Carrot Grove by Ehon
My, my, has been a long time since I had any visitiors on my mordern estate. Tell me, sweetheart, how may I help you? Do you want me to make your wish come true?
[DESCRIPTION]
Carrot Grove is an adventure romance visual novel by Serious Game Manufacture team. This time we present you a long adventure (for a jam game) in a form of visual novel with MANY choices and routes, based on Slavic mythos, creatures, places and spirits. You're Oriel - a guy in his twenties, who had to leave modern city life for a week to help his grandma at the carrot farm, in a delightful forest area called Carrot Grove. However, the task you have to perform for grandma is...an unique one. Her wish is that you perform a ritual supposedly able to delay the coming of autumn. Will you succed?
* Every playthrought of Carrot Grove could be and will be a little different! If you want to get the best ending, you really need to pay attention to everyone words and play two or three times. However, for those ones who are not into this thing, we prepared tips able to get you the best ending possible. Check them out at the very bottom of this page! *
[CONTROLS - THERE IS TUTORIAL IN-GAME]
IN CASE YOU FIND A SOFTLOCKING BUG, PLEASE REPORT TO US!
You can also find our team social media and info at the bottom! Please let us know which character was your favourite and which ending did you get!
[CREATORS]
@ehon - lead, art lead, programmer, writer -> https://www.artstation.com/gerard_makuszewski
@zozol - 2d artist, writer -> https://twitter.com/zoz_bmp
@miklo - sound design -> https://twitter.com/mik1900G
@kaem - composter -> https://soundcloud.com/user-918589295
@mimbladora - 2d artist -> https://www.instagram.com/mimbladora_/
@griszka - environment artist -> https://www.artstation.com/monikadalach
@lishiana - 2d artist, writer -> https://www.instagram.com/lishianaa/
@klaudia - 3d artist -> https://www.artstation.com/klaudiaszreder
BEST ENDING TIPS: 1. Visit all spirits and read and expire their dialogue options. 2. For the best finale you need: a wreath, rabbit and horse figurine, lit all candles exept for one, hold your breath, play on flute, fill the horns with mead. Wreath you get from Boginka after you give her the hat or the fern, the figurines are from Devana, the flute is from Kiki's quiz (you need to get all right or all right and one half-point), the mead is also feom Kiki after declining berry juice. 3. For a bonus to the best ending, you also need to choose the person you like the most. If you expired their dialogue and got their illustration, you'd get a bonus scene. 4. Bonus tips: Boginka's hat is on the way to grandma, don't give her goatweed, Didko thinks caring for others is cute, to get mead you need to decline berry juice first. If you have any other questions, ask in the comments.
Don’t be afraid to contact us via our social media or via comment here about our productions or partnerships!
| Win + Mac | https://serious-game-manufacture.itch.io/carrot-grove |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/carrot-grove |
Ratings
| Overall | 370th | 3.774⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 655th | 3.413⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 787th | 3.208⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 676th | 3.66⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 88th | 4.482⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 426th | 3.565⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 399th | 3.462⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 290th | 3.873⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 97🗳️ | 97🗨️ |
I should have saved before trying!
@volt450 ooh so bad :( Btw, if you want to give it another try, we updated the game with some stuff done during the jam that we didn't put into the game on time and we provided a best ending guide at the bottom of the page!
There's also some really interesting mix of art styles, with really expressive 2d art.
Music and sound effects could use some variation, but othwerwise nice work!
- Kikimora
- The way you discover the "map" little by little
- The quizzes "à-la-Nier" that incentivise you to pay attention to what is being told
- The fact that you can go to the Ritual circle from the start
- The art, be it the background or the characters
- The attention put to the sound design
- The multiples endings
- A fun, Hades-like introduction to Slavic folklore
- The fact that you put a guide to get the best ending
What an awesome entry - thank you for making visual novels!
@biku Thank you for playing! There is a best ending tutorial at the bottom of the game description, it should be helpful if you'd like to achieve the best one :D
Good stuff!
@zimny11 Thank you very much!
@animalx Thank you. Our music composer got a new job during a game jam and wasn't able to add a thrid track due to his workload and new, unexpected responsibilites. We as a team have a rule to not use free music/art for jam games so that's why it could get a bit repetitive. Glad you enjoyed it nonetheless!
The artwork is actually incredible. The story is pretty great, and every character was unique and interesting. Very great work!
@100th-coin It was supposed to be a little confusing to not be too easy to finish the ritual first try. There is best ending guide at the bottom of the description btw if you want to try once more (the swamp guy, Will, is a liar and nothing he says is true!). Also good idea with the possibilty to re-pick the figurines, I'd try to code it in the upcoming patch. Thank you!
