Anya's Valley by nardandas

[raw]
made by nardandas for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

Capture.PNG

Welcome to Anya's Valley! The special little place Anya hangs out with her animal friends! A rumbling approaches, something threatening the valley! Take up a wand in defense! Keep bulldozers out with plants and build new homes for your friends! Start by talking to the Mouse.

Controls

  • Move - Arrow Keys or WASD
  • Place Thing - Left click while indicator is green
  • Change placed thing - Scroll
  • Talk - E

Hints

  • The X removes a thing you've placed. This can be thought of as felling or harvesting the plant, if it's a plant.
  • Watch your magic meter! Some plants give magic when they're happy

Bugfixes

  • 4/5/2022
    • Fixed dozers turning on and off
    • Music plays in the main menu
    • This line makes me feel silly, but in my defense I was sleep deprived for(int i = dozers.transform.childCount; i >= 0; i--) {
  • 4/6/2022 -Music correctly stops and restarts on exit to menu

Ratings

Overall 565th 3.611⭐ 65🧑‍⚖️
Fun 790th 3.286⭐ 65🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 373th 3.609⭐ 66🧑‍⚖️
Theme 371th 3.922⭐ 66🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 415th 3.985⭐ 67🧑‍⚖️
Audio 463th 3.516⭐ 65🧑‍⚖️
Humor 869th 2.633⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Mood 342th 3.813⭐ 66🧑‍⚖️
Given 79🗳️ 128🗨️

Feedback

ursagames
05. Apr 2022 · 07:17 UTC
Wow that's an impressive jam game! Took me a few retries to figure out how to make everyone happy, and it was definitely stressful, but it was a rewarding play! This is actually really similar to one of the things I thought of for this theme, and very well executed! Love the pixel art and all of the mechanics at play.
mira
05. Apr 2022 · 07:40 UTC
really like the art style. lovely music. easy to understand gameplay. overall very good game.

I'm not sure if I won, but I saved all the animals (I needed about 5 tries). :smile:
Azhures
05. Apr 2022 · 07:44 UTC
WOOW!! I looove your graphics and all the animations! It took me some time to understand that I had to stop the machines getting closer, but after that was really nice!
Underlig
05. Apr 2022 · 21:45 UTC
Great stuff, this was fun, and also urgent, the art style is great, and it feels good to play.
A game i would like to see expanded on basicly =) i would love to play a bigger game like this.
Dont really know what to pick on with this, other than maybe some tweaks on bariers on the map when moving through the mountain, and some more accurate ingame descriptions on how to slow down the Bulldozers.
Great work and idea, this was fun =)
OtterFaeLure
05. Apr 2022 · 21:49 UTC
What a game!! That was absolutely wonderful.
My only gripe was that the owl kept telling me to talk to the Mouse and the mouse was not giving me any intel whatsoever for the owl. I figured it out though by using the image at the top. Took some trial and error.
The amount of everything that went into this game is amazing give that it's a Ludum Dare game.

I also really appreciate the conservation theme and how you can't just relocate animals without knowing what they need to be safe.

Well done. :D
nosleepjf
05. Apr 2022 · 23:17 UTC
The bulldozers are so great! The animation is so dramatic and feels me with a sense of dread for the animals below!!
VorpalSnark
05. Apr 2022 · 23:31 UTC
This is such a thoughtful game! There's a lot of personality put into the characters
ashley watson
05. Apr 2022 · 23:33 UTC
Very Nice feels complete. UI was done well/Story .
I Also love the bulldozers
nicorm
05. Apr 2022 · 23:38 UTC
Loved the game and the ambience, really good to be honest. Check our game as well!
frozenfire92
06. Apr 2022 · 00:02 UTC
Great entry! You got a lot complete for a solo jammer and the level of polish is impressive. Great use of the theme that is a stark reminder for those playing. The art was quite nice and I hope to see you improve and iterate on those skills!

Some constructive feedback:
- a pixel perfect camera will help the stuttering when moving
- the default unity blue camera is a little immersion breaking on the edges of the world
- the rules of why/where I could plant weren't always clear, or what would slow the dozers best
- when uploading games using webgl I generally go for a smaller resolution so people on laptops don't need to zoom out/fiddle with it, and then they can full screen if they choose (or zoom the browser in)

Keep on making games \o/
Quite Good
06. Apr 2022 · 02:05 UTC
The suprise of when the tractors come was amazing. Also I felt the writing was really good, from the little dialogue I could find. Music was also a lovely level of trippy
Mopifish
06. Apr 2022 · 04:23 UTC
Did the creatures die :(
I think I only saved the frog..
It's okay, the owl was a stuckup anyways.

Charming little puzzle game, good entry :)
🎤 nardandas
06. Apr 2022 · 06:25 UTC
@mira Happy to see you saved them all!

@underlig Totally agree - I only did one quick pass on collision and IT SHOWS. Definitely something I should've cleaned up. I also went very info-lite and that kinda shows as well...

@otterfaelure I may have been too vague... "Plants need water to grow" doesn't tell you that the plant in front of the owl is a tomato nor that water also helps budding... nor that the thing on your bar even is water, or that you could place it. Probably should've had another person test it for like, info loading.

