Deck of plants by FancyReckless

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

Deckbuilding game, where you plant plants, water them and collect for money to pay rent. Make sure to use special abilities of plants.

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How to play: Use mouse, drag plant cards on the field. Once you're done, end your turn. Every turn plant loses 1 water, if this goes to 0 - plant dies. Rent collector comes once in a while, so make sure you can pay up.

credits:

music: https://soundcloud.com/congus-bongus/rhythm-garden

plant art: https://apsyll.itch.io/top-down-fantasy-crops

Color pallete for other stuff taken from plant art pack

Edit: As per jam rules, fixed bug where your mouse hover sometimes fall through shop window and "On Water" effect gets mixed with "On Collect"

Ratings

Overall 21th 4.288⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 41th 4.115⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 22th 4.192⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 3th 4.596⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 24th 4.327⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 24🗨️

Feedback

xk_the_name
09. Jan 2023 · 21:58 UTC
Nice deck builder. Really like those kind of games.
Yubs
09. Jan 2023 · 23:24 UTC
Really like this one! The style is really well done, and I like how you can see whats upcoming with the track at the top
NoStressWes
09. Jan 2023 · 23:25 UTC
Fun game! Loved the gameplay really smooth and addicting!
Xeke-Death
10. Jan 2023 · 10:28 UTC
I could sink a day into this and have no regrets. Great idea, great execution.
Rincs
10. Jan 2023 · 11:34 UTC
That was really fun, I definitely would love to have a full version!!!!

EDIT:
I played the "fixed" version and this is how long I lasted:
![Screenshot 2023-01-11 203446.jpg](///raw/ccf/64/z/56191.jpg)
huozhedexiaoc
11. Jan 2023 · 10:54 UTC
The great graphics, music, and mechanics kept me playing for a long time, and the game has unlimited possibilities. Design more mechanics of cards, enemies, effects. The game will become even more fun
zimny11
11. Jan 2023 · 15:44 UTC
Great game! I had a blast, absolutely love it! The game mechanics are super fun. Great job!
theHerborist
11. Jan 2023 · 20:40 UTC
Very simple and very engaging. I was so taken with managing my own little field that I forgot about rent and the end screen took me by surprise XD

An absolute blast
Sarah
11. Jan 2023 · 22:04 UTC
This was really done, nice job! I love how polished it is and the music is great too. I love how fast paced it is and it's really satisfying to grow things haha. I love card/deck games in general, but I would definitely play more of this haha. Well done!
Togis
12. Jan 2023 · 02:45 UTC
I played far too much of your game.
It's really neat and easy to learn. You did an amazing job of making all the information clear.
It also feels very satisfying!

Great entry!
CG_Fred
12. Jan 2023 · 08:39 UTC
Excellent game! Looks awesome and is fun to play with good music. I haven't play that many deck games in general but I really liked this one.
surr-sloidah
12. Jan 2023 · 12:34 UTC
With some extra polish and mechanical depth I can see this being great.
I enjoyed the run I had with it, but found it a bit too simplistic and restrictive to really be able to push myself progression wise, the tiny deck size and amount of cards you can play per turn made the meta pretty much just "rush the plant that takes 20 turns but makes a ton of money" and water it on every other turn, I didn't really find much advantage to any of the other plants.

If that was balanced out a tiny bit more I think it'd make the gameplay a lot more engaging and challenging, good work regardless :)
🎤 FancyReckless
13. Jan 2023 · 10:02 UTC
@surr-sloidah thx for the feedback. What was your score tho? Some other people reported scores above 200 with other strategies and I wonder which one is best.
surr-sloidah
13. Jan 2023 · 10:05 UTC
If I could remember my score, I'd tell you :P
Of course I may be wrong and it's not actually the best strategy.
kuviman
13. Jan 2023 · 14:41 UTC
WORLD RECORD!

