Hobby Gardener by Yngvarr

[raw]
made by Yngvarr for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

Annotation 2023-01-10 153943.png

Do you know that empty feeling of not doing anything in your life, apart from working? You get up, brush your teeth, get your coffee, go to work, get back many hours later and fall asleep. Days seem dull and sooner or later you turn out to be the shell of a human you once was. No worries, we'll fix you back. The first step is to find a hobby to indulge in on a regular basis. I know you enjoy gardening, so take some of these seeds and go nuts!

You play as a hobbyist gardener. Choose the seed and click on soil to plant it. Plants can interact with each other and react to the changing weather, so keep an eye on the forecast. Click the grown plant to harvest it. Complete requests to get more seeds. Remember to have fun and don't hesitate to make a mess of your garden, it's just a game, no one would be mad at you. :)


Credits:

  • Yngvarr - code.
  • Syudzius - UI and concepts.
  • Nikita - 3D models.​

It was the first jam game I made with Unity and I hate it! From now on I'll stick to Godot, thank you very much.

Ratings

Overall 762th 2.759⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Fun 787th 2.362⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 773th 2.433⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 381th 3.759⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 491th 3.431⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 696th 2.897⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 29🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 315038
10. Jan 2023 · 18:28 UTC
I liked the idea for those crops! Graphics is cool as well
dob
10. Jan 2023 · 18:29 UTC
Nice looking game. I planted lots of stuff and enjoyed myself. I didn't really see how it was possible to fail or finish, so I just played for a while completing challenges. Might help to have more clarity on the goals. Nice work!
InitialPosition
10. Jan 2023 · 18:31 UTC
Nice little garden sim. I think it's nice that you don't give too much information on how the different plants work but also don't really punish the player for experimenting to find out more about them. The quest system is interesting and helps to keep giving you new goals. I didn't really understand the weather system that well since I couldn't do anything against plants growing in non ideal conditions anyway but my garden became a beautiful mess of growing things and I think that's all that matters :D
eeperdeheap
10. Jan 2023 · 18:32 UTC
Got some nice graphics. Not really sure what the missions on the right side of the screen do. I just kept planting stuff and clicking on the grown plants and sometimes the numbers went down. I kept clicking though so it was kind of fun.
CGreen
10. Jan 2023 · 18:35 UTC
I honestly had no idea what I was doing, but I did have some fun
Minakorii
10. Jan 2023 · 18:41 UTC
I didn't understand why I was skipping a day when I was collecting my bamboo and others but my melon keeps on taking all the place lmao
Did i play it wrong ?
Ale
11. Jan 2023 · 02:20 UTC
That boommelon isn't playing around. Those things will devour the earth if you don't remember to harvest them!

It's a nice little gardening toy, and fun to click around and see the different plant behaviors. Nice job!

Also, congrats on releasing your first unity game! I don't know many people who started with Godot and then tried Unity, but I can't imagine that's anything other than a frustrating experience.
Jovanden
11. Jan 2023 · 03:46 UTC
I think they are supposed to be goals but they are covering the crop buttons so I am not sure what I am placing until I've placed it. I think with some bug fixing and audio it could be nice because I do think it's a neat idea. The art it nice
Mika314
11. Jan 2023 · 06:11 UTC
The game has a nice cartoonish mobile game vibe. The objective of harvesting certain amount of plants to earn XP is good, but I found the game to be a bit repetitive. The game is also missing sound effects and music which would have helped in creating a better immersive experience. The weather forecast in the top right corner is an interesting feature, but it wasn't clear to me how it affected the gameplay. Overall, it's a decent effort, but it could benefit from more variety in gameplay, sound effects and music, and better integration of the weather forecast into the game. Keep up the good work!
Sikowny
11. Jan 2023 · 06:16 UTC
Didn't quite figure out that the seeds were tied to the quests, but it makes for an interesting puzzle like mechanic. Getting some audio in there would make it much more satisfying
Annie Owl
11. Jan 2023 · 15:54 UTC
Very relaxing game! Haven't even noticed how much time I spent harvesting digital plants :sweat_smile:
Ancient-Daedala
11. Jan 2023 · 18:02 UTC
I like the graphics of your game a lot, but i found the feedback for the successfull tasks a bit unclear. At some point i got a little bit confused that the melons and the cactus are spreading by itself. Overall a qiet fun game.
Pfannkuchen
11. Jan 2023 · 19:32 UTC
Cute and nice-looking game! I wish there was more content, missions and gameplay based on weather. But the game's already nice the way it is. Able to create pure chaos and that's what I like
Breaddysticks
11. Jan 2023 · 20:09 UTC
The game started pretty relaxingly, I do like the different variations of plants that have their own behavior. But after a few minutes, I just started spawning plants. I was expecting a bit more from the XP system: acts like a way to expand your garden or unlock more plants instead of a scoring system.