@marvis @itskdog @cakts thank you so much, it means a lot!
@gal-afik haha, no worries, we know it's not a game for everyone. the gameplay is around 20 minutes estimatelly, a bit longer if you go for the best ending. thank you anyways
The art is beautiful, the text is well written and the enigma is a nice idea.
I just found it maybe a bit too long and complex for a jam game. Great idea to give tips for the good ending on the itch page since it's not that easy to get it!
Thanks for the game I had fun.
Great game.
It would be nice if you can still see the dialog while choosing an option.
Tbh I'm not that much of a reading guy and skipped a little bit and when it came to make a decision I couldn't see anymore what was said so I had to pick at random.
But that's not a big problem, I think the target audience wouldn't be skipping through the dialog like me... :)
Great to see a game that uses Ren'Py, I used to play around with it some years ago, but it was always a lack of art that didn't allow me to progress further.
The story is light and fun, doesn't get boring or cringe at all. It was unique to see Slavic settings (I'm from Poland as well!). All characters are quite interesting although their quality and art style varies. You had so many artists that it is understandable, but I think it is nice that you get to make a game with so many people, you seem like a group of friends.
Unfortunately, I got BAD ending on my first try, but at least I have a Save before the ritual, so I hope for the best.
Good luck with your future endeavours!
@shess Well, it was inspired by demons and spirits of our conutry's culture, so plenty of the lore fluff and quests were inspired by the knowledge we already had, for example Boginka's hat is a slavic myth (the fact that she hates goatweed and eats fern too!), all the rite elements were inspired by Jare Gody - ancient Slavic celebratory ritual - and Midsummer Night celebration etc. I am planning to write a short post mortem for this game with some very poor gameplay sketches done in paint by me at the very beginning to show how it all came to life. Important fact: a placeholder for Will (the guy on the swamp) was a shrek picture.
Thank you for playing!
@realtanhen Thank you! As for the music, our music composer got a new job during a game jam and wasn’t able to add a thrid track to add some music variety due to his workload and new, unexpected responsibilites. We as a team have a rule to not use free music/art for jam games so that’s why it could get a bit repetitive. Glad you enjoyed it nonetheless!
@radmccool Haha, your comment made my day :D Thank you for playing and glad you enjoyed our work even though visual novels are not your jam (pun intened).
@haayaargh Fun fact, we wanted to add a secret way to get Marzanna figurine from Devana but we cut this content due to time constrains of the jam. Our team cherished your comment a lot, especially the part about being a group of friends, since that's simply true. Some of us work in the industry, some at different fields than gamedev, some are still looking for a job but for game jams we all become Serious Game Manufacture with a goal of creating something fun. Anyways, thank you for playing and for the feedback! If you still cannot land that sweet sweet good ending, there is a in-depth guide at the bottom of the game description. Good luck to you too!
I did play it a few times trying to to solve the mystery though. I didn't know what to expect coming into the game, but when I saw the map and especially once I got quizzed and understood the game structure I started to pay extra attention. I thought the game was quite interesting in how you could get conflicting pieces of evidence in your notes, so you had to pay special attention to the dialogue to figure out who was lying or not confident in their answers.
So my takeaway from this game was its concept of being one of those logic-lying-puzzles mixed with a VN and the result was a lot more entertaining than I expected. Coupled with an unfolding world it was need to explore and learn not just about the new characters, but ultimately the clues they had for the ritual, forming a longterm goal to think about the whole time. Awesome concept and pretty innovative!
@peachtreeoath yeah, the mead was a little hidden :D we were a little inspired by Gnosia (something like a visual novel Among Us game) and Ace Attorney so we came up with such a game concept for the base gameplay idea. We're really glad that you enjoyed it!
@ardorugus As you can see, we had no writer in our team, the whole narrative was a collective effort of 3 team members who are not even native english speakers - we're happy that it was involving and nice to play nonetheless. If we go for a visual novel next time, we'd try to make the flow more exciting. Thank you for playing and for the valuable writer's feedback!
There's so much content, congrats to the team!
I took my time, and it felt nice. I wasn't expecting it to last that much time, and it was interesting all the way to the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPpMxxPfRs
Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to fully explore the game, it is indeed quite long :) That's also why I only rated it in some and not all of the categories, hope that's okay for you!
@goldenxd @aumbra thanks for playing and for your feedback, glad you liked Carrot Grove! :D