![WORLD RECORD.png](///raw/7e3/32/z/565c2.png)
Weirdybeardyman
13. Jan 2023 · 23:38 UTC
This is an awesome game - fun and chilled, satisfying to play and engaging. I played for ages and got to 159 days :tada: There is a good amount of variation in the cards and there were a few different strategies you could use. I didn't 100% understand the water left and restore water mechanic and I wasn't sure if the remove card from deck was always working but I really enjoyed it, great job!
Lomby
14. Jan 2023 · 03:16 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game on the stream!
Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/qbBq_nBKk5k?t=4002

Loved the variety of plants, rewards, and cards available! Congrats on the great game!
caranha
16. Jan 2023 · 12:42 UTC
Hey, thank you for the game, the game feels really nice to play, and it is interesting to see the new cards showing up. I found myself having fun thinking about how the cards go together!

On the other hand, after playing for a while, I found myself thinking about what would be the "goal" - am I going for a high score? or to survive as many turns as possible? (in that case, a total turn counter would be nice). Maybe increasing the pace of the tax collector a bit would make the game more intense, not sure.

Also, I felt myself wishing to be able to see the water level of the plants without mousing over it!

Anyway, very fun game, could spend a lot of time on this one :carrot:
Chase of Bass
16. Jan 2023 · 17:22 UTC
This is easily one of my favorites!! I was loving the music -had me noddin the whole time xD The pixel art and the color palette worked really well here too!

The idea was a really fantastic use of the theme! I was having a lot of fun playing this one -whole lot of potential here to expand on -I would definitely buy this game. Amazing work! :D
Honey Pony
17. Jan 2023 · 22:57 UTC
Absolutely fantastic game!

So, I initially played this because I also made a deck-builder for this jam, and I saw yours on itch.io or something like that, and just had to see how other people built deck-builders for the same theme. I have to say, I think you did a much better job than me. :smile: But, our games both had a similar "water" mechanic, which is an interesting similarity!

The run I did, I used mostly tomalones + the orange plant (the one that does +2 coins for each copy of itself), can't remember its name. Near the end I switched to just that orange plant, as the ability of it to stack more money with more plants on the screen was very helpful.

More specifically, I think that an important property of cards in this game is how much money the card can earn divided by how many turns it takes to grow... basically its money/turns. And for that orange one, I was easily getting a ratio of 2 or more near the end, as it only took 5 turns to grow. Compared to the tomalone, which has a ratio of 1, I think this orange plant could be very powerful, and I might do another playthrough later to explore the strategy more.

But that's something... this game is really fun! I literally want to go back and try to explore my strategy more! I haven't played a Ludum Dare 52 game with that property yet.

So, I think the way you balanced the card deck is pretty good. There are some cards that seem perhaps overpowered, such as rain, but overall it seems reasonably balanced and I think there is probably more than one good strategy (and for cards like rain that are really powerful, it seems like they are powerful in every strategy, so it's pretty fair overall).

In particular, I definitely saw other people using tomalones... and I'm guessing it's possible to get pretty far with those. But I think that orange plant can probably do just as well if not better. So, seems like there is some nice balance there.

One thing that I think bit me is I completely misread the "+1 max energy" card. I kept reading it as "+1 energy," and so I never picked it up, as it seemed ridiculously difficult to grow for just 1 energy. But with 1 MAX energy... now that's a different situation!

That seems to be an occasional problem with deck building games -- I think I've had similar reading issues with Slay the Spire, for example. I think this was the only misread I had in this game, though. Maybe just underlining "max" would be a minor but helpful change.

I feel like the mechanics for gaining and getting rid of cards felt nice. Getting rid of cards is always powerful, for sure, but I feel like its gradual enough in this game that it doesn't feel too easy to just build a super powerful deck immediately. But it is kind of a nice feeling to be able to slowly build a better deck by repeatedly discarding cards.

By the way, my score was 169 days. Definitely not as good as some of the scores I saw on the itch page. :smile:
TheSmellofOxygen
20. Jan 2023 · 23:02 UTC
I survived for 159 days... I was totally ready to play until 300. This was addicting and calm. I really enjoyed your entry. It felt quite complete. I wish the plants had a UI indicator when they were on 1 day left of water, and I wish I could get rid of the starter cards when removing things from my deck. I was quite enamored with this little guy. Bookmarked for later. Wow!
Jonathan Lorenz
21. Jan 2023 · 20:16 UTC
Finally a famr simulator mixed with a deck builder! I spent way more time than I should have playing this game... The game loop is satisfying and the game is clean and enjoyable. Great game, good job!