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Verdant Heart's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Mechanics | #49 | 3.753 | 3.753 |
| Overall | #62 | 3.896 | 3.896 |
| Fun | #69 | 3.779 | 3.779 |
| Aesthetics | #74 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| Story | #95 | 3.234 | 3.234 |
| Theme | #193 | 3.766 | 3.766 |
| Sound | #202 | 3.221 | 3.221 |
| Music | #241 | 3.312 | 3.312 |
Ranked from 77 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
No. All assets (aside from audio) were done during the jam time.
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Comments
I just missed the voting period ahh!! This was an incredible experience Guilded Hub Studio! Great job :)
This is such a beautiful game! I LOVE the pixel art work and how you tied up together within the theme!
It's a very unique platform concept that I haven't seen before! Very creative!
I really hope to see this one as a full game in the future! Great job! keep it up! ✨😊
Thanks Bullstorm. To add to your hopes, I'm already starting on the full commercial game version. I have been playing around with the character controller first to improve it, and slowly I'll build up the other concepts. LOTS of research for making the roots grow randomly to generate the roots and ground for unique experiences, taking everyone's wonderful feedback to heart.
Here's the link to the new character controller in action so far https://guildedhut.itch.io/verdant-heart-sandbox I'll re-add the double jump soon. It's already in there, just toggled off at the moment. I was focusing more on coyote time and jump buffering.
Awesome!! 💪💪✨
This was a game made with a lot of passion, and I'm really impressed you got all this done by yourself. Robust mechanics, great aesthetics, and an innovative idea!
I agree with some of the other critiques I'm seeing about jumping, but would further posit this question to you: Would a triple jump make the game less fun? I personally think it'd help with navigating the space without meaningfully breaking things. Though I also didn't realize you could even double-jump until I just tried it on a whim, so I think a specific tooltip for that, maybe floating in the air near the tree when you start, would go a long way (even if it is in the tutorial text). It can be easy to miss that kind of thing.
But hey, overall this is seriously awesome work, well done!!
Aww. Thank you very much Semicolonkid. Yeah, I agree with what people have been saying and I 100% agree about not communicating double jump. That specific feature I just didn't think of needing since the last time I had a platformer, people were fuming that it didn't have a double jump "even though all platforms need it". Which I don't agree with. But it was an experiment for sure.
So I'll make sure to address it with tutorials/communication in the full commercial game version I'm currently working on. I really appreciate the kind words and feedback :D.
Very original gameplay. The day and night cycle is great, and having the gameplay change depending on the time of day is a really nice touch. The expanding world as you progress is also a great idea. Overall, everything feels cohesive and brings a lot of joy. Congrats on both the concept and execution — I had a really good time playing it.
Thanks chimerian. I appreciate the time you took to comment and glad you enjoyed it :D.
This was a really cool game. I enjoyed getting the tree to an absurd size, and the aesthetic of everything was well done.
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Cool game. Very unique! 😎
Thank you very much :D
Nice game. Thanks for sharing the details of the music and audio. I did not know that myself. The no-AI disclaimer is also appreciated. It is a good gameplay overall. The only detail I might see is that things might get a little repetitive. Good game overall.
Extra:
I just saw the comment bellow
> The jump feels off- its almost too floaty
I can relate to that. It does not bother me though. It just curious.
Thanks for the kind words. And yes, I've already put in a lot of time the past few days on a new movement and jumping system that is already feeling a LOT nicer. I've been doing research with GMTK's videos on the topic, some videos he recommends, and a few other sources.
Wow, I had a lot of fun completing this! I did this in eleven days! Not sure if that is fast or slow, but I figured some tech (probably unintentional) toward the end so I could probably do this faster. This is a solid game and I super enjoyed it! I make notes as I play games to give to the dev for feedback to help, so this is all said with care and appreciation for you and your work. That being said, here are some of the things I wrote down as I played the game:
1) A tutorial showed up while I was holding down my spear power and the sfx kept playing while trying to read the tutorial popup which I ended up skipping since the sfx was distracting / slightly annoying
2) The jump feels off- its almost too floaty and not powerful enough, even when holding down the jump button.
