Nova Pulse Bakery by WegPast
Nova Pulse Bakery - LD51
Welcome to your new job !
At Nova Pulse Bakery, you'll have to make some tasty bread ! It's special ingredient ? Love ! And maybe those pesky pulses that that supernova does every 10 seconds...
Instructions, read it before playing
Use the 6 machines that you have to collect Water, Wheat, Biomass and use them in the Mill, Kneader or the Oven to make some Flour, Doughs and finally BREAD !
Every 10 seconds, the supernova in the background will emit pulses of Fire (red), Water (blue) or Wind (green), each pulses type will impact in some way (bad or good) your surrounding.
Use the two tanks on the left. Any resources put in it will be save from any pulses as far as it stay in. With hints that will appear when touching machines, find the way to use bake that tasty Bread !
Process to win (Spoiler) :
Each resource node have 3 levels. To get a resource from a node you must bring it its last level. To achieve this, you'll have to use resources on nodes. There are three base resources : - Water from the well - Wheat from the crop - Biomass from the composter
Then three transformed resources : - Flour from the mill - Dough from the kneader - and finally bread from the oven
Some nodes will require a "pulse" from the supernova. Every 10 seconds the nova will emit a pulse of one of those three types : fire, water or wind. Each node is affected by one of the pulse type. You can use resources from other nodes to upgrade them too, here how it works : - Crop : Fire upgrade it, wind and water reset it - Well : Water upgrade it, wind and fire reset it - Composter : Wind upgrade it, water and fire reset it - Mill : Need wind and wheat to produce flour - Kneader : Need water and flour and player interaction to produce dough - Oven need dough and biomass and a fire pulse to make bread
The well is the only node that can be always interacted with to be upgraded. So you always have water at your disposal.
Controls
WASD and Space for action. (Some says that left shift button might do something...)
Credits
- Arts : @WegPast
- Game Design and Program : @Arktas & @Lut1n & @WegPast
- Music from the great and only Kevin McLeod
- All sound effects were made by @Lut1n
Updates
- v1.1 : Collider missing
- v1.2 : Typo and final score was missing
- v1.3 : Added icon of pulse in the prediction to help with readability
| Link | https://quasar-shrine.itch.io/nova-pulse-bakery |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/nova-pulse-bakery |
Ratings
| Overall | 480th | 3.62⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 640th | 3.32⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 413th | 3.52⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 328th | 3.92⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 165th | 4.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 412th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 433th | 3.6⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
Well done, I had lot of fun
In all seriousness the graphics and mood of this game are amazing. I found myself a bit confused about what steps to take in order to produce a loaf. The descriptions by each machine were helpful but as a visual learner I appreciate picture tutorials. That being said, there is only so much time in a game jam, and you completed a polished game here. You can always add a tutorial later if you decide that's something you are interested in. Nice work!
but it seems that other managed so great game!
First of all, great job on the aesthetics. I know spriting is not as easy as it looks but you nailed it. I do feel like the UI border for the elements can be a little cleaner, just having a clear line is easier to sprite as it is to look at. Sound job was great too, sfx and music blend together well and fit the mood.
It'd be nice if there's a way to know if the kneader and oven has water and compost already in it. I know the ui glows green if I'm holding the duplicate resource, but I feel like I need that knowledge all the time. I did accidently make a compost a couple of times, only to find out I already inserted it. I had less problems with that with water, since water is so ubiquitous, but it will still be an improvement.
Speaking of water, I feel like 3 steps for water can be a little daunting. I can barely finish that in a pulse cycle, and only if I have a resource slot to hold it, which I rarely do. Maybe that's intentional since the water pulse is there to help, but I don't know, I had the hardest problem with the well than anywhere else.
Also.... this is just a suggestion. I honestly don't know how it would turn out, but maybe it'll help if the pulse rng is not completely random. Believe me, my 2nd round I got fire in like 15 pulses. Maybe I was extremely unlucky, but sometimes rng does not have to be purely random in these kinds of games, where all pulses are necessary and best when they mix a lot. Or maybe you could make it a fixed cycle.. although you might have to adjust the game a little.
Alright, very fun game overall, else I would not be playing again. I'm going to give my 3rd try now. Brb.
edit: Yay! 29 pulses!
**We know that a tutorial would help players** more that what we have here. But we decided, as we were developing this game, to for a more "in-game" way. We wanted the player to have hints, by text indications or UI design. Bu we ran of of time and rushed a bit that integration of that in game learning mechanic.
Options we had were, rush (and botched it) a text tutorial as we made for previous games; make a big update later; try to make explanation screenshot an description on the game page.
- First option was proven not a good idea in our earlier games as long text, rushed, full of typos, player won't read it so after all it's useless.
- For second option, the learning of mechanics of a game is part of its development, we felt like making such an update later would like to cheat with the game jam.
- So we decide to do what we could within our remaining time and stuck with the in-game learning method.
What I wished we had time to implement was more intuitive interactions like more info on what the next pulse will do to each node (like a down and up arrow for downgrade and upgrade effect), maybe more hints that would appear if the player struggle too much...
And yes, as you mentioned @twowolf (thanks for your big and constructive comment btw :smile: ) it was planned to had visual info like pop-up above the kneader (and the Oven) to know what resources was already in it. We thought also to have the mill, kneader and oven appearing when you manage to get a resource that could be used in it. This could enhance the player understanding of the baking process.
Moreover, there is a 33% chance for each pulse to occur... If we didn't hadn't lost time on some UI non-sense (I am the only one of team that know it well, but a the time the team was working on UI and UX design, I was focused on the graphics that were long due) we could had implemented a ponderation of this randomness to avoid having a bazillion time the same pulse type in a row (and yes, it was annoying when that happened when testing the game, but other problems were more important at the time).
Anyway, **we may update the game with small fixes** like :
- Avoiding to have more than two same pulse in a row
- Add an info bubble to let the player know what resources is in transforming nodes.
## At least if you, players, don't say it's a too big change on the game post-publishing and would be considered as cheat. Tell us what you think about those two updates, we'll follow your opinion on that :smile:
I love the art-style! And the music is fitting to the artstyle I think. But to be honest, I think the game feels a bit liniar, as in: there is a specific path to follow to complete it. I like the more open-ended approches. Or did I interpret that wrong?
Nevertheless, this is an impressive piece you can be proud of!
This is probably painful to watch, but it should be your struggle as well: :smile:
https://youtu.be/wP1QP1SRzEE