@frozenfire92 Points well takes. The stuttering wasn't due to a non-pixel perfect camera, it was kind of a result of the speed not really being right for the pixels. Shoulda done it all in pixel coordinates. I didn't even realize you could see outside of the world, super big mistake! The rules were pretty unclear and that's because I kinda cobbled them in
Narffy
06. Apr 2022 · 07:52 UTC
Very nice game and i love graphics pixel art!
Yossha
06. Apr 2022 · 13:07 UTC
Very catchy design, caught my eye!
Helping the animals was not easy and took several tries. It was nice to get a hint by telling a proper story.
MOOOKS
06. Apr 2022 · 17:16 UTC
Cool game, I like the concept, it took me a few try's to learn how it works but I got it eventually. I thought the pixel art and animation was pretty well made and also the music which was fitting. Nice game I thought it was very well polished!
darwyn
06. Apr 2022 · 19:04 UTC
Convincing game, I like the art style and the game idea
Guy Girmonsky
06. Apr 2022 · 19:59 UTC
Big fan of this type of pixel art. I think it adds a nice simplistic touch to games, while creating a nice atmosphere to the game.
Also interesting dialogs always add more layers to the game. Super impressive submissions for a jam imo, good work!
Jvdwijk
06. Apr 2022 · 23:19 UTC
This game was really cute! Loved the dialogue of the animals, but I unfortunately couldnt save mister hoot :( I had a big tree but they didnt find it to be a proper home.

Very nice entry!
Wassim
07. Apr 2022 · 03:57 UTC
I loved playing the game it's very challenging and had to go through lots of playthroughs but I really had fun, Great entry! :smile:
Florian van Strien
07. Apr 2022 · 14:49 UTC
Very cute art, so I didn't expect it to be this challenging! I really couldn't figure out what the owl wanted even with a few tries. A big tree didn't seem to be enough, at least, neither were tomatoes. But still it was a really fun game. The audio was great too!
JuulH
07. Apr 2022 · 16:12 UTC
Really original idea! The first time around I was a bit unsure of what to do but eventually I noticed you could block the machines by putting stuff in front of it. There also wasn't really and ending/failstate so I wasn't sure if I had to restart or not. The second time I realized you had to try to actually save the animals, but I couldn't figure out how to actually get them to move away from where they were. As far as I know I completed their tasks but I couldn't really do anything after that. Aside from that, the art and sound was really good and I think the idea is very interesting. Maybe with some more guidance/tutorial it could be a lot clearer what you have to do. Overall a really good idea, with a little polish I think it'd be very fun to play :)
Sopata
07. Apr 2022 · 22:49 UTC
A cute-looking game. Even though I am not super big on these types of games and it took me some tries to understand what I have to do and how the interactions work - I had a fun time playing. Keep up the good work :v:
Orionhart
08. Apr 2022 · 05:25 UTC
It took me quite some time to figure out what was going on, and I had to restart a few times to read the dialogue which moved a bit too slow for my liking since hitting E would skip it instead of make it finish the type-writer effect first. The only major things I would change are that, and the fact that the visuals pause when talking to someone. The visual style was very cohesive, I think you fit the theme loosely but well, and you did a great job for being solo in the time allotted! Reminded me of stardew :)
Nash
08. Apr 2022 · 13:39 UTC
That is a great entry! Nice visual style and the music makes the game quite relaxing actually.

I agree on many other commenters here that the E key should only complete the dialog animation and not skip it completely. The speed of the dialog is too slow to my taste.
LDJam user 258516
08. Apr 2022 · 23:38 UTC
I'm very happy to see a game with a light diet, this JAM addressed many heavy topics (this one also addresses, but in a cuter way).

I understood right away that I ran out of mana that the small circles served to recover it, but I think a sound effect would be interesting (at least I didn't notice any).

The music was super delicate, and the map was really big (in a good way). I found some weird bugs like the character getting stuck in some parts of the land, and it took me a while to understand how to harvest the items.

The art turned out super cute, congratulations!

If this feedback has positively helped your game, don't forget to leave a "<3"
milq
08. Apr 2022 · 23:46 UTC
Wow! amazing game! At first I didn't understand very well but in a very short time I understood everything! The animations are very good and in the end I was able to save all the animals afterwards. :-)
Pixelydian
09. Apr 2022 · 02:02 UTC
Love the animation on your player sprite. Also loved the dramatic entry of the bulldozers. This was a tough but very compelling game. I definitely wanted to save those animals! I appreciated the little E above the animals for interaction. I wish the text would auto complete rather than skip to the next line when pressing E again, as I kept skipping dialogue by accident. I also would have liked a little more tutorial/explanation on the action options. These are small nit picks though and I feel like your game was a solid little polished package. Great job!
Skleembof
09. Apr 2022 · 16:59 UTC
Unique concept and interesting gameplay. I got a bit confused at first but the game was intuitive enough for me to figure it out quickly. The main character sprite looked great, especially the flowing hair.
Minor issues like the text box getting cut off and character sticking to parts of the gameworld slowed me down, but didn't get in the way of the gameplay. The music fit well and added a sense of urgency
BattleToast
12. Apr 2022 · 06:52 UTC
Great art and music!
LDJam user 250426
12. Apr 2022 · 08:55 UTC
I struggled quite a bit trying to figure things out, but I'm glad I stuck with it (thanks for being patient with me too xD)!

left feedbacks on stream, vod @ 1:30:20
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1449593775
LDJam user 263763
15. Apr 2022 · 22:54 UTC
I like the idea, nice art and music, good job!
TheBlitz
17. Apr 2022 · 03:47 UTC
Nice concept, but i was super confused at first XD, thought i had to fight the bulldozers
TheCrittersCove
21. Apr 2022 · 19:42 UTC
I was honestly confused initially. Otherwise, the game does seem very well polished. The art and music are good. I do like the variety of things that can be placed. It really does look like a lot was put into this game in such a short time. The game just needs a little more explanation. Overall this is a well rounded game.