Comments

by jackypark9852 (@jackypark9852) The concept looks interesting, but I’m having a hard time dragging the plant onto the puzzle. The grid highlight was offset from the mouse, so that might be a clue for debugging. Good luck!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @jackypark9852 thanks for the feedback! I think this might be a scaling issue. Could you maybe check if the page is zoomed in? Or press F11 to open the page in full screen. :-)

by jackypark9852 (@jackypark9852) @Wouter52 Yep! I was at 100% scaling. The controls worked once I scaled it down to around 70%

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @jackypark9852 thanks for the info! I changed some settings on my website (CSS), hopefully the issue is now less frequent. Your game looks fun btw! I put it on my “to play list” :-)

by BoxedMeatRevolution (@boxedmeatrevolution) I got a score of 2212 by using lots of seeds as pieces. I really like the graphics, and enjoyed running around the world. My “use lots of seeds” strategy wasn’t very fun as it involved waiting for a lot of seeds to grow, but it felt like the easiest way to get a high score. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed my time with this game!

by Torban (@torban) Very unique puzzle game concept. Nice job!

by Coderah (@coderah) Good stuff! love the overall movement and puzzle concept!

by noskro (@noskro) Great concept. I have to take a look on tghe plant growth in the code. That sounds interessting. For the puzzle itself I am not sure if it works out for me. It seems like at some point most of the plants are grown really big and I cannot place them anymore. And I can’t grow smaller plants because I cannot get rid of the large ones. So I try to fill fields with seeds to get more space. But once you have 2 or 3 big plants in the inventory it is tedious as you can also only carry 2 or 3 seeds at a time. Maybe I’ll have to give it another go after some more coffee. Also hate is a strong word, but I don’t like that I have to switch my hand between the mouse and the arrow keys. I would very much prefer to control the player with one hand (A/D to walk and W/S for plant/seed or somethng like that) and have the other hand just for the mouse. But maybe that’s just my preference

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @boxedmeatrevolution thank you for your feedback! I just checked if that would be a bug. But there is not. When placing big pieces, the board will be filled with points. When completing the row or column, the points in that row or colume will be added to your total. The calculation goes like this: every piece = (<amount of pieces in plant> + 2), seeds are worth 3 points. Keeping that in mind, if you woudl complete the board below with seeds, then you’ll get 99 points :-). Screenshot 2023-01-10 1323413.png

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @torban and @coderah thank you very much!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52), published 3 m @noskro ooh, that is awesome that you took a look! Don’t judge though grin This is “LD code”; dirty, but effective! Although, this was the first piece of code I wrote, when there was still plenty of time. I like to make such pieces. It is a puzzle in of itself! It goes a little like this: there are 5 types of plants (green, purple, mondrain, pipes and bushyboys), and 4 types of grow preference; (tall boy, normal, left preference, right preference). When a plant spawns, it will use the random seed it got to: determine 1 of 5 types and 1 of 4 grow preferences, tweak grow preference a liiitle bit (that is the mutation I was talking about). Every second a random plant will “grow”: every plant piece in that plant will do a check if it will grow and which way it will grow. (with a number between 1 and 100). It can’t grow to places where it would get two neighbouring pieces. the amount of points per plant piece will increase by 1. (see comment above) for all plant pieces, the likelyhood to grow again will be devided by 2. The first piece will start with an 80% of growing. When the plant grows, it will become 40%, the 20%, then 10%, etc. 20% of the time, a flower will grow. (if the number is under 20). So, a plant in its late stages of growth, will be more likely to grow seeds, IF it grows. When getting seeds from plants, the actual “seed” on which the RNG is based on, will be stored in memory. When planting that seed, the same plant (more or less, because of the little tweak I mentioned) will grow back. Hope it makes a bit of sense ^^” ===== Thanks for your feedback! do you have suggestions how to change the controls? Maybe use left click to harvest, and rightclick to handle seeds? And move the world exploring to A and D? Or do you have other suggestions? Sometimes, if more people give the same kinds of feedback, I make a post jam version which you can activate from within the game :-) This would be a nice addition.