3) Often, the character will land but still be in a falling animation
4) The jumping through platforms was finicky as sometimes it worked great, but going down through platforms, especially the tree leaves, did not feel right. I could also walk or jump into the side of them, so it felt strange like i was getting stopped by invisible walls, but really it was the platform preventing me.
5) The indicators of where enemies were attacking didn't go away, so it got confusing when I heard my roots being attacked, but went to the wrong side because the indicator was still there
6) Lots of tutorials which was great, but none about how you can heal the roots. With so much information at the beginning, it was easy to forget I had a right click as an option
7) It sounded like I could hit the shielded enemies but it wasn't since the shot wasn't charged enough even though I felt like I charged it for a while - so charging didn't quite match up each time with the audio cue (Charge attack audio sounded like it was maxed but the visual shows it is not - the visual matches for the most part, the audio does not)
8) Sometimes I would charge and it would look and sound like I had it fully charged, but it would release a spear that was not, so it was confusing - occurred when I just launched a charged spear and immediately tried charging another
9) It would be cool to see different bubbles / different things to shoot at during the fay to make it more interesting - like a yellow bubble that is worth more essence to make navigating around and shooting it / getting it a priority.
10) Sometimes the space between the leaves renders so I see flashing lines between blocks of leaves
11) Night 6 and 9 only one regular guy spawned and I noticed the night bar finished once and then repeated to finish a second time, not sure if that is intentional or not (I realized that is not what happened but will leave this in since this is what I first thought happened - maybe a clearer indicator that it represents time of day and not time left of the cycle?)
12) The transition from night to day and vice verse is too quick
13) I could spam the interact key and get a ton of essence that way since I would collect the same one multiple times (specifically the ones on the tree itself)
14) Running from one side to the other did not feel good since I was more reacting to the threat instead of being proactive - maybe the indicators should point to where enemies are coming from before they attack roots so I can be more prepared when they arrive? Or have a quicker way to navigate from one side to the other
Overall, a great game! Thank you for sharing, this was awesome!
Oh WOW! Thank you very much for that wonderful and extensive feedback. I love it! Day 11 seems to be the quicker side of things. I think when I ran through fast I hit like day 10 or 11 as well. I think the only point I wasn't aware of at this point is the multi spamming to collect a lot of essence from one node. I do plan on writing all of this feedback down as I have decided yesterday that I'll start making this into a commercial game due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback.
The next while, I'm going to strengthen movement and jumping to get that to feel amazing. LOTS of research into everything. I also plan on having the roots grow randomly each time to make it feel different each time. I LOVED the idea of co-op, so I'd like to add a co-op mode somewhere. Most enemies, enemy types, finally add in bosses (I wanted to have a boss come in at the end but ran out of time). And some elements like better, more tutorials spread out when they are needed, as well as some speedrunning tools since I can see that being a thing with this game.
Thanks for your time JehtMonkey. I'm going to bring your feedback to my master document immediately after this. I appreciate the work you put in and I am glad you ha da lot of fun. That makes me happy :D.
Glad I was able to help and add a little something! Co-op sounds like it would be lots of fun! Let me know if you get a steam page or something up for it, I'll help out by wishlisting it! Great job on this game!
I'll try to do a developer update on this game page here to announce when I get that going. I'm doing research on good platforming mechanics and already I'm seeing some good results.
Verdant Heart is a beautifully crafted game with a unique blend of mechanics. Watching the tree grow as you progress is incredibly satisfying. The day-night cycle adds depth, and the pixel art is top-notch. With some refinements to movement and combat, this could evolve into a standout title. Fantastic work!
