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Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa3j-msR0GFk8MKX4CWwhqduA4cO3f0De4ZnsdssNfQ/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes! 3 times!
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes!
Summarise your game!
Cultivate crops is a farming simulator as a giant destructive war machine.
In a world once ridden with war. You are left behind, as peace enriches the land. A war machine, whose only purpose was to destroy, now seeks redemption. A life worth living. You have found yourself in a quant rural town, adopting the role of a farmer. Are you determined enough to prove yourself no longer a weapon? Can a being built for destruction truly grow something beautiful? Cultivate the land you once fought on. Find peace with your new life. Don’t let the crows eat your crops.
Use your weapons of destruction to cultivate the land, and bring in a bountiful harvest.
CONTROLS:
WASD: Movement.
LMB: Fire your selected weapon.
1. Tilling Laser: tills the land.
2. Seed Shotgun: Plant your seeds in your tilled land
3. Hydro Pump: Time your blast of water to reach the distance you want to hydrate the land.
4. Harvest Blade: Cut down your fully grown crops to seek returns.
5. Flamethrower: When winter comes, keep your crops warm. Beware! If it isn't winter, your crops may be set ablaze.
Shift: Traverse the land with ease with your jetpack
F: Interact with key items.
<Q and E>: Cycle through your seeds, and the seed crate.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The player plays as a machine built only for weaponry and destruction and is placed in a context normally absurd for weapons and destructiveness.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Just have fun :) Also feed the duck with seeds.
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Very clever idea and great artwork! My only critique is to maybe consider adding a visual indicator, sfx, timer, or all of the above to tell the player when the crops are done growing. I was cutting my wheat too early at the beginning haha
This is a very cool take on the theme. I’m here for it. Amazing aesthetic and concept!
I understand that it’s supposed to be a little loose with the controls (How could a giant robot be good at farming?) but they’re a bittoo loose. The tilling laser, seed shotgun, and hydro canon would benefit from mouse targeting. Moving around to reposition to use tools was unfun.
Overall, very cool game! Would love to see some more iterative polish which a game jam doesn’t really allow for. Great job!
Fantastic concept and design! We too went for a weapon-of-war-turned-farmer idea for our game too, but our players don't get to actually plant seeds!
I read in the comments below that the clunkiness in controls was intended. I get that from a character standpoint, but think refining the controls and making the robot's farming actions more precise would greatly increase playability. I felt unsatisfied every time my lasers fired, especially when I burnt the stuff that took me several tries to plant to a crisp.
I still think the idea is solid enough that you should continue with it post-jam!
Appreciate the kind words and criticisms! We did try and approach this with the idea of "Most farming simulators are about min maxing your how precise your crop cycles are" and to go in tandem with the idea of the story, making that a difficulty seemed like a fun point to jump off of for design to juxtapose the genre. Your own destructive nature is supposed to underscore the messaging of self growth and change.
Now, would this in its current form be successful in a larger scale game? Probably not, I think theres a ton of refinement needed in several areas for an increased scope to make it not insufferable to use for a longer play session. Probably something along the lines of "upgrading accuracy and weapons" so the longer you play, just like our war machine main character, youre are honing in on mastering farming, subsequently getting easier the more you play.
All that said, I'm very happy with where we landed, and glad to see the reception and critiques from others.
Good luck in the jam, and I'm looking forward to trying out your game!
I can't believe you made all of this in such a short amount of time. There's a certain beauty on how heavy the robot feels while trying to do otherwise relaxing farmwork. I laughed when I burnt the land trying to till it equally.
You truly nailed the "not built for this but i'll try anyways" feeling. Well done!
Awesome idea and way to think outside of the box for the jam theme! Reminds me a lot of the Iron Giant
The humor in this game was upper tier. What a unique play on the theme. I always prefer "tongue in cheek" humor. Played again this morning. I was enjoying planting all the different crops so I missed my timer to get my wheat in. Bummer. The music was very peaceful in the midst of the chaos! I successfully kept that pesky crow from eating my crops this time! Success!
Amazing art. I'm very impressed with what you were able to accomplish in the scope of the game jam, especially in terms of the main character's art. I think it's also THE best interpretation of the "you are the weapon" theme I've seen so far. Turning it on it's head "you are not the weapon", where you're this big war machine trying to just get by. I also thought it was neat how you can't make nice neat little farming patches, you're this big destructive guy with his tilling laser so of course it's gonna be super chaotic and like a wake of destruction except a wake of farming. (So it makes sense the tilling laser was hard to aim. If people complain about it, maybe make it even more clear that your war-bot farming is supposed to be chaotic.) How slow and clunky the main character was was almost unbearably at first, but once I figured out you could just jetboost to get around long distances, it made a lot of sense for the theming for him to be big and clunky when trying to do precise aiming and movement.
I really wanted to so more of this world and its charm, and have characters to talk to. I wish you could talk to that robot scarecrow as an npc, even if it didn't talk back. Or maybe it talks to you and your war robot mc is the big silent type. At a certain point I didn't engage the game loop anymore, and just jet-boosted around admiring what you'd built. I just want to see more of the world. I feel like it could be a love death robots episode.
thank you for your very kind words. The first thing we thought of was how to subvert the theme in a novel way, and I think we did that very well. If we were to expand this project, what youve mentioned is definitely the goal. Show to good and bad of the post war world and have our character introspectively adapt to what he was, and what he wants to be. Also, from a purely gameplay stand point, having places to move, spend your gathered money on, and other daily tasks al la Stardew Valley would really bolster the day to day tasks.
Thanks for playing and good luck in the jam!
This is such a cool concept and you all executed it with so much style; the little hat, the incredible character and gorgeous animations, the gentle soundtrack, it was truly delightful to explore.
I loved that the decisions behind the gameplay felt so deliberate, too, the slow, weighted footsteps, how easy it was to trample your own crops, how ill-suited your weapons were for farming (yet all the ways in which they had been adapted for their new purpose were so thought-through and intuitive).
The artwork reminded me of the board gameScythe, which I mean as one of the highest compliments I can give.
Truly a unique and soulful game, good job to everyone who worked on it!
Love the music, the ambient, the little footprints are cute.
Gamplay felt clunky at first but as I played it actually felt really good if you look at it from a story perspective. Robot getting used to farming and not war.
Love the weapons
Love destroyable shit (Was actually my favorite)
I am at war with all birbs. Im tired of them touchin me crops
I've watched a lot of Moonmoon's game jams and I'd say this game would be in my tops.
I really like when games try to incorporate immersive sim elements, the same tools being used to farm the land also being capable to destroying the crops easily if misused is a great way to implement immersive style mechanics which is really cool, the animation and art all looks great too, just wish it wasn't quite so clunky to move
Thanks for checking out our project! Its definitely clunky, and only about half in the way we wanted it be clunky. Honing in aiming, and cleaner animations I think would be core to expand on this idea beyond the scope we were able to deliver on. Very proud of our idea and think we put our all into its execution!
Fantastic interpretation of the theme, loved the artwork and intro. Gameplay is unique, was pleasantly surprised to accidentally fry my own crops with the laser beam. So much packed into this submission, really great job!
We really tried to find a nice balance between destruction and growth. Was quite challenging, but I think for a 2 week prototype, we found a good feel for what we were aiming for. Precision and timing is everything in traditional farming simulators, and making it intrinsically difficult to do that and not feel bad was a fun challenge. Thanks for playing :)