by Cievers (@cievers) A really unique puzzle, though I would have maybe liked some way to gain more seeds for plants that I’d make extinct :( All in all, goed gedaan Wouter! ;)

by Wouter52 (@wouter52), published 3 m @cievers Thanks for your feedback! You have no idea haha, I had the same wish! And better even! I had 10 spots in my texturefile left for other plants. I wanted to reward the player with new species at every 1000 (or so) points they collected. That would be in the form of a seed in the inventory. Maybe I’ll add that in the post-jam version. Any ideas for new plants? grin

by Cievers (@cievers) @wouter52 Hahaha, sounds good! Looking at colors maybe an orange, or a black-white chekerboard plant? Or when looking at artists I’d be very interested in how a Jackson Pollock plant might look :)

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @cievers I’ll keep it in mind, thanks!!

by kr4ft3r (@kr4ft3r) Hey, good to see your entry as always. Well, I started by telling myself there is no way I’ll figure this out, but I managed, and ended up running around committed to the game’s loop for some time, while not achieving a big success at the puzzle part though. As a personal preference, I do love to see genetics in games and stuff sprawling from seeds in deterministic ways, and plant’s tiles are very pleasing to the eye, but tbh I kept wishing this potential was used in some other way than the core puzzle, I don’t know in what other way but that’s just me being among 1% of people who don’t enjoy the connect-to-make-room style of puzzles. Also, as plants grow to absurd shapes I kept wishing for some way to use only a branch rather than the whole tree. Other than that it’s a really clever idea, and you seem to have managed to achieve your exact (I guess?) vision while relying on your code alone, and that is very impressive, great work!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @kr4ft3r thank you! Great to see you here! Well… I said to you that I would refuse building a game themed around farming haha ^^” Did not go to plan. But the game is indeed what I imagined, I think this one is the least compromised of all my entries and I had fun making it, so there is a big plus! There are some things I imagined diffrently in the beginning. The idea originally was to make it a tetris game. Also, the pieces would be smaller (7x7, instead of 9x9), as it made more fun looking patterns. I had plans for powerups, like scissors. (and waterbottle, and POKON) With the scissors you could take branches. Just like you said. But that would be veeery hard to implement in the timespan I had left. I see your score was not added to the highscores btw! Did you post them? Or did you just close the tab? Otherwise I could add your score manually. What do you think? Shall I make a special mode where you can just harvest plants, drop them in the field (no puzzling required) and collect the points? That way the player can just focus on growing the diffrent kinds of plants. I did a similar thing to my LD50 entry. Oh, I wanted to add some new plants too in the post-jam version. I have some ideas, I need 7 more ideas for plants :-)

by yopox (@yopox) I liked the animations, it was clever to design the world as a planet. The sweet spot for me was to carry one or two big pieces and check which line or column I should get rid of to place a big piece. It would be nice if seeds stayed a bit longer (but maybe also too easy laughing) CleanShot 2023-01-10 at 20.47.18@2x.png

by kr4ft3r (@kr4ft3r) @wouter52 oh, I did the whole P thing, the score should have been posted. Unless I was supposed to click something? Perhaps it’s time to check the logs lol. I don’t remember the exact score. And ye just growing the plants mode would be enjoyable I think.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @kr4ft3r ah, I see! You need to press <enter> after that. No worries though! If you remember (approximation is also ok), then I’ll add it for you. I don’t have logs, as the game is purely javascript based.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @yopox great to see your score! I think that is a very good tactic! Just how I intended. Although, I did not have much time playing the game myself to confirm, so it’s nice to read your perspecive. What do you mean about the seeds staying? When you freshly planted them? Or do you mean the seeds on the plants?

by taikinaaa (@taikinaaa) Great game!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @taikinaaa Thanks! Do you have feedback?