Aww. Thank you for the very kind words. I'm already in the works of developing this into a full commercial title ;). I am taking the comments from everyone into account. It warms my heart knowing that many people had a great time playing this.
Super cool idea! And a nice mix of mechanics as well, it's really cool seeing the level grow out as you power up the tree, great job
Thanks BDBlaffy!
Very impressive game! Especially from a solo dev. The only issue was that navigating the platform became difficult to manage after a point. Other than that, the Cover Image, Music, SFX, Aesthetics, and UI were spot on. Keep up the good work!
Thanks DawnstarGames! I'm starting to plan out on expanding this (and fixing movement, etc) due to the overall positive turnout for this concept. I'm very happy how many people are enjoying this one :D.
Fun. Had to restart to get the controller working. I got to level 14 then I got bored. Solid game for the most part. Healing was useless. It was better to just sacrifice tree limbs than waste essence healing them.
Sorry to hear the controller didn't work right away. Was it plugged in or connected before starting the application? I agree with that healing thing. I didn't have time to balance it out. I hope you had fun before you got bored. You got pretty far. Thanks for your time commenting and playing.
Yeah. It was weird. The mouse worked, but nothing on the controller worked, but I figured since you had controls listed it would work so I just reloaded the web page and it worked.
Odd. I'll look into that. Thanks for the information :D.
Nice entry! Loved the defend mechanic. Unfortunately, once you start getting a big worlds, the limit of the character controller become a little annoying. If you improve the movement mechanics, this game becomes top! Also, some little building mechanic for automatic defense may be interesting to add. Nice done!
Thanks Vitbull88. I 100% agree with the defense system. That's something in mind if I push this into a full game (as well as REALLY tightening up the movement/jumping). I'm glad you noticed the body block for defending.
fun little game with cute graphics
Thank you :D.
You managed a nice amount of complexity with cute graphics. Very nice!
Thanks Darohn!
Well done, the gameplay is very satisfying.
I just feel that the jump is not high enough. I need to use it multiple time to just go up to the nearest platform. Maybe some feature to allow to walk on the roots.
Great work.
Thanks Onitenshi. There is a double jump. And that is my bad on not communicating the jump well.
This is the most game I've felt a game feel. Like this submission feels like it belongs on steam maybe more than anything else I've played. Like this could be a demo for a full game is what I would describe it as. I don't know why but I got hooked with the different mechanics. I think my biggest complaint would be the movement. It just didn't really feel solid jumping around the place. But I liked the combat mechanics. The arrows not disappearing when you see the broken root on screen was a little confusing at first but got used to it. That' something I would address though if you continue this project in the future. Really cool, I liked the day night mechanic also. I would get worried I was gonna lose apart of my tree but then the sun would rise and I would take a breath. Got to the end though!
Aww. Those are some amazing words Veras Studios. Before submitting this game, it has been my best feeling and most complete jam game I have done to date. I told myself that I would move forward to make this into a full on Steam game after LOTS of polish and tightening up of mechanics, and building it from it's current simple state. I do have some plans to basically address everything you bring up. Congrats on getting to the end! Thanks for playing.
You had some really neat concepts! I liked the night/day concept to vary gameplay and it was fun watching my trees grow. I was having an issue with moths mostly spawning offscreen? I often spent night time just waiting without anything to shoot at. The graphics and cover art look awesome.
Thanks for playing Lodesa. And leaving a wonderful comment. Yeah, I'm not pleased with the moth AI and definitely want to overhaul them. They sometimes get stick in the leaves of the trees :P. I appreciate you taking the time to comment and play. Glad you liked it.
There could be some better feedback on when you click the start button, it takes quite a while for the fade to black to be noticeable...
Sadly, with the current web build, neither of my gamepads work at all...
Yeah, it was going faster when I was testing. I have to adjust that variable for sure. Shame on your gamepads not working :(.
The art style is so beautiful. I really enjoyed playing this.
Thank you very much. It was really fun to design.