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Cultivation Jam

Hosted by Team Dogpit · #dogpitjam

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A jam submission

Elowen's LightView game page

A relaxing infinite platformer. Cultivate the landscape for magic to restore your companion.

Submitted by Doug T (@sweetpowersauce), ChaosConstant (@ChaosConstant), Reiale, Jamie Whitmarsh || Game Audio Wizard (@jwhitmarshmusic), yinawang — 9 hours, 25 minutes before the deadline

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Elowen's Light's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Community choice	#3	4.100	4.100

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Team Name
Jam Dream Team (Doug T)

Team members
•Programming / Designer - Juzek (Doug T)
•Programming - ChaosConstant
•Art - Backgrounds, House, Enviorment - Yinawang
•Art - Characters, UI, Enviorment - Christina Terhune
•Music - Musician Cognito (Jamie Whitmarsh)
•Clarinet - Lisa Kachouee
•Writing / Story - Christina Terhune, Invazorzim

How does your game use the theme "cultivation"?
The player goes out into the environment to plant seeds, and avoid disturbing the wildlife. When the house comes by the plants get harvested.
Secondarily, the main character (pleia) is cultivating the healing of her loved one, and building their relationship.

Also the secondary character struggles with their transformation into a House-held good (lantern). and the house itself is a big deal

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Comments

Solanum TeamSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

This a really great platformer and has potential to be a full game! Great art and cute world! I'd love to see more of the story! Maybe you could make areas that are only accessible once you get an ability or something! Keep up the great work!

Submitted

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Yes! This exactly! You have guessed my plans

MiknuggetSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

This was a great entry! The art and dialogue great! I also liked how getting new powers gave me access to the different parts of the level, and allowed me to interact with the little critters in new ways. It kept the game fresh and interesting even after going through the level a few times.

Just some feedback for if you decide to work on this some more. The start could use some more work with establishing what to do (after I got it though, the game became interesting :D). Related to that is Im not really sure where the seeds go when I collect them? Maybe you could make that clearer. Also, when leaving the house, maybe don't have the player jump out right away, or have a small platform on the house that they can jump from. I fell a lot when leaving to explore haha. Lastly, the background moving around with me as I jumped was a little nauseating.

I hope you work on this after though, it was fun!

Submitted

A Housewife's Guide to Toxic Tinctures

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for playing! All good feedback. Clarity is such a thing to reach for, and easy to start missing when as the dev, I am so close to the game.

RaelleSubmitted1 year ago (1 edit) (+2)

Hello, I really loved the concept of your game, the music and art is very beautiful and interesting, I especially love the character sprites on the dialogues. I also liked the idea of cultivating the seeds of the world so that you can achieve the goal.

At first it was confusing to what the goal is but I enjoyed just jumping around the world. I would love to have more maps(?)/level design(?) as it gets tend to repeat that I almost memorized where I should be going but with the time given, I think it was already good enough content. I don't know but the gliding sound bothers me like it feels unnatural. Also, I didn't like how the house just shoots me out and I usually end up in the void T^T maybe you can just let the player jump from the house on their own?

However, I really enjoyed the game as I played for almost an hour just jumping around, it was a nice experience.

P.S. I definitely loved the red mushrooms jumping around when I go near them

Submitted

A Housewife's Guide to Toxic Tinctures

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Thanks for playing!

I did have a much higher goal for the number of platformer chunks to make, but alas. Definitely going to do much more for the future -- at least some tougher ones that unlock as you gain abilities, and maybe even different biomes. The gliding sound was so hard to nail down, and I last-minute recorded something new the day of the submission.

I was trying to let the player feel like they jumped on their own, and you can steer horizontally as you go, but it feels more like a cannon, cause I had to get the player high enough so that when I turned on the collisions at the apex of their jump they wouldn't have been colliding with any platforms..... I may figure out a way to select a good landing space, and reverse calculate a trajectory to get you there. But yeah, I spent over a day getting just entering and exiting the house to work, and just had to leave it at "functional".

Thanks for your feedback, (adding some tasks in Trello now) I hope to polish it up a lot more in the coming weeks.

(I think the mushrooms are my favorite too!)

omalleySubmitted1 year ago(+2)

Beautiful game. Animation and artwork are both wonderful.

Submitted

Ric Haines Makes GamesSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

I love the snails! Nice game, beautiful art and music. Well done!

Submitted

Field of Excellence

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

The snails were the last animation to get finalized. They were originally blue and smaller. We dropped in the sky, and suddenly the blended in perfectly with the blue sky. Stealth snails! So they got a color change and some dirt on top of them

tylRSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

This was my favorite game of the jam so far, outstanding job! The art, music, story was fantastic. The platforming felt great, especially for a game made in 2 weeks. Having the house follow you was a great design decision. The first time I filled my magic bar I was dreading walking all the way back with no orbs to pick up but the house was right behind me, such a relief! It's also really impressive that so many people could make such a cohesive game in this amount of time, great job!

Submitted

Birchrum's Brunch

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Thank you for your kind words. I was worried about the house mechanics.

Also it's amazing how non-relaxing it can feel to make a relaxing game in a crunch. It took a lot of coordination.

wolfheatSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

Lots of nice graphics and effects. More of an experience than a game. The gameplay got a bit repetitive after a while.

Submitted

Desertification

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for playing! I only had enough time to make 40 or so building blocks to work with. I hope to fill it out and unlock more difficult parts as the player gets upgrades.

