I think this game is a really good proof of concept. The game has a good system relating to food, I can effectively play the game. That said there doesn't seem to be a way to generate money, so I will quickly run out of money and then there is nothing for me to do. Having a building that generates gold or having a system that converts excess food into gold would have really helped. I think this game with a few additions could be a really fun city build and defense game.
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Harvest Haven's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Visuals | #9 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
Sound | #11 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
Theme | #12 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
Overall | #12 | 2.920 | 2.920 |
Game Feel | #12 | 2.400 | 2.400 |
Core Mechanic | #13 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
A solid entry! I wish the game feel was a bit better with the UI being a bit tighter and there being some feedback when I place buildings. As a player, I should really feel the impact of placing a building, and most importantly, I should immediately understand what it does. Something like an animation that highlights the fact that my food stores are now going up, or even a UI that shows up when I click on the farm.
I ran out of money pretty quickly, I didn't really know if I was too greedy with making farms, I just knew my people were starving so I built a bunch of warehouses and farms and had no money to build a mage tower.
So obviously with more time you can flesh this sort of thing out, that's why I wanted to make sure people focused on 1 core mechanic, so they could really focus and invest that sort of UX quality there.
But yeah, solid entry, looks great, tightening stuff, balancing, and a good dose of polish can take this to the next level.
Thank you for the review! I agree 100% with all you remarks. The idea of the game jam, to focus on one core mechanic, makes so much sense after building this out. I see how I added extra things which, ultimately, didn't add as much as they may have took away.
One other thing that I find so interesting is having folks test the game so much. Turns out, there was one consistent bug, everyone ran out of money! That showed me, make sure you test, test and test!
Built 11 farms, got spammed by "people are starving" voice, got a well to support they growth. Not sure if effectively :)
Built a mage tower to defend from raiders, some crazy flares started showing up at some points where they died and hit my framerate like a fraight train. Also I could not see anything because of them and the console kept spamming "Unit destroyed" text.
But I have generated some money, before all my people died among the farm fields. 10/10 would cash in on my fellow hungry neighbour again.
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