Word Harvest by Steelfeathers

WORD HARVEST
Play on itch.io
This year's harvest will be bountiful...if you can get rid of all the debris cluttering up your field! Seems like every season there are new boulders, tree stumps, and even a few shallow graves that appear from nowhere... oh well, you better get to work cleaning up all the garbage so it doesn't wreck your tractor!
In Word Harvest, you play as a farmer harvesting the season's crops. Each crop you successfully pick up gives you points towards your final score. As your tractor moves across the screen, obstacles will sometimes appear in your path. If you type the word on the obstacle, it disappears - but if you don't, it will jam your tractor, causing you to lose a life and miss picking up crops for a short period of time.
TOOLS
- Unity/C#
- Krita
JAM NOTE S
- No sound effects, I ran out of time after switching projects halfway through.
| Link | https://github.com/Steelfeathers/LudumDare52_2 |
| Link | https://steelfeathers.itch.io/ludum-dare-52-test |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/word-harvest |
Ratings
| Overall | 264th | 3.7⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 185th | 3.74⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 271th | 3.5⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 118th | 4.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 145th | 4.2⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 487th | 2.682⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 523th | 3.261⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
As you noted above, it's eerily quiet. I understand that you ran out of time, but I think you should definitely revisit this post-jam to add some sound-effects and a backing track. It would make a world of difference.
I also think that the difficulty ramps up too slowly. I think I could probably have made it much further than I did (Level 2), but the early levels weren't challenging enough to keep me playing.
As always with typing games, they get a bit boring to me after a while of playing, and this one is no exception - though you managed to make it a bit more interesting with levels. I would have given up a lot quicker if it was an endless runner.
Pity about the sounds, they would help a lot with engagement I think.
P.S. A minor nitpick - I'm not sure if there was a way to confirm the menu to go to the next level via a keyboard, but having to use a mouse in a typing game is a bit awkward :sweat_smile:
@mvasko2 Menu navigation via keyboard makes sense, I'll add it to the list.
Also errors are expensive, missed one character and you have to retype whole word.
- Beautiful GUI / Menus / Buttons, nice colors
- Nice sprites (most of them)
- Game lacks animation (harvester machine wheels, etc.)
- Simple gameplay, maybe too simple (I missed some additional mechanics)
- In terms of logic it's pretty hard to understand how all of those obstacles appeared on the field
- If you select all text and them press any button, text will disappear, but new character will not appear. Pretty annoying bug.
- When remove the last obstacle in the level, level should just speed up
- In general – I liked the game, even though it was pretty boring (dropped after 3 levels) because of too simple and monotonous gameplay. Some bonuses on the way could help with that.
I also would recommend you to add a link to Itch in the section with links, because a lot of people will look their first (as I did), I barely found your link on the description page. Title orange text doesn't look like a link in most cases. More like a title.

