Reap What You Sow

Very nice Idea! I also like that you added a Computer voice, so the player doesn't feel as alone while playing

This game is awesome. I feel like the weeds are too easily countered.

Such a great relaxing time, really enjoyed playing this one. Would love to see it expanded even more with more voice acting and more plants. Fantastic little strategy game!

What a great game this is! Enjoyable mechanics, consistent graphics, amazing audio/voice! Easily won the first round though, so could be more challenging!

Great game! On theme, not to hard to get into, consistent style and great audio. Well done.

This is an exciting game, The computer voice and art is great.

This game was a lot of fun! It felt quite polished for a jam game. It did take me a minute to figure out that you could pick the direction of weeds though!

Great strategy game! The opponent's robot voice added a nice touch to the matches :)

This game is fantastic. I love the idea of like... a turn based strategy with this aesthetic.

A good game. The computer annihilated me. Weeds are OP.

Fantastic game, LOVE the commentary of the AI, very original.

Very polished, the AI is fun to play against, I think even very well balanced.

Would love to see this as a mobile game.

Very interesting puzzle, atmosphere is charming and the AI voice is just a tiny bit infuriating. An alternate way to rotate the plants would've been good as I kept scrolling down the page on accident. It was a bit frustrating to not draw a rock or weeds for 4 turns in a row and just get bullied by your opponent too. And the game crashed to a black seed when I tried to harvest. But really good and polished otherwise.

It seems very well scoped, were there any extra features that got cut?

I was actually kinda blown away by the quality of the ruleset you came up with and also by the fact that you've also created a really well working AI to go along with it. It was really fun and challenging to play against this AI. And I actually learned a couple of trick moves from it (that I later used against it >:D), like overriding the weeds with my own weeds going in a different direction, or putting down a stone on the weeds to claim the territory, or re-seeding after harvesting in a way to tear off part of the opponent's territory.
At first all these moments felt kinda cheap, like the AI did the moves that I didn't even know were possible in this ruleset, but then it felt really good and even triumphant to pay back the AI by using the same moves on it in return. And in the end I feel that this is actually a really good way of teaching people how to play the game beyond the very basic level.
I also really appreciate that the AI voices its turns out loud and does a little pause before actually doing the move. It really helps a human player to follow up with the game.

If it's not a super secret mystery, would you mind giving some insight into how your AI actually works behind the scenes? Does it simulate all possible moves some number of turns in advance, wights the outcomes somehow and selects the move that produced the best simulated outcome? It also so happened that around turn 20 the AI just gave up and said that it doesn't have a move, although I was kinda lagging behind in terms of points at that time, so I wonder how it really works under the hood and also how it copes with the random nature of the actions that you draft each turn.

But yeah, it's a great game, I really enjoyed my time with it, and thank you all for making this one!

Great work! love the voicing!
also, the art and audio are pretty awesome.

very cool idea.

Ooooh an AI. I could play this game for hour. That like b*** keeps to put weeds on my weeds... I would be very pleased to see how it works behind but i rather keep the mystery ! Nice game really. Very fun to play even if AI kills me in my first game...

Ooooh an AI. I could play this game for hour. That like b*** keeps to put weeds on my weeds... I would be very pleased to see how it works behind but i rather keep the mystery ! Nice game really. Very fun to play even if AI kills me in my first game...

@fizzbark Thanks for your comment! There were no features cut necessarily but there was no time left to playtest it to find out whether the current ruleset makes sense. The cards you get are now completely random for example and we wanted to add a system that guarantees that you get each card at least once every three turns or so. I also wished I had more time to polish the AI and see it perform over a longer span of time. The crash on harvesting is also probably a result of not being able to play it enough to see this happening. We hope to fix it in the future!

@detectivelosos (and @reikan if you want spoilers) Thanks for your kind comments! The AI basically only looks at the current situation and plays from there without looking turns ahead. I then programmed it in a way that I would play the game. It basically goes down a list of actions and tries to find the most appropriate move.
1. place grass in positions that are not owned and will not be owned next turn.
2. scan for dangerous weeds that are close to high value plants and neutralize them with rocks or other weeds.
3. Place plants that are worth points, except flowers, when lacking behind in points.
4. Attack the enemy player by placing weeds or flowers if available.
5. Place plants that are worth points if nothing else can be done.
6. Try to harvest if possible

If there is no action that can be performed from this list, then the AI will just give up. This might feel a bit strange to the player but I had basically no time to add other possible moves.

The last bit that is interesting to mention is that it decides where to place weeds, flowers and reseeds based on the value of the plants in their sphere of effect. Weeds for example prefer being placed close to plants that are worth a lot of points, with flowers that are still developing being the highest priority target. Flowers and reseeds just want to steal as much land from their opponent as possible with as many plants that give points as possible.

I personally really like talking about the AI cause I like playing against it myself too. If you have any more questions, you can DM me on twitter ([@Hare_Software](https://twitter.com/Hare_Software)) and I will gladly explain.

