LudumData

Feed the Deep by Matt Green

[raw]
made by Matt Green for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

Play Here

I was hoping the game would be intuitive, but just in case you get stuck:

  1. Farms spawn food at regular intervals (better food takes longer)
  2. Drag food into the lake to feed the beast
  3. The amount of food needed to reset the timer is in the top right corner
  4. Every few feeds, the beast gets hungrier so don't just throw food in haphazardly
  5. You can sell food and gold to get money if you have extras (gold has no other use, so sell it)
  6. When you have the money, buy some sand piles
  7. Drag the sand into the castle to store it
  8. Buy the Pacifier when you have 100 sand
  9. The Pacifier will spawn an object
  10. Throw that object into the lake to win!

The game does get very chaotic by the end, but it is very winnable!

build.png Click the farm buttons to spawn farms

food.png Drag the food into the lake to feed the beast. Sell food at the market (next to the castle). Drag food into piles to keep things neat.

expand.png Use your market money to build better farms, mines (for more gold!) and sand pits. Drag sand into the castle to complete the big project

win.png When you've amassed 100 sand, build the Pacifier and throw it into the lake to save the town!

NOTES: - Comedy "Exit" buttons just freeze the game in WebGL

===

Grow food to keep the beast satisfied until you gather enough resources to pacify it for good!

Free hint: start with a Karrut farm right away, then go from there.

===

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to write here.

I'm so proud of everyone! Even if you didn't finish, this was a crazy experience and just trying is achievement enough. I graduated with a minor in Game Design a decade ago and then had to change careers. LD51 is my first real attempt to make a game and it went better than I expected.

Looking forward to LD52 (or maybe 53, I might need the time to recover!)

Cheers, Matt

Link https://matt-the-green.itch.io/ludum-dare-51
Link https://github.com/palindrone/ludum-dare-51
Link https://matt-the-green.itch.io/ludum-dare-51-html
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/feed-the-deep

Ratings

Overall 244th 3.415⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Fun 225th 3.354⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 175th 3.476⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Theme 97th 3.963⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 222th 3.512⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Audio 197th 3.317⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Humor 78th 3.5⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Mood 216th 3.288⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Given 67🗳️ 57🗨️

Feedback

Paroxysmal
03. Oct 2022 · 01:44 UTC
I keep losing and don't know why. Like the graphics and good music.
wavertron
03. Oct 2022 · 01:45 UTC
Took me a while to work out where to drag the food to (into the lake, which makes sense given the title!). Still found it quite tough to survive long. Nice art, nice music and SFX. Wish the text and icons were a little bigger, hard to read. Very neat idea though.
LDJam user 285197
03. Oct 2022 · 02:38 UTC
I had a hard time playing the game since the UI was way to small. Since you're using Unity you must have forgotten to switch the UI out of "pixels per unit".
Ben Parisi
03. Oct 2022 · 02:42 UTC
I like the graphics and music here. The web GL version is not as good as the PC.

As with most jam games, this is tough as nails. I didn't get all that far. I think you might be able to get more mileage out of the whole thing by slowing it down a bit.

If I could add one thing, it would be the monster in the lake, what does it look like? You never get to see it eat the town. :)
🎤 Matt Green
03. Oct 2022 · 02:51 UTC
@j4cko16 Yeah, I did most of my testing on desktop and then, for some reason, thought I HAD to post an HTML version which turned out to be a nightmare with resizing and stuff.
🎤 Matt Green
03. Oct 2022 · 02:52 UTC
@ben-parisi Thanks Ben! I actually also found the game tough, and I made it. Balance is certainly hard in gamejams :)

