The Garden by bendmorris

[raw]
made by bendmorris for LD30 (COMPO)
This is an incremental game about the connectedness of life. As your garden grows, more animals will come to live there. Use the tools at your disposal to try to maintain a balance and prevent anything from growing out of control or going extinct.

Like the real world, this game features indirect effects. For example, if you use pesticide on the ants, you may end up hurting the beetles. Why? Because spiders eat both ants and beetles, and with fewer ants to eat they'll start eating more beetles.

The Garden was made with HaxePunk.

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall 3.13 638
Fun 2.87 717
Graphics 2.26 1052
Humor 2.24 611
Innovation 3.37 394
Mood 2.80 721
Theme 3.20 600

Feedback

Tanner
25. Aug 2014 路 07:34 UTC
Good idle game but does exist other things except ants and grass?
馃帳 bendmorris
25. Aug 2014 路 15:26 UTC
Yes - once you have enough ants, the next one will appear. It doesn't take long.
Liz England
25. Aug 2014 路 21:23 UTC
I really enjoyed this - I've played a lot of incremental games, but I loved how this required careful tending to get it to grow. I spent way too long playing it (wish there was a pause!) - I looked away and came back to find my ecosystem collapsing under the weight of deer and wolves :) Very nicely done.
Devtactics
26. Aug 2014 路 06:42 UTC
Nice job! A pause button would be great -- I didn't want to stop playing but needed to step away for a while. Once the cats went extinct I just gave up.
mess110
26. Aug 2014 路 16:28 UTC
a wild ant appears :D
bobrocks
26. Aug 2014 路 16:30 UTC
I keep trying to quit, then I decide to let it go a little longer haha. You did something right!
Boodog
26. Aug 2014 路 16:32 UTC
Nice game!
Marcellus
26. Aug 2014 路 16:52 UTC
I played this game for about 15 minutes, went to coyote, hawks and corn then I couldn't understand how to fight the extinction.

Everything finally died and I didn't understand how I could fix the entropy.

I seemed that everything I could click made the things worse.

It's a very good entry but some kind of explanations of how the things interact with each others (other than just percent) would be great.
Jacic
27. Aug 2014 路 01:13 UTC
I like the idea, but it took a long time for more than three items to appear for me.
madk
28. Aug 2014 路 01:59 UTC
Wonderful! Very relaxing and fun to play. Would've been awesome to have indicators next to each number showing whether they were currently increasing or decreasing.
馃帳 bendmorris
28. Aug 2014 路 02:59 UTC
Just in case it's not clear, the colors indicate whether something is increasing or decreasing - green is increasing and red is decreasing, and the brighter the color the faster they're changing.
oggyiu
28. Aug 2014 路 06:32 UTC
Just love it! But the hint is quiet unclear, my cats all died and I forgot how to make them again! Nice game!
mrexcessive
28. Aug 2014 路 13:22 UTC
Hi there. Interesting simulation, but I think it needed a bit more content sooner - or maybe just a few more things to keep player occupied. Got as far as 4 things (Bush). Good job!
Tanser
28. Aug 2014 路 19:42 UTC
Cool game! Its addicting :)
tanjent
28. Aug 2014 路 21:08 UTC
Thanks for opening my eyes to a new game genre! When I think about it some more: most games I've played seem to have a core of "incrementation": levelling up, reaching the next world, getting achievements, improving your (motor) skills, earning more, getting more XXX ... Really basic human stuff, man.

Funny that when my kid brother showed my cookie clicker I thought it to be the most silly and pointless thing ever ... but it's really an archetypal game mechanic, we just dress it up in lots of logic and gfx, like this silly action rpg I've been playing for 100+ hours just to get all the last level 9 items ... Well, anyway, nice game and thanks for making it! (...and sorry for the philosophy :))
pjimmy
31. Aug 2014 路 22:00 UTC
nice, interesting take on the theme
Colapsydo
03. Sep 2014 路 10:39 UTC
It was relaxing to play this game.

I went until cows, but they were dying. I guess I had to take care of them. All of a sudden all the insects started to die, but my actions against their predator were useless.
Hopefully a small colony of ants came back in my garden after a short period and the ecosystem had reborn.
I will be more careful this time.
local minimum
06. Sep 2014 路 19:57 UTC
I like the take on the theme. I was toying with that type of interpretation myself before opting for a different path. The ecosystem was really robust, which made the game play itself for a great while. I got to 11 species and had very little trouble keeping them in line. Then I decided that grass would rule it all, trying to get it to overshoot. But I never managed how much I tried. After that I got rid of all animals, which was a challenge. And they kept popping back. So I decided to KILL ALL LIFE. Which was really the most challenging and game-wise interesting way of playing it. Doesn't work too well as a moral in the story though, but clicking to keep ants at max, spiders at minimum and cutting down all plants was really fun. (And I succeeded, totally destroying the ecosystem.)
Dans17
08. Sep 2014 路 05:35 UTC
Very interesting game. I think it would have been more intriguing with an animation of your garden going on as you played.