by yopox (@yopox) @wouter52 Yes I mean on the plants. seedling I guess the balance is hard because if they stay too long the game is too easy and if they disappear quickly we are waiting a lot.

by SS9 (@ss9) This was a very interesting idea! I found it pretty confusing at first, but I ended up getting the high score! Speaking of which, I love the high score feature, I think that is a very awesome addition! I found an issue where if you currently are in the puzzle screen and you are holding a plant, when you exit that screen into the main world, you are still holding it. Aside from that, I thought this was a pretty fun game, nice job!

by floata3 (@floata3) liked the game very nicely done fits theme perfect

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @ss9 congratz on your highscore! We found that issue here at home too. I declared it a feature, but careful! If you fill up your inventory and the piece in your hand does not fit in the puzzle, it is gameover for you ^^” Thanks for the feedback!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @floata3 thank you!

by Papabirb (@papabirb), published 3 m Interesting game! I love the concept, but found it more difficult than I anticipated. All the plants grew very quickly into ones that would not fit on the board, and it took a lot of tedious use of seeds to clear the board out. That being said, while it’s difficult to fit the pieces on the board, it is also not that challenging of a game. I was able to reach the top of the leaderboard just by having the patience to play long enough for my score to get that high lol, the leaderboard is more a measure of patience than skill. The plant DNA is very interesting. I think it would be cool to be able to crossbreed certain plants. It may also improve gameplay if the amount of seeds you can get from one plant is capped, since again, the leaderboard is easy to cheese by waiting for more seeds to grow and clearing enough space for the occasional medium-sized plant lol. I really like the looping world and the fact that the line clears are calculated vertically in addition to horizontally smile_cat Edit: Damn, scrolled up to read comments. Didn’t realize you needed to hit another button after ‘P’ to actually save your score… I think I was at 4118 when I quit.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @papabirb thank you for your feedback! That is very helpful. I think you are right about the patience-aspect. Altough, I think there is at least a little bit of skill required to get to the higher scores more quickly. After hitting P, you need to press enter indeed. I trust you, so I wanted to add your name to the leaderboard. But now I see that you already are on the number 1 spot with indeed 4118 :-) So, I guess you hit enter all along. (or did you do a GET request to the server by inspecting the javascript files? shhhh, this is LD code, not acctually safe code )

by Papabirb (@papabirb) @wouter52 wait, I’m there now? When I opened it again to check, I definitely wasn’t! Maybe it somehow had it cached so when I hit enter while checking the boards, it magically found my score to add it? I can confirm it’s there on my end now too lol… Spooky highscore shenanigans! (Edit: The need to press ‘enter’ afterwards should probably be written down somewhere by the way, my instinct was definitely to hit ‘P’ then close the game) I’m not smart enough to do a GET request to the server lol, I didn’t take any web development classes in university. Best I could do is tell you that’s a database request of some type :’)

by Wouter52 (@wouter52), published 3 m @papabirb ohh… that might be a bug then :x It should request the score from the server right after changing the textfile. Maybe someting was cached somewhere indeed I’ll look into it :-) A GET request you can do in the URL bar of your browser. Something like: https:\\www.wouter52.com\highcore.php?score=69420&name=wouter52

by Rolly (@rolly) Very nice and relaxing game! I would have loved it to be a bit more challenging - maybe you could have a “hard” mode that forbids placing seeds in the grid! It would definitely be difficult then :p The “grid” game is nicely implemented and you could make something nice with this concept. Again, I think it misses a small thing to be a bit more exciting (could be a timer, could be a max number of moves, or so many other things). After reading your Trivia part on this page, I paid attention to how the plants grow, and I must say this is really cool! I’m especially impressed by all your animations in the menus, or transitions between screens. The in-game visuals are very good as well, and the rotating playground is a great idea. Visually, everything looks perfectly polished, it’s amazing! Nice music and sound effects! :) Good job!