That said, you DO get to see the monster when you win. But you're right, it's pretty hard to do with the controls and everything the way they are!
LDJam user 303716
03. Oct 2022 · 05:55 UTC
nice
LDJam user 268934
03. Oct 2022 · 05:57 UTC
Your music is verry catchy tu tu tu de tu de.
If you read the controls and explonation it is easy to play. (Put them in your great game)
Feels like overcooked.
sdelay
03. Oct 2022 · 06:49 UTC
Yeah on Web version, the FX button overlap the carrot farm. But fun to play, took me 5 tries to understand how to survive, 10 seconds happens to fast. It is a good combinaison on "how survive" vs "expend", the classic short-term vs long-term, and the balance is well done here.
m11
03. Oct 2022 · 08:08 UTC
Very catchy music, and a nice take on the theme - very tough on the difficulty, though!
osh.studio
03. Oct 2022 · 09:54 UTC
Interesting progression when you get further but I had to stop as it got too stressful with the constant worrying, not your fault tho. Good game!
Flamus
03. Oct 2022 · 15:40 UTC
Amazing entry! Had a lot of fun with playing with different farms and strategies, love it!
OldDog
03. Oct 2022 · 16:20 UTC
cute funny game,,,nice job man ,but I feels hard to understand how to play in the begin,,,I like the music by the way
LDJam user 21718
03. Oct 2022 · 17:52 UTC
Saw your comment above. I'm glad you did export a HTML version. Makes it very accessible (running on macOS). Great job on finishing the jam!

After the initial hump of getting the grasps it was a fun experience. :v:
Bewelge
03. Oct 2022 · 19:29 UTC
Very nice work! Didn't quite get what to do until a couple of tries, but then it has a nice incremental feel with constant pressure to it!
nyxkn
03. Oct 2022 · 20:35 UTC
Who doesn't love a good farming game! Was not very intuitive at first, but once you get the idea it's straightforward. Nice music and sound effects. Maybe the food required goes up a bit too quickly and feels a bit hard. Also the timer resetting as soon as you feed feels a little unforgiving, because if you do it too early you're wasting resources, but if you do it too late you lose the entire run. The art is quite nice, but the UI could use some visual polish.
LDJam user 300184
03. Oct 2022 · 23:19 UTC
I was off to a rough start, but I got into a rhythm pretty quick. It is very fast paced, I feel like need two cursors to manage everything by the end. But I like it a lot. Also, the sound effects are hilarious and I love it, especially "splash".
atill
03. Oct 2022 · 23:37 UTC
I was so close to winning multiple times! The lesson is that every beast can be appeased with burritos. Very cool gameplay here that kept me struggling to manage the timer while I keep earning enough cash at market to move forward
🎤 Matt Green
03. Oct 2022 · 23:39 UTC
@vimmagic haha! I made the splash effect as a test right near the beginning and it made me laugh every time so I kept it. Then leaned into the voiced effects with the sand, cha-ching and timer boop :)
Bit Flipz
03. Oct 2022 · 23:49 UTC
Not the most intuitive at first, but a decent game once you've figured it out. The sound effects are my favorite part haha
Pusheeneiro
04. Oct 2022 · 01:01 UTC
Great idea, and art style.
LDJam user 264390
04. Oct 2022 · 05:17 UTC
It's a fun game, it really picks up fast and gets you rushing. I wasn't able to beat it yet, but I was starting on my sand empire and got too distracted to notice I didn't have enough food lol. I might give it another try later. The graphics for me, I wish were a little bigger and just some things maybe stand out a little more? The text specially was really hard to read, and the icons at the bottom are a little distorted. I played fullscreen and it didn't really help. Plus the lake is important but is half covered by some of the UI. It's not super distracting, but it would be better if it was fully visible.

Other than that it's super entertaining. Maybe it'd be nice to start with one patch of food ready, or if the timer didn't start until after you place the first patch, because if you don't do it right away you're basically doomed from the get go.

Music is fun and catchy, and the sounds effects are really funny. For your first real attempt this is amazing, and I'm sure with some improvements it can make for a great time killing game, when I want to ignore my job.
🎤 Matt Green
04. Oct 2022 · 05:29 UTC
@payaosito I really like the idea of having one farm loaded in already! I wrote it in the description that it's basically step 1 (even tomatoes take too long to grow for the first feed) so it woulda got things going. I made the game and I still die on the first feed because I dont get the farm down fast enough, haha.

I wish I had lined up some play testers in advance because everyone I know was busy. The UI looked great on my screen but Im learning that different monitors display different (which is an insane thing not to think of because Im a web developer. yikes!).

