itch.io

Thanks so much for playing and for the feedback! What kind of performance issues did you face in the shop? I haven't heard someone mention those before so would be keen to hear about them and try fix them

Hey! Thanks for playing. I agree that the pink ball is definitely one of the best. I'm not sure how well balanced the game is but I imagine with enough of those pink balls and a bit of skill you could keep on going forever!

Cool game! Nice twist on the card and countdown combo. I think the game might just need a more streamline way to teach the player. It felt like I was dumped quite a bit of info and then thrown into a timed game that I didn't fully understand.

Cool game! Enjoyed the risk of not pushing columns to gain the ability to use the pickaxe

Ah yes that did confuse me. I didn't realise the grid was 4x4 as the ones sticking out looked identical to me.

Cool idea for the game! Fast paced maths to keep the counter ticking was fun. I think making the game clearer and giving the player some feedback once they hit the goal would be nice. It took me a couple of games to work out how the game actually worked so maybe a little tutorial before the game starts. Good job!

Super game! Very polished and simple artwork that suits the style perfectly. I think the game maybe could do with upping the difficulty as you went on further. I got to 2.6 million points and gave up as I felt I'd seen enough. Maybe adding two bosses in at once would be interesting?

Cool idea for a game! I enjoyed the simple loop and adding complexity with extra bombs. I was a bit confused by the timings of the bombs for a while and feel it didn't explain that bombs of the same time could explode next to each other. Also there were a few spots on the grid, particularly at the top, where I couldn't place any bombs. 

I wonder if setting the bomb timers to longer and having them tick down as soon as they spawn onto the grid would be fun. Then it'd be a bit more frantic and the countdown would be a more integral part of the game.

Once again though, cool game!

Hey! Yes I was initially planning on making the goal to survive 5 rounds of the game and then 'winning'. Similar to something like Balatro. In the end I just left the goal as 'get the highest score' which I now believe was a mistake as the round idea would have been clearer

Thanks so much for playing and for the feedback!

The idea is you want to try score as many points as possible without ever beating your previous rounds score. This isn't explained too well though unfortunately.

You want to score as high as possible in the first round and then aim to score high but not quite as high in the next round. Then keep doing that until you eventually lose

Thanks for playing! The aim is to score as many points as possible without beating your previous rounds score. I appreciate this isn't explained too clearly!

The idea behind the shop is that you can buy balls but the cost comes out of your last rounds points, meaning you have a lower threshold for the next round.

Hey! Thanks for playing. Balls in the shop cost a percentage of your points from the previous round. If you scored 0 then you will be unable to purchase anything.

Thanks! The idea is that on the first level you want to try get as high of a score as possible and then get lower every other round!

The aim is to get as high of a score as possible overall without ever beating your previous rounds score. Your high score is calculated by adding each of your rounds scores together at the end. I do think this could have been explained better! 

Try playing like this where you aim to get as close to your previous score as possible without ever beating it.

Thanks for the feedback! This bug has been fixed in the steam demo that is currently live.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4258790/The_Gardener/

Hey, thanks for playing! 

That's great feedback that I'll take on board for the full release.

The game will be released on steam this year and there is also a demo on steam which is currently similar to this demo but soon will be updated to include more puzzles! Check them out below.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4258790/The_Gardener/

Hey! Nope that level is 100% solvable. It is tricky though and the Mole mechanic has been removed since this prototype. There is a more up to date version of the game on Itch and Steam that you could try out if you enjoyed this prototype! The link is below.

https://ajwcw.itch.io/the-gardener

Thanks so much for playing!

Yeah that's not a bad idea, I'll give that a test!

Thanks for playing & for the feedback. I have heard that piece of feedback before and plan to implement it while developing the game going forward!

I have been working on some graphical changes to the game which I'll be publishing once the jam is over.  I'm then going to work on developing it further into a full fledged game so watch this space!

Thanks for the reply. The idea with the undo button is just to let you jump back a few turns in case you hit the wrong button or realise you've gone wrong on one of the puzzles. I played around with the idea of capping the length of the undo but I didn't want to make the game unaccessible to anyone so I left it endless. It's definitely something to consider and maybe I add it as an option in a 'accessible' mode option in the menus going forward.

Ah thanks for the explanation! I hadn't considered that you were entering a tile that was already at 0, moving off of it and then undoing back over it. This is because I'm just checking if the grass length is less than it's 'maximum length' and increasing it if it is. I need to implement something that confirms if you have just mown a piece of grass on that turn to resolve this. Thanks for the feedback, I will add that to my list of bug fixes!

