome and on point
- the gameplay is fluent, fun and, well, very much unique!
Unbelievable thinking one single person came up with all of this.
Certainly you deserve your username, this is one hell of a happy little game! :D
Thank you for this absolute gem! I will certainly come back to it and try to get the highest score!
I loved the different tower types and how you could use them together. I had a lot of fun with this one
My feedback on gameplay:
- It seems that the fat mushroom doesn't heal as fast as the others, from time to time I managed to tank more with the cluster mushroom than the fat one.
- Again with the fat mushroom, it pushes enemies that are around him towards other mushrooms, destroying the defense system.
- I would make picking up seeds a button press, late into the game walking into a seed stops watering and as such kills mushrooms.
- Too much visual feedback from attacks, by the time I had 20 or so mushrooms I could barely see the seeds being dropped.
As a final remark, look at my score and tell me how much I've loved it.


But I was wrong: One Slime managed to take down one of the poison cloud shrooms. It was a race now, I had to build more poison shrooms than the slimes cold destroy, all other spores became nothing but decoys to distract the slimes for a short while.
I fought and fought, but in the end they were too many. **I have failed you mother shroom, I am so sorry** :cry:

Great game! , btw In the end it got very laggy with so much on the screen at once
I found myself not understanding what the watering can did, trying to water the little spores, or use it as a weapon.
But man, pushing the baddies around, throwing guys out. it works well as a play loop.