Shred-A-Bunch! by HayriCakir
(I accidentally changed my entry from JAM to EXTRA while I was trying to add an image to description :/)

Your grandpa left his farm to you when he passed away, and you gave him a promise to keep the farm at good shape. After zombie apocalypse, you take your good old tractor and protect your farm from zombies.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/shred-a-bunch |
Ratings
| Overall | 241th | 3.725⭐ | 104🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 43th | 4.094⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 256th | 3.535⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 169th | 4.079⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 64th | 3.931⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 286th | 3.649⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 112🗳️ | 169🗨️ |
I did find a bug where when using the big boy that when I ran out of health it was just stuck there with a pile of zombies growing under me
5/5 would harvest zombies again.
Only bad thing is that I harvested all the sunflowers and killed all the zombies, and didn't get recognized by the game for it. :(
So I drove of the map.
Great entry!
I can't enjoy the joy of harvest.
- Where is handbrake, I wish I could drift with that bad ass tractor and shred oven more zombies :D
- Got stuck on pile of bodies with the Big Boy and could not move, however zombies kept coming to me and kept dying at me feet :D
The slow-mo effects when you "shred some" enemy are awesome and satisfying.
I would add a bit more challenge, maybe different types of enemies because now it is too easy and I died first time just because I get to tired and was curious to see if the game have something else.
And since then I was just dying on purpose to watch upgrade system.
Ah! And the mechanics you chose to kill zombies is very interesting and creative I think.
Keep up the good work!
With a few more vehicles and some level variety it could make for a pretty cool game.
Gotta say though, for this particular game, the combine harvester was more efficient at harvesting sunflowers, but it was way worse at the thing that was most enjoyable in the game, drifting into zombies :D
Great work!
I was playing around with the "big boy" but when i decided to stop moving, i got stuck by zombies:c
Mowing down zombies is super fun, and the upgrades are nice.
Well done !
One note, it would be nice to have a menu to pause or quit
One "issue" I had... don't these huge front harvester usually have rear wheel steering?
Love it nonetheless, of course... I mean, who doesn't.
Now I regret not listening to ChatGPT, because when I saw the theme, I asked ChatGPT for "original farming game ideas that could be implemented in a weekend, with a simple mechanic" and it suggested me precisely this - "farming game where you harvest with a tractor while dodging zombies to protect your tractor", but you went above and beyond with the upgrades.
Solid game.
@xparker That combine harvester was implemented in last 15 minutes so I just copy-pasted the tractor code :D
@splitpainter I had tough times while I was trying to explain 'combine harvester' to Midjourney but I am satisfied with the result. It did the job for a card. Also my first idea was to make a game where you harvest sunflowers and avoid zombies but killing zombies ended up much more fun so almost no one cares about sunflowers :D
🎶 "There's an alien invasion, but you got a brand new combine harvester..." 🎶
It was inspired by a scene from Evil Aliens. Never seen the movie though, it's bad from what I've heard, but you can lookup the [scene on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8dMlkGKoZE). In your case it is zombies instead of aliens but the idea is still pretty much the same. Unfortunately the 'big boy' combine harvester loses durability when you hit zombies head on. For LD52 we went with a different idea. Fun to see someone else implement this though.
What does the bar at the top do? The one that goes up when harvesting stuff or pressing space?
Here is my playtest:
https://youtu.be/IvDFBMz32Wc
Overall, amazing fun and great game.
The game is very fun, I love the upgrade system that is like a card. I'm not sure if it should give you random tractors or not, but the big boy felt worse than the second tractor since you could only harvest from the front and ha a shorter range and also you get damage from zombies.
Overall a great game. Good job!
Fun game, even if bit limited. I was bit confused what I'm supposed to harvest, flowers or zombies. I went for zombies cause it was more fun. Physics were somewhat glitchy, but passable enough. Did not come in the way of fun, though some kind of suspension simulation could be nice. Bit more softness in driving over things. I think you could get rid of health bar and just show damage in tractor, darken texture/mesh as damage increases.
Also I felt like Big Boy was downgrade, at least fun wise. Most of the appeal was to throw plough into zombies by drifting, then combine harvester came and ruined all the fun
My biggest feedback would be to look for a bit of a redesign. Thrashing zombies was obviously the most fun part, but damaging the harvester was a direct consequence. So in that sense, running over zombies was more of an obstacle than a goal, it was more of a deterrent. Does that make sense? I think if you _encourage_ the part that's more fun by tying it to the reward (upgrades), you've got a winning design!
It's a little laggy, but it's not critical.
Thanks for game =)
Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/y26fNN5FUi0?t=9699
Really fun with the bullet time when drifting through the zombies! Nice work!
Epic soundtrack (did you make it or do you have a link? its epic?)
