[SA GameJam 2018] uMthi
Jam: SA GameJam 2018
Name: uMthi
Level: Student
Memebers: @tasty_jose
Entry: 48hrs
Started a bit late and I'm not sure what it's about yet but it's cathartic to make
[Edit]
It's an atmospheric point-and-click game about growing a forest
available on itch
Name: uMthi
Level: Student
Memebers: @tasty_jose
Entry: 48hrs
Started a bit late and I'm not sure what it's about yet but it's cathartic to make
[Edit]
It's an atmospheric point-and-click game about growing a forest
available on itch
uMthi.PNG
664 x 511 - 90K
Comments
https://phxtho.itch.io/umthi
I would like to see some obstacles, for example a bird coming down and stealing a seed. The trees move a bit as you bump against it, especially when the forest gets dense and you can't really see your character anymore, will make it visually appealing and easier to track your character.
Thanks for a relaxing experience.
I also did a bit of stress testing if you were interested, I noticed that after 50 seeds load times started getting quite long when going to the next day, at around 10 seconds. so I timed it after some time and it looked like it was exponential, 60 seeds had around 20 seconds, 85 seeds had 1:54 and my final test was 100 seeds, with 4:25
If you plan on expanding then this may be a bottleneck, just something to keep in mind. Otherwise it works really nicely, I unfortunately couldn't fill my screen as I hoped on getting a wallpaper from it :P I've attached pics of my last few forests, I really like it :)
The interaction however feels a bit directionless, picking up the seeds is a matter of clicking and waiting. So that waiting time might feel better if there was more to it - what if instead of tying the time to a space key, you tie it to the movement? As the player moves, the time moves, and trees grow, die, etc? The idea here is to give the players the feeling like they're affecting something with everything they're doing.
It doesn't quite fit the theme, there remains only one possibility in the game - grow more trees. Perhaps there are more types of trees with more and more stuff you pick up? Giving the player the feeling like there's more to look forward to and surprise/interest them, or to make them feel more powerful/effective was the point of the theme, I think.
Persistence - It would feel really good if you could watch the trees grow bit by bit rather than just randomly regenerating the map each time.
Great little start, love the concept and overall feel :)
- Very soothing experience - great colors and sounds!
- Needs to check if your space bar has released, otherwise can go through multiple days by mistake
- Particle effects snap out of existence! Should stop the particles playing, then have a delayed destroy! This would match the soothing feeling I think!
- If you wanted to add a little bit of interesting choices, perhaps restrict the amount a player can move every day! Then have different types of seeds to collect that generate different trees to unlock new seeds etc. With your collected seeds you could maybe combine types to make more trees etc. You could still keep the experience very simple, while having a touch of progression / differences day-to-day
@Desktoy woah thanks for the stress testing. I didn't think anyone would get to 100 seeds I think the lag is due to the fact that the map size grows each day and with the ground and trees all being individual meshes it becomes more and more costly to bake the navmesh.
@riders_of_rohun Yeah I definitely wanted to have some kind of seasonal progression I think that'd be really satisfying.
@Tuism I agree it doesn't really fit the theme that well I considered going for 72hrs and adding more mechanics as the game progresses but I felt it would end up being quite haphazard and take away from the experience. Personally I really like the waiting I didn't want the player to feel like they had to do anything or that something bad would happen if they didn't do things correctly but I agree the interaction by itself is quite shallow at the moment. Yes watching the trees grow would be so nice.
@Bensonance I really like limiting the movement and making small interesting choices like this. I wanted to have different colour seeds appear that meant you could unlock different coloured trees but they would be inaccessible at first and then later on you'd gain the ability to cut trees down that are in your way. I think some sort of progression is needed though while still maintaining the simplicity of the experience.
Thanks again for all the feedback yall.
The path finding feature is a nice touch.
For my view on bettering the game, perhaps give the player an incentive to get all the seeds in a day. And the ding sound gets a bit repetitive, so varying the ding sound would be good too.
Well done!
Could be cool to implement some sort of limit on how much time I have to collect seeds or something along those lines to add a level of challenge but it's also fun to watch the scenery gradually expand and just kind of walk around.
It would be nice to be able to better tell where the seeds are, but I suppose part of the challenge is running around looking for them. Keyboard movement might also have been nice, but the mouse-based movement might translate better to a touch device.
Side note, I'd like to see this ported to mobile, it has a lot of "idle bus ride" potential
I would like to suggest if you can rotate the world 360 on the y-axis. Just to have a different point of view of where the seeds are.
Absolutely loved, looking forward in the future to see more updates of the game! Keep it up! (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
I really enjoyed the calming feeling the game creates, along with the subtle ambiance. The way that the character navigates the navmesh is real cute sometimes and I like the smoothness. Agreeing with the previous comment for the camera rotation, I think that'll add a lot to the game.
It's also very pretty. I tried playing it first by collecting everything and my plot of land got clogged up, then I played it again on lazy mode by not collecting anything and I had plenty of space :)
I would have loved more types of seeds to play to achieve different effects. Like building up something of an ecosystem. Like finding an egg and it making a humming bird, or planting a flower that the humming bird pollinates. That kind of thing.