Overall: Pretty cozy game with nice-looking aesthetics.
🎤 Yngvarr
11. Jan 2023 · 20:50 UTC
@ale, well, I used to deal with Unity while working in a mobile games company and, honestly, it was one of the reasons I quit. :sweat_smile: But this time I had a team of people who need some experience with Unity for their work, so I had to give in. The most frustrating part was the increasing loading time as the deadline approached. Didn't enjoy staring at the "Reloading assets" window for a literal minute before every run at 2 a. m. fighting against sleep, 1 hour before the deadline... Anyway, thanks for playing! And reading my ramble. :)

@jovanden, sorry, the game doesn't do well with ultra wide monitors. X_X We'll try to fix it in post-jam. Thanks for playing anyway!

@mika314, thanks for the feedback! The weather affects some plants, but to communicate it better we had visual effects in our mind. Sadly, didn't have time to implement them. :(

@ancient-daedala, quests was one of the last hour features, so we went for the very basic approach and didn't really test it. It becomes more cumbersome when the active quest is replaced by the same very quest. I'd like to fix it in post-jam. Thanks for playing!

@breaddysticks, thanks for the neat idea about XP system! It was the last minute feature, just to add some sense to the gameplay, but it makes sense to do something more interesting with it. Thank you for playing!
Wuppos
11. Jan 2023 · 21:06 UTC
I tried to keep my garden nice and tidey, but those boommelons en cactumbers kept spreading all over the place XD I must say I did not fully understand when plants would spread or do things. For example, the boommelon sometimes exploded as I pressed to harvest it. Nontheless, it was fun just to play around and see what would be the best spot to place plants was. In the end I had quite a nice forest of bamboo :D
Very nice submission :D
BangKerpow
12. Jan 2023 · 00:24 UTC
Nice chill game. I certainly made a mess of my garden. I was a little disappointed the catcumber didn't involve a literal cat but I won't hold that against you.
parkuhrmd
12. Jan 2023 · 20:20 UTC
It took a moment to understand the gameplay, but was really nice afterwards. I would love to play some more while working towards some goal. Its a really cute little game.
Sam Cousins
13. Jan 2023 · 14:24 UTC
Cute game, though I think I had a UI scaling bug (probably an ultrawidescreen issue)
sillyman987
14. Jan 2023 · 14:35 UTC
Kind of fun, but very buggy and no instructions
Kirsten-Lee
15. Jan 2023 · 15:50 UTC
I liked being able to plant and harvest crops but I didn't feel like I was working towards a goal. Fun none the less!
sergio_nikol
15. Jan 2023 · 15:58 UTC
Nice graphics. But i can't see end of this game. Does it have some?
Winter2277
15. Jan 2023 · 16:06 UTC
Nice game and fun mechanics for the plants. I would suggest making the plant's effect more obvious visually so you can understand what is going on without reading the info. E.g. the boom melon can have an actual explosion and a wind effect could be added to see the lightfruits be blown away. Good game overall
🎤 Yngvarr
15. Jan 2023 · 18:59 UTC
@wuppos, thanks for playing and for noticing the bug with melons, they shouldn't explode as you harvest them. :thinking:

@sam-cousins, yep, you've caught a widescreen bug. Sorry, didn't have time for a proper UI layout. X_X Thanks for playing anyway!

@sergio-nikol, right the only ending is the softlock when you have no seeds to complete any tasks. Quests was implemented way later than they should've been. Thanks for playing! :)

@winter2277, thank you for the suggestion and for playing! It was our plan to implement such effects, but we spent far more time debugging plant interactions than we planned to. X_X
commanderstitch
15. Jan 2023 · 21:49 UTC
I made a mess with my garden. It was crazy!! It was really weird watching all these plants interact with one another in crazy ways.
PhilStrahl
25. Jan 2023 · 19:47 UTC
Thanks for submitting! I liked the different kinds of crop and how they interacted and the weather system! 😊 Here's the video of me playing the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj_pzh6rT7I