Hydroponica by Cakestorm
LINK HERE! https://cakestorm.itch.io/hydroponica
THE GAME
Try your hand at interstellar farming, with no pressure - except for the rapidly depleting oxygen supply. Don't stress about it too much.
At least you get some plants to increase your lifespan. Manage building carbon-emitting machines and the relentless growth of flora to make sure you get as much O2 as possible, and try and keep a stable equilibrium!
And if all else fails, just sit back and watch the wildlife.
MY THOUGHTS
I feel ambivalent about this game; I definitely like what I've made, and it's pretty fun to just watch and see the plants grow across the map. In a way, I wish I'd gone back and expanded on that a bit more, since I feel as though the gameplay is a little weak, and I'm more interested in seeing the plants grow than the oxygen levels. It's a bit late to be fixing that now, but in future I'll keep it in mind! Even some new mechanics or variety probably would've helped a little, but what happens, happens. And, having said all that, I still do like how the game looks and feels, I like the effects I've added, and I've tried out a few new coding patterns and techniques and so on (though I know you can't see those - trust me on this one!). Overall, I'm glad I made something, and it was definitely fun to make! I hope you had fun playing it too. How long did you last?
| Itch.io page | https://cakestorm.itch.io/hydroponica |
| Unity source code (version 2019.2) | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LzsyHgBw9eGj4Fv-1cDVkkTdLTzjL-3D/view?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/hydroponica |
Ratings
| Overall | 445th | 3.714⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 824th | 3.257⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 111th | 3.956⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 156th | 4.157⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 93th | 4.471⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 159th | 3.971⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 184th | 4.014⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
Sometime I can't construct machine, but didn't really know why :sob:
But anyway it was really pleasant to play ! Good job !
However, I was just confused about what to do most of the time. While figuring out the mechanics was part of the fun, I think that in the end my actions felt like they lacked direct impact on the outcome for the oxygen & carbon levels. I never really quite felt in control enough that I could really make informed decisions.
@loiclegrosfrere That's an odd bug, it came up a few times in development but I'd thought I'd fixed it - sorry that I didn't fix it well enough! I'm glad you had fun though, thank you!
@gravityflip Thank you! I'm glad you figured out the game in the end; I wanted to strike a balance between explaining everything to the player and not having massive walls of tutorial text, so it's good to hear you figured things out eventually.
@yaen I can understand why, the game was pretty rough when it came to having an impact on the ecosystem, particularly since there's so little to do to affect it - I would've loved to add more to that, like adding new building mechanics, limiting plant growth etc., so I'll keep that in mind going forward! Thank you for the feedback!
Something to notify the player that they are out of materials would help as I found myself trying to place machines without the materials frequently.
I think my thoughts are the same as your own and what's been said before. I found the first playthrough a bit surprising since I didn't expect the plants to take over so quickly, but had a lot of fun trying to organize my machines to contain the plants on subsequent playthroughs. I think a game like this is hard to balance, sometimes it felt like the plants snowballed a bit too quickly once they reached a certain threshold but at the same time without that the game may have been too easy. I think just starting off a little slower so that you can spend the early game preparing a bit more by mining and setting up buildings would have been nice.
Overall really enjoyed the game though, great work.
I like how it's so atmospheric and natural with growing plants etc.
The art and music is wonderful too.
Overall great game :)
Minus a few points for needing the player to repeatedly click the mouse (that got annoying quick), navigating the menu for the blocks was tedious and felt very inconsistent at times, and the background of the itch.io submission and the game made me click off the screen a few times accidentally which was a bit annoying. All of those are easy fixes though and with 72 hours, you can only do so much.
Great game!
If you do work on this more, I think that adding gentle animations to the plants and machines could really make it feel more "alive".
Also, I felt some feedback for oxygen / carbon dioxide generation/depletion was missing, because when placing machines, it's not clear that anything's happening. Similarly, when you can't place a machine, maybe display some feedback for the reason.
It's actually a little unfortunate the primary, initial strategy is to build machines away from the plants because you don't get to watch the plants grow. Though now that I come back to the comments section, some people were actually using them to block the plant grow which was something I definitely hadn't considered.
The system itself is pretty clever, with different interactions between the plants and machines on multiple levels. This allows for depth and flexibility of how you want to play.
Ultimately I think this game's strength is in its incremental visuals. It's a joy to see the system grow and be self-sustaining........until it's not lol. I certainly couldn't keep it going for a terribly long amount of time, but I could still see where the design shined. Great job and clever idea!
@suchista Huh, I didn't realise the itch background would've been a problem - sorry about that! But I'm glad you liked the visuals, and thank you for the feedback!
@tornadopiggie I agree on the clicking part, it's one of those things that was quickly and roughly implemented at the start that I never got around to polishing, it definitely could've been more fun!
@elias-newton I like the gentle animation idea, that'd really work with the feel of the game!
@ycb21 Yeah, pacing is an issue with the end product; considering the chill music and space atmosphere there sure is a lot of clicking and panicking. I'm glad you liked the rest though, thank you!
@peachtreeoath Yeah, at times I was thinking of it as an idle game too, and if I had more time I was planning to bring it more in that direction! Similarly with the plant growth, I wanted to give it that sort of exponential feel a lot of idle games have, so it's a shame it all collapses after a while. It's good to hear that you liked the game, though, and thank you for the thorough look into the design!