Physics based tractor.
Zombies
This is like a top quality game
Can I also ask
how did you do the anime speed lines?
Great job!
-https://pixabay.com/music/synthwave-a-hero-of-the-80s-126684/
-https://pixabay.com/music/electro-cyber-war-126419/
-https://pixabay.com/music/synthwave-neon-gaming-128925/
@d3kryption @poboy About the anime speedlines, the art pack (POLYGON - Farm Pack of Synty Studios) contains a rain particle effect. I just rotated them towards camera, made them thinner, longer and voila! brand new anime speedlines :)
@malibaturhan Sure thing, I'm gonna play your game tonight, along with other commenters' games!
The lack of sound effects and instructions would be the only criticism I have, but this game was really fun. Congrats!
Nice use of the Synty Polygon models 👍
The clunky controls are funny to!
So here is some feedbacks:
You kill the zombies when you collide with them, but they also hurt you when you collide with them, which shifts the challenge to pure randomness... A way to deal with that would be to have 2 types of mobs:
- some you kill by colliding with them,
- and some that just damage you when colliding (explode?)
It took me some time to know when I was hurt, and I didn't see the health bar. Could be nice to screenshake, screen FX + bump and blink the health bar... I would also place the bar on the top hand corners.
Its hard to figure out your goal, and what are the dynamics in place. I see some "levels" that grow when collecting sunflowers. I'm not sure if you earn points for "levels" when you kill zombies, but I guess it's the case (I would make it more clear). So I guess the goal is to get the biggest level possible? Unfortunately, at one point all of the sunflowers are exploited, so I just reach the zombies and get killed :thinking:
So different possible dynamics could be nice:
- Idea 1: you must collect sunflower to finish the map, and protect the sunflowers from zombies. When all of the sunflowers of the map are collected (by you and the zombies), end of the level, choos ean upgrade and you go to next level, etc.
- Idea 2: you must survive infinitely: sunflowers grow, you collect them, with this resource you improve your harvester. And there is infinite waves of zombies coming and trying to kill you. There is several types of zombies. The upgrades shift your balance of power against specific types of zombies (for example, the "Armor" upgrade helps defending against a zombie).
The important problem here is the winning condition. Either infinite with progressive difficulty, or defined by an ending state (with successive levels, or not!).
The only default is for me the dmg on the last vehicule is a bit hard to understand (why you take dmg).
But overall a very good entry, Good job !
The only thing I was a bit confused by was the bar at the top.
I did 5 or 6 runs. The Big Boy seems to be bugged because I keep taking damage from zombies that are already dead. But the other 2 tractors are very satisfying to use.
Great job! had a good time playing.
I love the music and upgrades. The upgrade card at the end of each round was like: "Oh nice, give me some good shit". It reminds me of pack opening. Love it!
The game routine itself is simple but playable. Really nice arts and animation. The upgrades of getting bigger and bigger are my highlights!
Well done!
I loved the music choices, although I wish there had been more audio feedback for actually driving the tractor and not just when you hit things.
It wasn't clear to me at first that I was supposed to harvest the flowers - I thought I would be getting points from running over the zombies in order to protect the farm. But, drifting was fun, especially when I got the bigger harvester thingy.
It wasn't as fun when I got to the Big Boy upgrade. Shredding zombies became frustrating, because unless I just stood there and let them walk into the front of the Big Boy, I'd take collision damage from running them down. So I think something might be wonky with the colliders or whatever in that regard.
Overall, I didn't actually have a lot of incentive to shred the zombies (thought it felt fun to do so) - they did not give me points towards upgrades, and they damaged me even if I hit them with my big spiky harvester bits.
What I'd love to see is a focus more on drifting - more types of vehicles with different things on the back to swing into the zombies! I'd also love way more zombies, maybe more ragdoll physics when you hit them & also for them to maybe have some kind of score to them - what's the point of upgrading the tractor to kill zombies better when there's no point to killing the zombies themselves?
I appreciated that the game had controller support - when I played with keyboard, I really felt like I would love playing with my controller, so I gave it a try and it worked out well. On Controller I would have loved, maybe a chargeable speed boost to enhance the drifting? I felt pretty slow despite what the anime lines and music were telling me.
I also felt that the play area was too big given the slowness and low numbers of the zombies, inability to replant sunflowers, and the fact the available flowers to harvest only went maybe halfway or less down the road? The farm just felt pretty empty overall.
Overall, I really liked it. I would love to have a choice on my upgrades and again, a bigger focus on the drifting - very silly and fun way to kill zombies by spinning around!
If you ever make a post-jam release, let me know! :smile_cat: I'd wishlist the heck out of this on Steam or itch.io or wherever, lol!