I tried the html version and couldn't get my little guy to move.

Took me a bit to realize how to fight, but was a fun little game! I was pretty excited once I planted the second crop.... definitely left me wanting more :D Love the farmer sprite by the way, nice bobbing animation!

What are the controls?

@pojo79 There was a bug with the player input that accidently snuck by sleep deprived me. Thanks for bringing it up! It's been fixed and all builds.

@reevest2 I added a breakdown of the controls to the description of this page (along with a little spicy flavor text!). You can also find that information in the game in the 'Info' menu, but that's a little obscure, and the controls are a little complicated. So hopefully it will help to have the info in more easy to find places!

@ursagames Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to add some tutorial text explaining how combat worked, but there just isn't enough time in a compo for everything. I think a lot of the game systems and interactions would benefit from some more explanation in game, and I hope to add that in future versions. Thanks for playing!!!

I am wodering how to plant crops. I am only killed by monsters all the time.....

@found-bow-tonight Here's my quick guide to planting!
* Start with a patch of Dirt
* Use the Hoe to till the Dirt into Soil
* Grab the Bag of Seeds (or any other seeds you have handy)
* Use Seeds on the Soil
* In a no time at all you'll have some healthy, happy plants!

Interesting take on the theme! Love the roguelike+farming mixed genre. Found that placing about 8 plants in a 2x4 rectangle makes me able to start harvesting the first one as soon as I've planted the last one. Didn't realize how to fight at first, thought I need some new tool as a weapon or I need to run from the enemies until dawn. Moving "into" the enemy with my bare hands just didn't sound like a reasonable thing to do until I did it accidentally :) A few suggestions:

- It would be nice to see what tool you have equipped right now, and having the same button do both dropping and picking up a tool would make it much easier to play.
- You can accidentally use a tool on a tile where this tool does nothing and the player gets stuck on this tile until he ends using the tool, which still does nothing. Would be nice if the game ignored attempts to use a tool on an inappropriate tile.
- Again, when using a tool you can't attack or even heal. This is exactly how I died in my last playthrough - started sowing the seeds and got suddenly surrounded by a dozen monsters and died suddenly, with nothing I could. Would be nice if there was a way to prevent that, e.g. maybe cancelling the tool if you think you need to run :)
- It felt like removing trees and rocks is pretty much useless: takes a lot of time and doesn't give you anything at all - you still have plenty of free dirt everywhere, and due to ripe plants turning into bushes you can't really sow a large enough field anyway.
- Finally, it would be cool to have more options to fight with the monsters, or at least build some defenses/wall against them. The game felt a bit unfair when I finally got to a good amount of crops but they didn't help me to defeat an overwhelming army of monsters.

@lisyarus Thank you so much for your feedback! I really liked Hartifacts! I agree with all of your feedback. I had plans for some stuff (systems and story) that I think would have helped with the issues you raised. Unfortunately compo time limits being what they are, I ran out of time to get them into the game at this stage. It's good to hear from your feedback that I'm on the right track with the things I need to address going forward. Thanks for playing and taking the time to comment!

I don't think there's much more that I could say that @lisyarus hasn't already said. It seems like he had a near identical experience as to what I did. I didn't find the fighting mechanic very obvious. It might deserve a mention at least in the control descriptions.

To give the player more reason to expand their farm and clear out bushes and boulders would be to have some longer term crops. Longer term crops would allow the player to be able to manage more plots without having to worry about the plants withering away too quickly.

The square moving are so interesting.I like this game very much!

Felt a lot like the typical farm game, i guess most ppl avoided that, that's why i actually quite enjoyed some real farm game feeling :D

I had a hard time tho to see the progress bar while standing on a hoed dirt patch trying to place seeds ^^, Maybe you could change the color to something more visible - other than that a great game!

@jason-wilson Thanks for your feedback! I really appreciate it. Definitely some work needs to be done to improve communication about the combat system. In the meantime I've added 'Attack' into the controls instruction list. Hopefully that will help. Also adding more crops to plant (with a variety of growing times) is definitely in the works!

@poietic-ruby I'm glad you liked the game! Thanks for playing!

@thoastbot Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'll definitely look at changing the bar color to into account what's behind the bard and give it some more visibility.

so bascically what @lisyarus said. I did get to the dungeon where i reached the end of the game, so I can imagine at that point you would have had more typical rogue elements. I would have loved a bit of sound, just some basic sound fx from bfxr or whatever would have been nicer than nothing. It seems like as far as I saw you have a pretty low limit on how much you can ever grow and keep up with harvesting in time, so the extra expansion options are redundant. So interesting concept to mix the farming elements with some enemies and combat, maybe has some potential. Never been a massive fan of the farming genre so this may not be the entry (or the Ludum Dare) for me. Art was nice enough and does the job, gameplay is funcitonal but for me at least more grindy than fun. Solid effort.

Liked the retro vibe quite a bit! Also took me some time to figure out I can fight the monsters, but honestly it helped make them more scary. Shutout to main menu art, it was a nice touch, and there's something really funny about the monster peeking from behind a tree like that. :D


Nice entry. Having to pick/drop item is a bit tiedious. Not sure if i fought the mob properly. I was just moving toward them but loosing some life in the process. Like the design. Congrats !

Nicely done! The day and night cycle gave a good pressure to get stuff done during the day. I got a dungeon seed, but I didn't know how to use it unfortunately D: I thought the tools were pretty intuitive, the tips in game and the visuals gave me enough info to figure everything out on my own. I played it on gamepad (a nice touch!) But the left and right triggers used the bumpers on my xbox controller :P

Overall great entry, especially considering it's entirely solo, and an entire day less!!

I liked the retro feel of this game, and my man tore 6 orc-monsters with his bare hands! Took a while to figure out the farming- kept trying to harvest the plants while holding seeds, only to see them wither before my very eyes...
This was pretty fun! Awesome game! ^~^

@jonqs Thanks for the feedback! I agree with the pick/drop feedback. I like limiting the tools the player carries, but if you want to pick something else up, you should just be able to walk over the tool and hit the button to automatically swap it. I'll definitely work on streamlining it!

@cameronpenner Thanks! Inspired by your awesome entry, I'm planning add rail grinds and wall jumps! :D Thanks for the note about the gamepad. Fun Fact: I hadn't tested gamepad input until about 5 hours left to go, and I discovered a mistake that ate up the next 3 hours as I had to redo how I was handling input while at my most sleep deprived. I'm just glad it works at all! Lol! [Tony Crow is awesome!!! Everyone should play it!!!]( https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/tony-crows-pro-scyther)

@pazzi Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it! I'll be adding more animations so that those monster battles can play out in even more epic glory!!! [Slime Crime is amazing! Everyone should play that too!!!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/slime-crime)

I like the idea to mix farming game and rogue like games, but it lacks some things, and I agree with all points said by lisyarus. I think the game needs a goal because some players play for extrinsic motivation (this kind of players play to achieve something, not just for the sake of gameplay). Good Job by the way.