I wasn't super happy with the theme at first, but now that LD is done, there's so many things I wanna add!
LDJam user 264390
04. Oct 2022 · 05:51 UTC
@matt-green Haha messing up is what game jams are for, specially LDJAM because there's always a lot of feedback going around, everyone is your play tester! It really is a fun game and I hope that you will add more stuff post-jam.
Vhalenn
04. Oct 2022 · 08:02 UTC
Great managing game, it was very tensed !
Henrik Ganard
04. Oct 2022 · 09:07 UTC
Fun game. I like the ironic game-over sign =)
LDJam user 278146
04. Oct 2022 · 12:11 UTC
Nice high intensity game! Finally managed to win. I was a bit confused about how much each type of food feeds/sells for.
Nash
04. Oct 2022 · 12:13 UTC
It is quite a fun game! I think it slightly suffers from the strict 10 second theme. Having to feed the beast once between 10 seconds gets quite jarring. I feel with a slightly slower tempo the game could actually be quite relaxing.

I had some hard time getting started initially. I did not read the manual too carefully so I did not know where the beast was. After a handful of fails I had to come back to the manual and then I understood it. But obviously you would not have time to create a comprehensive tutorial during a jam.

Overall, quite an interesting game and a nice take on the theme. Great work!
Geronimo
04. Oct 2022 · 15:11 UTC
THIS GAME WAS AWESOME! The best game i've played this jam, I love the "splash" and "chaching" sound effects, they made it so satisfying to sell things or feed the monster. It was a simple and good concept, but it got really easy really quick, that doesn't mean i didn't have fun though! Very good job everyone :D
David Hampson
04. Oct 2022 · 15:13 UTC
Great vibe! Figured it out without instructions too. I love the sound effects :P
Castitatis
04. Oct 2022 · 15:49 UTC
That game is pretty intense XD I really liked it, I was about tobuy a pacifier but I lost... :'(
Sean Esopenko
05. Oct 2022 · 03:43 UTC
I found myself in carrot zen, collecting them to feed the beast. I wish the music was a little more varied but being able to turn it off made it fine. How do I generate the resource needed for the gold mine?
🎤 Matt Green
05. Oct 2022 · 03:46 UTC
@sean-esopenko The carrot farms will ultimately create more food than is needed to feed the beast early on, so you can sell extra food at the market (the building next to the castle). Which you can use to buy more (and better) farms, the mine and the sand pits.
Helzinko
05. Oct 2022 · 12:39 UTC
Really interesting take on the theme. Spend way more time playing this than I excepted. Good job!
elysiagriffin
05. Oct 2022 · 17:29 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my stream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1609823066?t=8h45m10s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
shimmerscale
05. Oct 2022 · 18:50 UTC
Wow, that was fun! Even though it was tough, I found myself playing again and again to try to find the best strategy.
busisen
05. Oct 2022 · 23:09 UTC
I love the idea. Really nice execution too. Was pretty stressful to keep up with the hunger demands while simultaneously expanding your farm haha. One thing that happened to me, which most likely is a bug is that I managed to feed the monster RIGHT before the time was up, the timer was reset to 10 seconds, but I was presented with the game over-screen anyways. Probably some rare timing issue with an easy fix! Regardless, cool entry.
🎤 Matt Green
06. Oct 2022 · 02:54 UTC
@busisen Thanks! I really appreciate the kind words. As far as the bug goes, I did witness that a few times during testing and to avoid putting a whole global lock on the timer once it ticks down and freezing the whole scene, I just added ~.5s of grace period.

The timer still resets, but at least I don't feel bad about it anymore, ahah.
Quoclon
06. Oct 2022 · 05:01 UTC
I'm a sucker for some MS Paint looking art, and the splash screen and music had me pretty stoked to dive in. I think if you eased the player in a touch... it would make it a bit easier. I tried about 3 or 4 times, but wasn't able to grow the crops fast enough. I think that's on me though! Overall it seems like a smart use of the theme :)
owca
06. Oct 2022 · 08:11 UTC
For me It was too difficult, but I really like the idea of this game. You used the theme very well. I like the sound effects - they add humor to the game.
I think it's a good foundation for a mobile game.
Phillip Scott
06. Oct 2022 · 10:57 UTC
Ah this was pretty fun, the sounds were really funny - it escalates a little too quickly for my tastes

Good entry!
LDJam user 258850
07. Oct 2022 · 14:12 UTC
This gets hard fast ^^ I love it! really good idea for the theme too.