@hare-software Hey! Thank you very much for the explanation. I'm quite surprised that just a simple set of game states to check without any step simulation provides such a sophisticated AI behavior. And now that you've described the things that AI checks for, it is starting to make sense why in my playthrough AI just gave up: seems like it was because I've blocked off all of my plants by rocks or by plants of the AI itself, and the AI drew some unuseful actions on it's turn(like rock and weeds and something else) and it couldn't use any of them without in some way putting itself at a slight disadvantage, so it just gave up.

Wow really nice.

Super impressed by the AI and the way they talk to you while playing against them is adorable!

Wow! Thats amazingly polished for a game jam game! I really like the mechanic - played against the computer but will definetly try out the multi player :) The pixel art is very nice and the robot voice is cute

Wow! Thats amazingly polished for a game jam game! I really like the mechanic - played against the computer but will definetly try out the multi player :) The pixel art is very nice and the robot voice is cute

Wow! Thats amazingly polished for a game jam game! I really like the mechanic - played against the computer but will definetly try out the multi player :) The pixel art is very nice and the robot voice is cute

(sorry for the multi comment! My internet had a hick up and there seems to be no option for deleting comments?..)

Good AI. Fun computer voice and interesting gameplay. Definitely fits the theme. Have a tied record against the AI, but learn new plays everytime.

Yup, we have a real winner on our hand here folks. Art is consistent and doesn't distract, the little voice-overs are a nice touch, it's easy to understand the rules, and the fact that there's an AI... so good. I played a 6x6, and I wasn't able to win, but I imagine if I have a few more rounds I could probably best the AI. I love the simplicity of it all, and how easy it was to get into. One of the best entries I've played. Well done!

Great game! Planning to show it to some friends who I think would like it... The AI and voiceovers were a great touch, and I appreciated the occasional pitching of the vocals to add ~flavor~, although i wish they were a little less processed as I can't always comprehend what they're saying.

Also loved the attention to detail with the art! Is it a little crow sitting on the rock? Just lovely!! Thanks so much for submitting such a cool game!

This is really good! most LD games don't make you stop and think for your next moves, the concept is really nice

Great idea, and well executed! The AI was perfectly capable, always tricky to manage during a jam, and the voice work was a nice touch. Nice work y'all!

Brilliant game! The graphics, the computer voice, the gameplay, and the polish are all done just fine. It would be very interesting to see the development of this idea. Great job!

Always impressive to see a game which has both an AI (which behaves very naturally) and the possibility to play local multiplayer. The gameplay is great, it does not take long to learn the rules but it is still deceptively deep. The cliché "Easy to learn, hard to master" describes it well :smile:

The whole game "package" is awesome, everything from the sound to the graphics come together to create a pleasant and cohesive experience. The voice acting was a nice touch, makes it feel more personal even when not playing against another human. But most importantly, it was a lot of fun to play!

One of my favorite entries. The art style reminds me of old Chis Sawyer games like Roller Coaster Tycoon. The music is nice and the gameplay is very engaging! The talking robot is a nice touch :) Well done!

I absolutely love this game!
The graphics, audio, and gameplay are all amazing.
Very well done, crafting such a nice game.

Amazing game! My only complaint would be the RNG which makes it less fair to do PvP. When the other uses a weed and you randomly don't have rocks available it really feels unfair. But the audio was amazing, the graphics were great and the CPU voice was over the top! 5/5, great game!

I played this game in local multiplayer and it was fun. I think the RNG mechanic was not fun. Both players should have the option to use all tools. In the small maps there was a huge advantage to playing first and picking middle but not in the large map. Are weeds to kill weeds always better than rocks because they cost nothing?

Nice voice acting, chill music, fun sound effects, cool pixel art graphics, and addictive game play. Good job!

@winter2277 Glad you enjoyed it! RNG can be difficult to manage in a short jam project but I am glad you appreciated the game otherwise! Thanks for rating and commenting!

@martenscedric Weeds that replace weeds are better in the sense that they can redirect towards enemy territory and cost nothing. The rock is better in the sense that it creates a semi-permanent barrier that you can build behind safely and avoid future weeds as well as discouraging flower expansion due to the attacker inheriting the minus points.

As for the small map advantage, while the first player has an advantage in the form of being ahead 1 turn, the second player has the advantage of always being the one reacting to player 1, and therefore making more informed moves each time. Overall, player 1 still has an advantage but we can't perfectly balance a jam game unfortunately. I hope you had fun regardless and I hope you had a chance to experience our AI as well! Thanks for the comment!

Whouw this game was awesome! I like the turn based mechanic. It lets me read all the options before making a choise. The graphics and audio design are just outstanding. This game is so polished, that I can see myself in it!
The computer is a bit too good at this game I think. Or maybe I'm not that good haha, I did not win yet, but I had a good time playing yours!

Can you please open-source the code of this game? I want to read the code of the bot which we find quite strong. Is there some alpha beta pruning going on or is it a state machine?

Really good! Was a bit overwhelmed at first and lost quite hard the first time, but at that point I'd mostly figured it out and easily won on my second round 😁 Great work on making a fun board game in itself, and on all the polish surrounding it, including a computer player *with* (funny) voice acting! Didn't need much of a tutorial as one test game along with the tooltips seemed enough to get it. Super well done 🌟

Really interesting "Rock-Paper-Scissors" interplay. It feels like a good foundation for a more spatial oriented version of a card game. Would love to see a more fleshed out version of this.