M.E.A.T. Rancher 2199 by Brendo
The year is 2199. The lab-grown meat industry has exploded, and you can make a killing with your alien meat farm and trusty combine harvester. However, the dreaded Meatblight is starting to spread! Harvest your meat trees when they get ripe, but once they get overripe the infestation will take over and spores will spread to other meatplants. Return your harvested meat to the barn and avoid the deadly spores.
Controls:
arrow keys to move
Credits:
adhesion: music, sound design, code
Brendo: art, design, code
emarcotte: code
ninjavitis: code

| Link | https://radmars.itch.io/meat-rancher-2199 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/meat-rancher-2199 |
Ratings
| Overall | 267th | 3.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 317th | 3.522⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 411th | 3.283⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 151th | 4.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 345th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 124th | 3.804⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 195th | 3.432⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 281th | 3.652⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
And to be honest, this game really stands out from many games where you play as a tractor with an overhead view, because you have combined bullethell game mechanics with a farm. Good job.
Conclusion a good, fun and polished game.
I love the feel, feedback. It feels satisfying to harvest!
I like the dynamics of the growing, going for 100x, avoiding being shot, having to go back. Always on the move. Cool!
Graphics is very nice and music fits the dynamics.
Polished overall.
Only thing I did not like: when dying, I could not see anymore my highscore :-(
And too much screenshake .. I understand that you want to have impact. But continuous high "impact" after a while does not feel anymore like a lot. And it hurts the brain after a while.
Congratulations!!!
The vibe is cool as well, though I sadly couldn't hear the music very well with all the SFX going on at the same time (well, unless you stand still). Not sure how I'd fix that though, since the 'big machinery', 'messy' sound is a large part of the mood. Maybe lean into the juice a little more?
From a gameplay perspective, there's some interesting intersections between arcadey gameplay and strategizing going on, but as it is now, I don't really know how to approach it.
If go for strategy completely, then I'm immensely helped by the fact that tiles where the blight has been, but are now 'rubble' (for lack of a better word) don't grow anything, and will not ever if you don't drive over them. That means you can essentially just pick your own difficulty by letting the field bloom out the first time, and then only clearing areas you think you can take. I managed to make a 'loop' where I'd wait a few seconds, then went around again, if careful, slightly more than exactly a full truck, slammed that back in the barn & then started again, all without seeing a single projectile (maybe a few infected ones). I stopped when I had done 10 loads or so.
On the other hand, I don't seem to manage very long when I don't strategize at all: When I just drive around without any care other than what's going to happen in the next second or so, then it feels a bit _too_ chaotic to me.
Still, something you can start playing immediately but manages to have a bit of a twist is always welcome though!
I wish the camera was a bit more zoomed out though, I think it would make it lean towards the arcade flow a bit better. If it were slower paced and required planning of the routes the zoomed in camera would work well.
Sound and music was very nice and kept the flow going the entire time.
Maybe some rough indicator of fullness near the harvester would be helpful also, like a x/4 bar graph or something to let me know im getting closer and need to pay attention to the limits.
I like how the enemy is the crop that you didn't harvested at time.