I was hoping some of the story elements would keep player interest beyond just the platforming. Did you restore your companion or unlock the gliding in your playthrough?

BaldSavantSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

It's a bit confusing to play, I'm not really clear what I should be doing or why. I can enchant seeds, but nothing seems to happen when I do, and the dialogue doesn't seem to explain my goals either. The house moves and can cause players to fall to their death or get stuck without any ability to fix anything. The first time I spawned I landed between two rocks and had to relaunch the whole game.

But still, the vibe is solid. It's pleasant to exist here, the music is nice, the art is pleasant and colorful, it's a very welcoming world. Programming all seems stable as well, I didn't run into any glaring errors or missing features. Overall, I'd just say it seems like you needed a game designer on the team to help the artists and programmers, but everyone who was there has done a great job!

Submitted

Seeds of Revolution

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hello! Designer here. To clarify, the seeds grow, and help fill up your magic as your house passes them.

It was my choice for the text in the dialogue box to be more conversational and less directive to add to the laid back atmosphere, but each part of the text that shows up in the world gives subtle hints for how the game mechanics work such as "When my house passes this tree, it will harvest it's magic" after you enchant a seed.

I would have loved to add more UI visual indicators to make things more intuitive, but the text box was the best tool I had for this jam.

For the design, I went with a philosophy of super accessable, but with some amount of skill growth allowed. The game never punishes you for any failures or mis-timing a jump, and is ready to pick you back up (literally) at any time of need.

I do regret the physics a little, and the occasional soft locking, but the house always seems to fix you as it passes.

I'm glad you liked the vibe, I think the artists and composer really thrived with this theme.

VarzSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

I have ascended playing this game, I feel happy

Great music and art, even standing still inside the game and letting it idle feels nice, just enjoying the game gives. The story is short and nicely written, I love it!

A few bugs I found, my browser (chrome) didn't have sound, but the Windows version does have sound. Sometimes I get stuck when jumping but it can be fixed by minimizing and restoring the window again.

Feedback about Camera movement, lots of jumping around made me feel dizzy, had to adjust the screen size to play it.

Overall great game! I hope more people see and play this game!

Submitted

ReialeDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Hi! Thank you so much for checking out our game! Those are the exact vibes that we were hoping would come across!

We have looked into the sound issue in the browser version and realized that the game needs to be full screen for the music to play (and it should continue playing even if you minimize after). I have edited our description to include this. Thank you so much for your feedback!

stephen-berrySubmitted1 year ago(+2)

Ok playing this for like 10 minutes has made me completely calm. The art, lights/fx, and THE MUSIC are all so well done! Also really liked the day changes.

After a bit more playing, I guess I have 2 comments for gameplay! Seems like the double jump only fully works (full jump range) after the first jump is on its way down, and at some point I couldn't seem to cultivate any more seeds (I had 0, but maybe I missed something in the explanations).

Regardless it was super enjoyable, thanks for the soothing game guys :D

Submitted

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Awesome! A calming experience was our primary driving motivation.

The jump happens wherever you are, so to get the max height, hit it at the apex, and to get the max length, hit it afterwards. The game can be completed with only the one jump, so double/triple jumps and the glide are all purely quality of life additions. I just felt that they had to be in the game to follow the great tradition of platformers.

The seeds get refreshed when you go home and "take a quick rest and chat, also recover seeds" option, and that makes the progress through the story much faster, as seeds are the primary way to harvest magic. There is a text prompt after you first run out of seeds to go home and rest, but plain old text can be easy to miss.

I'm hoping with some additional ease-of-life prompts and better visual instructions, a completed version could reach 100% zen.

Thanks for trying it out!

stephen-berrySubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for the response! And I do recall the text actually, but I think I may have forgotten to rest and chat before trying to pick up new seeds, so thanks for the affirmation! I believe in you guys, zen power to the max :D

YupGamesSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Beautiful game. Not sure if it's from my side but there is no BGM. Would be a best fit for 'Child of Light' style soundtrack

Submitted

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Ok, I think we figured out the sound. The game can be loaded and played without the window being focused. So if you Full Screen the window, it should ensure focus, and the sound should play. If this doesn't work, I'd love to know which browser you are using.

I actually listened to the Child of Light soundtrack quite a bit while programming for it :)

iamcheezeSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

this is brilliant! the controls are solid, and the art is the best I've seen in the jam so far! there were a few bugs here and there, like one time i got stuck under the floating house, and the sound started repeating over and over, but they were quite minor to my enjoyment. very good job guys!

Submitted

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I couldn't be happier with the art and sound. I had worked with those team members from past projects, but this is the first time they've worked together, and the results speak for themselves.
I'd love to know exactly where you got stuck. Debugging a proc gen game turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated. no one is able to say "near the end of level 3", its just "somewhere". When your house comes by it always picks you up, so if any sticking happens that would fix it (eventually), but the repeating sound thing is new to me. hmm...

iamcheezeSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

for the house issue, I dont think it was your guys's fault because i really thought that you could go behind it and tried to force my way over there and kinda got jammed between the block right front of the house and the ground of the house. The sound issue happens when you scroll

down while playing and click off the game

.

around here is where i got stuck

Doug TDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for the picture! The fact that the house's ground even has a collider was left over from an earlier version where jumping and landing on the house was somehow important. I bet I could get rid of it altogether!

iamcheezeSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

alright!