by Lone_Wolf (@lone-wolf) First try (LandarVargan) sunglasses Thursday_12-08_31.png This is one of the most unique takes on the theme I’ve come across so far. Not to mention a pretty unique game in general. I’m not sure if it was me or the gameplay loop but I found it hard to pay any attention to/take advantage of the evolution mechanic, maybe because it felt more rewarding to just harvest 1x3s with 1x1s and use those to fill in gaps left by giant plants. I’ll also put in a vote for a WASD/Mouse option, hand health is a worthy cause though. Great work!

by shp (@shp) very cool concept, I love the idea of growing your own puzzle pieces to use. There was some weird glitch though where most sprites had their transparent parts rendered in bright magenta though (firefox, win10 64, 2070super)

by Slush (@slush) Wow, what a unique entry. I really liked the gameplay loop with the puzzle, the circular world was a cool touch as well!

by Parker Nalch (@parker-nalch) Really interesting take on the theme and well done completing the game in the time allotted! I like how quick the movement speed is – it allows you to create a world that feels large, but doesn’t bog the player down in getting from Point A to Point B. I would have liked a way to turn particularly large plants into seeds (or some sort of “compost” function to make use of the big plants when you don’t have enough space for them).

by breadstick (@breadstick) Awesome puzzler! It’s really a delight to be home-growing the pieces you play the puzzle with, and it’s such a refreshing breath of fresh air to be fitting pieces in a board that aren’t your classic tetrominos. Great gameplay loop, and the plants’ look were interesting, memorable, and inventive. Nicely done!

by wheelsx (@wheelsx) Screenshot 2023-01-13 013149.png It’s addictive. I really like the plant growing system. Very relaxing, play at your own pace.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @rolly, thank you for your wonderful feedback! This weekend I plan to do a post-jam version. Maybe I’ll implement such features. I have to think about the balancing :-) Cool that you like the growing feature. There is a very early version where you can control the growth by clicking the screen. Maybe you will like that. You can find it here: https://wouter52.com/PROJECTS/LD52/NIGHTLY_BUILDS/NIGHTLY_01/ https://wouter52.com/PROJECTS/LD52/NIGHTLY_BUILDS/NIGHTLY_03/ The menu animation was a bit of an accident, but I loved it so I kept it in. It was supposed to be a solid black screen, but the world and player sprite stayed on the foreground ^^”

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @lone-wolf Congratz on your score! And thank you for the big compliment! I think your strategy is a very good one. I haven’t played it myself very much acctually. I had too much trouble with bugfixes to acctually enjoy my own game. I think harvesting all the big plants is a good tactic too. Putting as much as you can in the playing field and filling up the rest with little plants. I’ll try that this weekend. The controlls I will look at, maybe WSDA + mouse is a good option indeed. Or maybe using click to harvest and take/plant seeds? How would that be? P.s. I checked (I recognized your name), you are in a lot of my highscore tables from previous jams! Thanks!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @shp thank you very much for your feedback! And thanks for pointing out the megenta pixels. I know exactly where those are comming from. In a previous jam someone pointed that out too, only back then there was a collision system depending on the magenta to be not visable. So it was a big problem. We found out that it had to do with a feature in firefox and brave browser called “block fingerprinting”. It is a very technical story, but it has to do with websites using a HTML canvas to store information about you, so it can track you and serve better ads. By manipulating the data in an HTML canvas with random noise, websites can’t track you anymore. (that is what your browser most likely does) My game, however, relies on some values being EXACTLY magenta to work (in this case to not draw those pixels). So yea, that’s why ^^ In my previous game I had a fix for that, but it took a big performancehit I was not willing to take in this game. Next time I’ll look for a better fix!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @slush Thank you!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @parker-nalch thank you for the feedback and suggestion! I’ll make an update this weekend. I will think of a way to implement your idea. But no promises! Your idea would most likely be a very big change, so unless I find something clever, I don’t thing the feature will make it.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @breadstick thank you for your feedback and for your awesome compliment!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @wheelsx congratz on your highscore!!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @cievers grin Screenshot_20230113_205731.png

by LeReveur (@lereveur) Well, I may have played (very) much longer than I planed to. Is this the game is addictive, or is this just me? Don’t know, but well done! PS: I played on FF, and transparent did not work (I had pink pixels instead) but I don’t know if it’s because of my configuration or another problem

