Farm Flow by Szivacs
https://szivacs.itch.io/farm-flow
Hi everyone!
This game is about planting crops and harvesting them. The twist is that you are restricted on what actions you can perform at certain times.
The game includes a description in the beginning, so you will be introduced in all important aspects.
P.S. I had a crazy weekend, I actually don't know how I finished this game. Since I only spent 20 hours on the development at max, I would expect that the game has some bugs, or unintended behaviour at times.
All art (sorry in advance, my artistic skills are basically zero), sound effects and gameplay was made by me and me only.



| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/farm-flow |
Ratings
| Overall | 365th | 3.553⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 345th | 3.472⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 24th | 4.184⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 16th | 4.5⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 499th | 3.417⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 461th | 2.667⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 593th | 2.382⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 710th | 2.853⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Simple but sweety graphics, great work!
Sometimes it gets a little frustrating when there isn't a clear way forward. I can't tell if it was hard, or if I'm just bad at it. I expect that carefully balancing which "pieces" get generated at what times could lead to a little more fun, but I had a great time with this.
If you want a bit of constructive feedback, I think there are too many options given to the player, it becomes a bit overwhelming, especially for 36 turns. Perhaps you could allow players fewer choices but give the ability to rotate the pieces instead?
The other thing is that the water doesn't really feel useful enough, especially when carrots die if you don't get back to them fast enough. Perhaps the water could make a field produce 2 carrots instead?

Sok sikert!
Really liked the idea of this, congrats on the fun puzzle!

There are a few things that you guys pointed out that would have been great to implement:
* As @magno-chuntey, @theothersamp, @matt-rix and @lomby said, the balance and fluidity of the pieces were not that great. I felt that during the development, but since I had very limited time, I resorted to a fully randomly generated path system. Somehow adding some weights to the RNG in order to generate more relevant options when needed, or giving a higher chance to generate a path that leads towards crops would have been great
* To add more to the previous point, @matt-rix, @lomby (in his stream) and @bartalomew mentioned the ability to rotate the paths. Yes, that would have been amazing to have, but unfortunately the way I implemented the paths did not offer an easy way to achieve this. Actually, I didn't even think about this for some reason, maybe that's why.
* Nobody really mentioned the fact that the playing area was way bigger than it should have been. In many cases, I felt that maybe 10% of the screen is actually used for the gameplay. @lomby had a great idea where you would start with a very small area and then each year your farmland would get bigger. This could also solve the issue to ease the player in rather than just throwing them in the deep end. This is definitely something that I could have explored more.
* Thanks @weirdybeardyman for pointing out the animations that went into the tile selection. I tried to add something fun and interesting to this (let's be honest) very monotone and static game.
Thanks @igor-minenko, @emil-akper, @qqruzkin, @scarpex, @tildecat, @beardywombat, @plepletier, @found-bow-tonight, @pikkufighter, @szieberth-adam, @trsthstrs, @glaikunt and everyone else who rated the game and didn't comment. :) I will probably not continue with this idea since I don't really see it as a standalone, but who knows :D