Post by Sora in [ ! ] Mid-jam Playtesting [Sun-Tues]

My First Game Jam: Winter 2022 » Community

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Hello everyone!

I uploaded the first version of my game My Chicken Farm here:

https://chocosora.itch.io/my-chicken-farm
You can access the page via password: chickens

My Chicken Farm is about raising different colored chickens!
It's meant to be enjoyed in the background - wait for your crops to grow, pick up and sell eggs and hatch different chickens.

I'd like feedback on: Bugs in case you notice any.... grave ones. Enough chicken variety?

I need help on: How to "end"? I want to add an "endless" mode, which allows players to sell chickens, so they can raise more of their favorite breed. Still, I wonder how to properly end it for the jam? A "You hatched all chickens" message?

Thanks for playing!

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Zara Saber2 years ago (1 edit)

Hey Sora! Nice to see another chicken-based game in this jam, lol. I don’t find the game to be super intuitive to play, like I clicked feed, and it wasn’t clear to me that I didn’t have anything to feed to the chickens. Then when an egg was laid, I tried to click hatch, then click on the egg and nothing happened.

The chicken sprites are super cute, and I like the overall aesthetic, I look forward to some UI improvements to make it easier to get started on the game.

Also, I tried rapidly clicking the skip button to see what would happen, and after a few days and getting around 5 chickens I got the following crash:

Edit: I played it a bit more, and I started to figure things out. The UI when you try to sow without seeds is confusing, and it’s annoying that the commands are re-explained each time you use them.

It would also be nice if there was any kind of consequence for not feeding your chickens. It took me many days to figure out how to grow corn, and I got up to 12 chickens (more than 11?) but there seemed to be no ill effect to not feeding the chickens. As far as endings, I guess you could just do something simple like “get up to 100$” or whatever. As it stands, it’s not clear what the goal even is.

Good luck with the rest of the jam!

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Sora2 years ago

Amazing, thanks for your input! I'll link into adding a tutorial for the first loop to explain all buttons, then I can remove the repeating text when hitting the store and such, so it won't be nuissance.

Not feeding chickens is not punishable. I thought about it, but felt it was too much for my first try for that jam as I was intending it to be relaxing and not a chicken horror game. (Chicken flying over the screen in a rage and destroying all your crops!) Balancing was also an issue, I didn't want to leave the player without a possible income stream (for example, if not feeding would lead to no eggs).

But I'll keep it in mind! The game is basically a soup made of If-statements, so I am happy that it's running at all haha.

The goal is to raise different colored chickens, 11 in total (not counting player chicken), but that's what I meant when saying "what is the end"? I'll try to make it more clear! Thank you!

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Hiraeth Games2 years ago

I liked it! The chickens a so cute and chubby. The game play is a little confusing even with the tutorial. As for bugs and the such, Some sprites for a second would just be a garbled mess a pixels. But overall, solid.

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