Oh really? Each tile has a 'maximum length' to it which is set based on how long the grass starts. If you mow a grass down from 1 length to 0 length and then undo over that grass then it does put the grass back. The idea of the undo move is to let you go back to previous moves, meaning you can correct a mistake without having to start again.

Is there a bug in there which allows you to abuse that and do something you don't think you should be able to

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm thinking going forward I might make it so that once you complete a puzzle it is locked and marked as completed. That means the whole vine attaching will disappear and I'm also thinking anywhere the vine-door it opens is not on screen there will be some camera movement to show what you've just activated . It is a great bit of feedback though as I do agree when a puzzle opens two vine-doors or a vine-door off screen it is confusing as to what you've achieved.

Thanks so much for playing!

Thanks so much for playing and for the feedback.

Please could you elaborate on what you mean when you say you could 'redo' the tiles at the border? This sounds like it might have been a bug that I missed!

Also could you let me know where you managed to get softlocked? I thought I'd tested this well and by using undo you should always be able to get back the way you came and avoid the moles!

Thanks for playing! The camera zoom out was actually surprisingly easy to implement. I essentially just took the camera out of my 'player' node and attached a script to it. I then set a variable called target position in the camera to the players position and in the process function slowly moved it to match that target position. Once the player collided with an area2d I setup in the centre of the puzzles the cameras target position would zoom out to match the zoom and position I manually set. Finally once the player moved out of that area2d I set the target position back to the player!

Hey! I just watched your stream where you played my game, you did so well and you were so close to completing the big puzzle! That's 100% the hardest in the game and I think you were only 1 or 2 correct moves from finding the solution. Thanks so much for playing it, I hope you enjoyed!

No worries! It looks like only the two puzzle you've screenshotted aren't working as intended as I have no idea why right now!

Thanks so much for playing!

Thanks so much for playing and for your feedback! I have had the feedback about the reset buttons being too close a few times now. I was planning to 'lock' a puzzle once it has been completed which means you can walk over it again without ruining the solution. I hadn't considered a confirmation button on the reset tile though, that might actually be a better solution.

Thanks so much for playing! The bottom right puzzle was a tricky one to design so I'm glad that it stumped you for a bit!

Thanks so much! The undo mechanic was added to make it easier to test out your ideas and take it back a few steps if you go wrong so it definitely was intended! Thanks so much for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

First of all thanks so much for playing and for your feedback! I'll address your gripes below in reverse order (should make sense why once you read them).

Gripe /2
It would appear you have found a glitch/error in one of the puzzles, specifically the one on the right in your screenshot. I will explain the rule of the flowers below so anyone reading this who wants to go in and play it first stop reading now! You've been warned...

The flowers represent which of the tiles diagonally should have 1 piece of grass and which should have 0 pieces of grass on. The flowers in the left puzzle indicate that the central tile should have no grass and all the others should have 1 piece.  That means that the puzzle in question should be solved like it is below. This issue is this puzzle seems to only be checking how many tiles have 0 grass on and not where they are located on the puzzle! So your solution works as it has the correct 12 tiles with 0 grass on but the flower rule is essentially being ignored by the game! I will get this resolved and ready to push up once the jam deadline has ended!


Gripe /1
Now the flower rule has been explained. I created the mole puzzles before the flower puzzles and only added the latter in right at the end of the jam. I therefore decided to add the flower into any previous puzzle that featured grass tiles with 0 pieces of grass on, essentially just to keep the rules consistent across the whole game. I never considered that someone would see these earlier and believe that they were a puzzle mechanic so thanks for pointing that out. The hope was that you'd just think they were flowers but then once you got to the flower section you'd remember seeing them and realise then. The intention was that those final two mole puzzles are solvable without needing to understand or interact with the flowers. I realise now that's one of those things obvious to me as I built the game but not to a player so thanks for pointing that out!

Nice game! I loved the chip tune soundtrack, it gave the game a very jolly feel. One issue I faced due to having an apple magic mouse was that when I was trying to click on the castle to gain money my mouse kept scrolling me in and out. Quite a niche issue but I thought I'd mention it for you!

Nice game! I loved the audio. I feel like a bit more feedback on the spells would have really taken the game to the next level. Maybe some audio of the monsters reacting to being hit and a slightly shake form monsters hit by a spell would have made them feel more impactful?

I struggled to find any ending other than the bad ending but cool idea indeed!

Really cool mechanic! I feel like this could make the basis of a great game!

Thanks for playing and for the commitment to play till the end! I thought the game was maybe a bit long as most game jam games I play are short and sweet. Out of interest roughly how long did it take you to beat the whole game?

Thanks for playing! I tried to get a nice balance of easier puzzles with a few tricky ones thrown in to stump people so I'm glad it sounds like that is working!