Play Tomato Farming Game
Tomato Farming Game's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation / Experimentation | #8 | 3.425 | 3.425 |
| Game Play / Game Feel | #11 | 3.350 | 3.350 |
| Presentation (on itch.io) | #12 | 3.425 | 3.425 |
| Overall | #23 | 2.829 | 2.829 |
| Level Design | #26 | 2.675 | 2.675 |
| Storytelling | #28 | 1.825 | 1.825 |
| Audio | #28 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
| Art Direction | #34 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 41 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Year of education
Credits (names and roles of entire team)
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Visit our itch page and start playing without having to download and unpack anything!
The Tomato Farming Game tasks players to care for a tomato plant. Players harvest tomatoes, prune the stems of the plant, and use products to influence the growth behavior of their plant.
Credits:
Samuel Karabetian - Design, Programming
Mikael Ferroukhi - Design, Art
Elias Faltin - Design, Art, Sound and Music, Production
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Comments
First I want to note that this concept is re-treading the exact game play of at least a dozen old flash games. There is nothing original about this game at all.
But, and this is a big but: yours is the first game I've encountered in the show case, to have been scoped for the production budget available. It is not pretty nor original, but it is complete. It is a full experience with almost no extraneous bloat* and leaving lots of obvious room for growth.
It is also well suited for the circumstances of this years showcase! Very few teams thought of the obvious solution to an online-showcase: make a browser based game. It's by far the easiest way to reduce friction and engage players quickly. Your start-menu introducing the basic game interactions is a nice extension of that. Well done there.
Your soundtrack and the constant buzzing sound effect makes me want to stab nails in my ears. It is entirely antithetical to your design goal of a "chill experience". Replace the audio and give us some volume controls, please.
* regarding "almost no bloat": I'm uncertain about the repeated power-ups (eg. three of each type). I didn't play long enough to check how or if different price levels differentiated in any meaningful way. Also: the description texts in the store are far too small to be read on a TV.
Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback!
Now I would like to offer some context. We made this game first as a prototype in a course (1 week of production time, playable here: https://gotland.games/2020/03/21/tomato-pruning-game/) and then worked on it another 2.5 weeks.
2 of the team members used the game for their thesis about reflective game design. The abundance of products should make players experiment with their effects by observing the immediate and long-term environmental changes they cause. There is a "good" "medium" and "bad" product in each category.
I haven't played too many physics based tomato plant simulations in my browser game days but I can live with having a nice but un-original game :P The text in the store does experience some scaling issues, I give you that, but it is readable if the game is played on a Computer screen.
You are the first person to dislike the sound that much and your word choice is a bit harsh to be honest. My assumption would be that your TV speaker boost the mid to high frequencies too much (or are straight up trash) which make the trumpets (that emulate the buzzing of the bees) seem very loud or unpleasant. If listened to on headphones they are mixed in a way that they are often barely noticeable to avoid being annoying in the first place. I really have no problem with critique towards an aspect of the game but I don't write that I want to scratch my eyes out after reading feedback, I write "Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback" and I am sure that if you would have given me feedback in person on a show floor your word choice would have been more constructive. That was at least my experience when interacting with you in previous years.
I am still salty about the way you gave feedback about the music I made and I would ask you to play the game with a set of decent headphones and check if the "I want nails in my ears" feeling persists. Like I said this most likely has to do with your TV speaker setup. I am not above being told that something I made sucks but you are the first person out of 100 people with such a strong, hurtful, adverse reaction to it. I am going to refrain from becoming mean back now and just appeal to your humanity by asking you to imagine that you stand in front of an actual human being when giving feedback on digital showcases in the future. I was genuinely surprised and disappointed by the tone of your words after having interacted with you in person and having experienced you as much nicer during those interactions.
Elias
PS: This is my personal response to this comment but this does not necessarily reflect my teams opinion.
Wow...
"Your soundtrack and the constant buzzing sound effect makes me want to stab nails in my ears."
Incredibly uneccessary comment. I agree that a volume slider would have been nice but to add this harsh comment about something as subjective as music is very counterproductive. Sad to see this from a fellow industry professional.
A nice little game to spend your time on. Feels good to see the tomatoes grow and harvest a large amount of them! I still wonder what a good pruning strategy is? I did just let it grow and harvested the ripe tomatoes as quickly as possible.
I personally am a big fan of just letting the plant grow wild. Happy to hear you enjoyed the game!
This game was so sweet and charming. I really enjoyed it. I found it a little hard to understand what to do at times, since I wasn't sure if I was doing things correctly.
I think it has a lot of potential!! I liked the different products and tools you could use.
Happy to hear that you enjoyed the experience! There is no real "right way" to do things in the game, it's about pursuing your self set goals and experimenting with different approaches of how to achieve those goals, so it sounds like you did everything right!
The save-the-environment message is a bit unsubtle, but the game itself has charm.
I had trouble cutting the stalks at times; this could have been an interface issue, or perhaps hidden rules were in play that I didn't see.
Thank you for playing!
Cutting works best if you keep the mouse button held down and then "swipe" through the stems.
We are happy to hear that we succeeded in providing a charming experience for you!
It was just fun to play and figure out, how the different products are really influence the tomato plant. I have decided to use the natural products and I get very good tomatoes... Now I try it in my own garden, hopefully I have a rich tomato harvest there too :-) Great game!
Happy to hear you enjoyed the game! Even happier to hear that learning transfer occurred :P Good luck with your real life tomatoes!
I like the feeling of it. The atmosphere and concept is nice and wholesome! It is fun just watching it grow and try to keep it alive and happy.
Happy to hear that you enjoy the experience!
It was quite hard for me to really know how to use some "Upgrades" or to know what exactly they do, since there is no real explanaition for them. It would be nice to be able to 100% understand how the bees, worms etc. really influence my little tomato plant. But maybe the idea is to try things out & fail and adapt. Apart from that - amazing game! To be honest, i even got a little addicted to get the max amount of tomatoes. Great job!
The goal is indeed for you to figure out the exact effects of the different products through experimentation, so keep playing and you will figure it out ;P
We are happy to hear you enjoyed the game overall!