The Blood Tree by strong99

[raw]
made by strong99 for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

Something has been taking your fruits, and that something tasted delicious.

Humanity can't stay away from your fruits. And you have developed a taste for blood. Lure unwittingly humans into your trap. And feast up on their riches!

Gameplay

You start with 3 trapped humans in a digestive pod.

The tree needs blood (through a trapped human in digestive pod) every 10 seconds.

The tree produces a magic fruit every 10 seconds which counts as both your lifeforce and build points.

The adventure guild will dispatch adventurers when citizens are alarmed!

Spread your roots from the main tree and decide what sprouts from your roots. You can create: - lure: to attract and trap those humans in a digestive pod - blockade: block the route - offensive: shoots acid towards anything

Find and click magic nodes to get construction and interactions to select from.

Note: you can only build roots connected to other roots

Issues:

  • there's a small bug with audio looping or the browsing disabling audio due to that (firefox)
  • sometimes humans freeze when they can't decide what to do

startScreen.png Screenshot 2022-10-03 130632.png

Version 1 source and link will show the submitted version. Play the latest version directly on https://ldjam.4vandorp.eu/ld51/

Ratings

Overall 342th 3.2⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 429th 2.711⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 160th 3.5⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 372th 3.237⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 107th 3.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 288th 2.95⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 290th 2.333⭐ 17🧑‍⚖️
Mood 236th 3.235⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 42🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

ROBOWARRIOR1982
03. Oct 2022 · 05:43 UTC
The idea is good for a tower defense, it fit the theme. It lacks of sounds and feedback, and i think it's really difficult too. The graphics are charming and very well made for a jam.
cogcomp
03. Oct 2022 · 19:08 UTC
Very nice graphics but I agree with @robowarrior1982 it needs feedback of some kind to make it easier to understand. A like how the grim story is in stark contrast to light and cheerful atmosphere in the game :smile:
Riphitter
04. Oct 2022 · 02:25 UTC
Graphics are pretty neat and I enjoyed the background music, though the loop seems a bit off. Definitely wanted a few runs at this but the restart button lead to a white screen. Just had to refresh the page
Ninnec
04. Oct 2022 · 03:40 UTC
As other have said the artwork is really nice and backstory is also really nice. A really solid idea
ThaProfesional
04. Oct 2022 · 06:40 UTC
Everything about it looks gorgeous from the menu to the UI elements and parallax backgrounds.

Found it pretty challenging at the start but I think I got the hang of it after a few attempts / once I figured out what I was doing. Dug the minimal UI but at times I felt like I couldn't really gauge my progress by just looking at what I've built.
Dfyzet
04. Oct 2022 · 12:25 UTC
The look of the game is amazing. All the art is amazingly beautiful, and the background music is great for this game.

The whole idea is pretty damn interesting, it took me a while to figure out all the aspects, but it still came out great, I love it!
Doot
06. Oct 2022 · 21:32 UTC
Very good looking game, that's impressive for a compo game!
I had a lot of trouble to begin with, then I started to understand most of it and it was fun! It's cool to expand, to try to catch people when other are fare enough, and to survive when it gets caothic.
Great job!
badoomtch
08. Oct 2022 · 13:15 UTC
I enjoyed the graphics, great game. I enjoyed it.
Misfire_dev
11. Oct 2022 · 12:20 UTC
really like the idea and the ui is great from the start but i suck at the game itself and i'm struggling to get a grip on what/how i'm supposed to progress when thieving humans keep taking my fruit
ryusui
12. Oct 2022 · 00:01 UTC
It's a little hard to tell what exactly I'm supposed to be doing here. Like, I understand all the tools at my disposal, how they operate, but I can't quite wrap my head around what my long-term strategy is supposed to be here, other than "survival." It feels mostly like no matter what I do, I tip the humans off that I'm trying to eat them and then I'm at their mercy.
dhim
12. Oct 2022 · 13:04 UTC
I tried a couple of times, and I was not sure what to do at first.

Visually the game is beautiful, but some of the elements are hard to parse (captured humans) as they blend a bit too much in the busy environment.

the game elements are quite small and fast, but the UI is not super responsive. I felt that hovering and then clicking on capture was too slow to really get the humans in a timely fashion (add the fact that we have no clue about the vision range of humans) and it makes it a bit frustrating. The tree elements could serve as a line-of-sight blocker, and the game could play a bit more like a stealth game if it was a bit slower.

It might be interesting in terms of UI to distinguish actions that are timed (or context-based) like capturing humans that are over a spot, and upgrades that are "permanent". Maybe having a build-up, tutorial mode where you get more and more upgrades and spots to gradually discover elements (maybe unzooming gradually on the map)
- first, zoom in on the tree, just the trap mechanism, and find the timing of capturing the human without being discover
- Unzoom add an area to "grow" a new root
- Add a new path, grow blockade or attack
- Unzoom completely


Having diegetic elements ( the fruits are both the actual fruits and a UI marker for health and energy) is really cool! However they could be improved a bit. they are hard to track on the actual tree, and it's not very clear when they appear/disappear. I understand why (appear every 10s, and disappear when someone goes by) but you are still treating them as UI elements and not physical elements (they should grow, humans should grab them and take time to remove them)

The initial menu is Excellent ! The followup text could have been on a paper as well !

This a very solid entry, that deserves a follow up!