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @lereveur thank you for your feedback! The meganta pixels are a known problem, maybe I’ll fix it this weekend if the performance hit is not significant. See explaination below for how and why it happens :-) In a previous jam someone pointed that out too, only back then there was a collision system depending on the magenta to be not visable. So it was a big problem. We found out that it had to do with a feature in firefox and brave browser called “block fingerprinting”. It is a very technical story, but it has to do with websites using a HTML canvas to store information about you, so it can track you and serve better ads. By manipulating the data in an HTML canvas with random noise, websites can’t track you anymore. (that is what your browser most likely does) My game, however, relies on some values being EXACTLY magenta to work (in this case to not draw those pixels). So yea, that’s why ^^

by Cievers (@cievers) @wouter52 heart

by BinaryPrinciple (@binaryprinciple) I enjoyed the game a lot, cool take on the topic, felt like petit prince/pikmin/tetris. My recommendations are: Find a way to simplify the controls, maybe plant and harvest could be the same depending if you are holding flowers. Setup a small training level.

by Sibi (@sibi) Very cool spin on inventory tetris :D I especially like the selective breeding aspect as that allows you to plan a bit more longterm and makes you think which ones to plant. I unfortunately got the keys confused quite a lot. (Maybe because the left (A) key was listed below the right (S) key and my brain was always swapping them. Which in the end led to me picking up some plant which didn’t fit into the grid anymore.

by rickylee (@rickylee) Nice! ^^ I never have a run where I am “killed” by running out of spaces for flowers, I always end up with a hot bar filled with crazy big pieces that I just cant place haha. my score image_2023-01-15_014436404.png

by ironhandMD (@ironhandmd) great game! the art is good and the mechanics are understandable , the concept of action (picking)and puzzle (planting) was a good mix, this has good replay value, overall I enjoyed playing, keep it up!

by smashcrate (@smashcrate) Very smart puzzle, needs a lot of thinking and pre-planning before each steps. I am not very smart to progress much smile , but I understood the concept and played as long as possible before I ran out of options. The DNA system for each plants is really well thought mechanics.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @binaryprinciple thank you for your feedback!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @sibi Thank you! That helps a lot!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @rickylee congratz on your spot in the highscore table!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @ironhandmd thank you very much!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @smashcrate thanks for the compliment!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52), published 3 m Update 1.2 Activate “Post-Jam mode” in main menu by pressing P banner 1.2.png @cievers , your plant suggestion made it in :-) Also, there are 9 other plants added. You can unlock these seeds by scoring 100 points at once. @lone-wolf , This should be more rewarding to harvest bigger pieces :-) @ss9, issue is solved where you can walk away with a plant still out of inventory @lone-wolf and @BinaryPrinciple controls have been moved to WSDA and mouse @shp and @LeReveur the magenta pixels should not show up again. ======== Full changelog: Post-Jam toggle added (do not rate post-jam version). In post jam mode, the following changes: Post-Jam tag in highscorelist for everyone who achieved a highscore in post-jam version Starting plants are a little younger (not as big) Bug fixed where player could walk away with a piece outside of the inventory Better controls, WSDA is used now, so players don’t have to move their hand away from the mouse 10 new plants! You can unlock them one by one by scoring at least 100 points at once. plant the newly given seed to find out what plant you got. Issue where magenta pixels are seen around plants: fixed

by Kurakurture (@kurakurture) The game is cool. The combination of tetris and plant management is very addictive.

by commanderstitch (@commanderstitch) This game is just awesome. Loved it. So cool.

