Welcome, Seedling

Game Description

Deliver a blow to deliver sunshine to your planet... and yourself to grow in other grounds.

Overview

This is a minimal game. You control a dandelion-like seed to move high into the air to collect sunshine, before coming down and growing another flower... and that flower will grow another seed. Join in this relaxing cycle for awhile and let your cares soar. Of course, if you want, you can also pine for high scores (only Altitude works correctly in Compo mode.)

Background

I tried to make the controls as uncomplicated as possible this time around. It has always been the one critique I've gotten constantly in my past jams. So I've decided to change pace a bit and create a minimalist game. But I've also planned to put in networking into the mix for the first time. The combined result is a sort of a roulette-ish game of who can go the highest. I admit this idea would've been best for the "Ascend" theme but... I mean, it delivers.

I do suppose I could've made a goal but creating an ending is no trivial task (for me anyway) and moreso I really wanted to test my newfound network programming skill so I opted for ranking instead. But next time I'm going to try out for a puzzle game and I'll definitely add an ending there.

Quirks

• I forgot to mention, but you need over 35k alt (or +50km/s velocity) to get ranked. Otherwise it won't show up.
• I also forgot to mention that there is a very small textbox above. You can put in your name there and it will show up when you get a high rank. I'm sorry I only programmed for 10 high scores with that much blank space, but I'm just not yet that well versed with how Unity manages UI.

How to Play (Controls)

* LEFT/RIGHT to move. *

* UP ARROW to BOOST *

* SPACE to LAUNCH (in the beginning, and directly from the menu screen) *

* MOUSE CLICK on the GREEN BUTTON next to the stats bar to UPGRADE *

* (Compo Only) MOUSE CLICK on the BIRD BUTTON ON THE LEFT RIGHT CORNER to DISABLE BIRD COLLISION. *

Version Control

Currently I only made one hotfix. This will change if I ever do add others.

• Add "disable bird collision" button

So, technically feature additions are not allowed in Compo. However I do have an explanation for this one. Originally, you were meant to bounce off of the birds because there were supposed to be many categories to be ranked in. One of them was traveled distance, and travel time - both of which can be prolonged by continuously bouncing on the birds.

As with always, due to time constraints, I was only able to put in two - altitude and velocity - and only altitude works correctly in Compo mode. (I sorted the wrong way for velocity.) I'm going to leave that in because it's my mistake.

The disable-bouncing button, however, is for the players' benefit. You are free and even encouraged to play and rank as if that button does not exist - but the unnecessarily prolonged game duration by constantly bouncing off of birds just gets in the way of the intended play and tone of this game. You can turn it off to continue playing without feeling like you're spending time doing nothing.

Tools Used / Work Process

Normally I draw first then program, but I've decided I would go the "orthodox way" this time. Honestly I think it kinda shows, it plays and feels a little differently from my past games.

So I use Unity but the physics was completely hand-rolled with kinematic bodies. In hindsight I could just used built-in translate but.. it occurred to me a little too late so I calculated all the rotations and accelerations myself. (Remind me not to do that next run. I spent most of my first day fiddling with physics.. and the next day with UI.)

For art, I use Aesprite and my own atlas editor. Unity's built-in sprite atlas and sprite animation editor is a bit lacking and unproductive, so I use my own. Now that I know how to host my web, I'll build it in wasm and share it with others soon.

It's a secret I didn't want to reveal but I have to admit... I thought I couldn't make it for the audio. All of my audio, yes all of them, was done frantically at the last hour. Luckily I've found a little 8-bit plugin which to my surprise MASSIVELY helped me with my audio production. Long story short, I don't have to use sfxr anymore for the sfx. And I just completely winged the bgm in 15 minutes on my synth... I really like how my improv turned out for the short amount of period I spent on it.

Wrapup

My past games were overly complicated in game mechanics and keybinds. So this time I massively toned it down and went for mood instead. Just chill, relax, and watch your seeds fly, eat sunshine, and grow into many flowers.