Chop and Sprout by SethJMoore
Once you start chopping and sprouting branches, it's tough to keep the bulb (or the game) stable enough to reach the green goal.
Those 48 hours went quicker than I expected, but at least I got something halfway playable submitted for my first Ludum Dare.
| Link | https://hsimosoftware.itch.io/chop-and-sprout |
| Link | https://github.com/SethJMoore/chop-and-sprout |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/chop-and-sprout |
Ratings
| Overall | 529th | 2.645⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 469th | 2.774⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 61th | 4⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 135th | 3.952⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 368th | 2.296⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 496th | 1.948⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 17🗨️ |

Good Game!
@benjamin-halko It's a monster! I think the game usually crashes for me any time I get that many branches growing.
Good job on the game!
I discovered a less fun shortcut to win. If you let it grow high enough, you can just chop off some of the left branch, and it will topple over into the goal.
The controls however are impracticable. The player "dot" is way too small, and also to slow compared to the growth speed, and it's super easy to fall from a branch when the physic glitches. Another option would be mouse control (left click to srpout rigth click to chop for example), although the game would be very different.
Anyway this is definitively good for a first jam, especially as you didn't go the easy way.
@thetatautau All good points. I was thinking this morning about how mouse control might work, and if I work more on it, I'll tweak size, speed, etc., plus hopefully I'll be able to mostly eliminate the glitchiness.
@arttu-halonen Yeah, the crashes when the physics gets wonky is my biggest disappointment.
@xpoho 🦔!
Thanks for the input everybody! I haven't had a chance today to rate your games, but I'll make sure I get around to it.

The core idea with sprouting and cutting, and branching is reeeally nice and unique, I very much like it. I can see that mechanics reworked into some simple and addictive hyper-casual mobile game.
It worth trying mouse controls, as they might work better here.
@bootak The only thing you can count on in this game is the crashes! Everybody's feedback is convincing me that it might be worth expanding at least on the chopping and sprouting aspect of this, and you're probably right that involving mouse and/or touch controls would probably be ideal. Thanks for the feedback!
@makimopl If you had fun, then my main goal was accomplished! Thanks for letting me know.
@nyxkn Oh, it needs a lot of polishing to become a good game, but I'm glad you liked the mechanic. I didn't get to making a win screen, so the changing color does indicate that you won!
@flying-dog-fish When you're on a branch, pressing the 'Z' key will chop the branch at your location, and pressing the 'X' key will cause the branch you're on to sprout new branches.
Anyway, now that I was able to actually play, I see this is actually a very interesting concept game. I managed to get the head inside the green circle, and climbed there myself, but the whole thing collapsed after that. A couple of times the thing just exploded and a couple of times the game stopped responding and I had to close the browser tab, but that's just what the theme called for :wink:
@quadtree Thanks for playing! Although currently the goal is getting the sphere to the target, one potential idea for further development is to change it so the player has to get to certain goals.