by pinchazumos (@pinchazumos) Very cool concept and lovely visuals! Well done ;)

by nardandas (@nardandas) The concept of this game is very very cool! I really like the way the plants grow. I find the stress of having to place plants before other plants get too big to be used a bit antithetical to how I want to play the game. I really like the “how do I place this and give myself good opportunities to keep going” with the random plants. It’d just be nice to be under a bit less stress while doing so. Really really cool though, and the graphics are great for this kind of thing! In the comments you talk about plants passing DNA to their seeds. That’s really really cool! While playing I wasn’t sure if the plant types themselves had different growth habits or what…

by GrapeTwig (@grapetwig) I amazed my the simplicity of the idea, the controls are a bit unconventional0, having to constantly switch your hand form mouse to keyboard, makes it hard to play. Otherwise a solid fun game.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @kurakurture Thank you! I hope that it is not too addictive innocent Other players need ratings too grin

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @commanderstitch and @pinchazumos Thank you very much!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @nardandas Thanks for the wonderful feedback! Maybe the plants could have been growing a bit slower. Would that take the stress away? The appearance of the plants and the grow pattern are not connected. It is random. However, once you plant a seed, the grow pattern and appearance will be passed on to the new plant. Maybe that is why it was a bit hard to see :-)

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @grapetwig Thank you very much! I’ve gotten your feedback from other players too. That is why there is a Post-Jam option in the main menu. Press P, instead of ENTER, to play the post-jam version. If you do, could you confirm if the controls situation has been improved? I would like to know grin

by Samuli (@samuli) Great entry! Very nice combination of different gameplay elements. Maybe the plants should have minimum size before you can harvest them as now it was too easy to just fill the puzzle with small plants. It was very tedious and safe way to survive long.

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @samuli that is a very good idea! I’ll make sure to add that one IF I decide to release another update :-) Thanks!

by CataclysmicKnight (@cataclysmicknight) Hey! I came across you from some of your updates on the main page, and figured I’d check your game out once it was done. And then I saw what you were making and REALLY wanted to play it. It DEFINITELY lived up to the hype! 🥳

by Flying Dog Fish (@flying-dog-fish) Cool combination of harvesting and tetris. The music gets rather repetitive after a while, a longer loop would be better.

by Geckoo1337 (@geckoo1337), published 3 m What an interesting gameplay - totally unusual. The controls work well as expected - and I expected something less elaborated. Animations and depth when player run around the earth are really impressive. Addictive - skill required. Thank you for your comment. I wish you the best ++

by pkenney (@pkenney) Wow! This game has a lot of innovative stuff I haven’t seen. The inventory-grid/tetris puzzle mashup paired with the varied growth patterns of the different types of plants.. the tradeoff between growing plants vs not making them too difficult to use, and then managing to keep the lifecycle of seeds vs pots vs plants all in line. So many unusual interlocking elements. Love seeing a game breaking new ground and mashing together a bunch of interesting ideas. Very cool, nicely done!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @cataclysmicknight Hi Beth! I remember you too from one of my posts! Thanks for playing! smile

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @flying-dog-fish thanks for your feedback! I feel the same way. I’m really bad at making music ^^” Every year I have as one of my goals to make something awesomesounding. And every year I spend too much time with other things, so the music is always something that is added in the last few hours. Made with beepbox.com ^^”

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @geckoo1337 I think you are the first one that likes the controls grin Did you maybe play the post-jam version? The original version uses the arrow keys, so you have to move your hand around to the mouse all of the time ^^” Thanks for the big compliments!

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @pkenney Thank you for your awesome comment! I’m glad you had fun playing smile

by PhilStrahl (@philstrahl) What a weird little game – and I mean this in the best sense possible! I didn’t know what to expect but it made sense soon enough! I should have played longer to have my name show up in the high-scores. Thanks for submitting! Here’s the video of me playing the game: Youtube video thumbnail

by Wouter52 (@wouter52) @philstrahl thank you very much for the awesome feedback and your cristical opinion smile It is really cool to see someone actually play the game with live commentary. That helps a lot.