Does Money Grow on Trees by Antti Haavikko

John is a lonely young man, a son of two popular country singers, who wants to be a farmer. A Blood Fruit farmer to be more specific, they're the hot new thing and are worth a fair price on the current market. But his harvest hasn't really been too great lately and the bills keep stacking on.
Controls and other instructions given in game, good luck on helping John!
๐ฎ๐น๏ธ Download or play online on itch.io ๐น๏ธ๐ฎ

๐ ๏ธ Tools used
- Unity 2018 (with Post Processing and Anima2D)
- Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
- Bfxr
- Garage Band
๐๏ธ Gameplay video
๐ฅ Dev timelapse
๐ฅ๏ธ Screenshots

| Source Code | https://github.com/anttihaavikko/dmgot |
| HTML5 (web) | https://anttihaavikko.itch.io/dmgot |
| Windows | https://anttihaavikko.itch.io/dmgot |
| macOS | https://anttihaavikko.itch.io/dmgot |
| Linux | https://anttihaavikko.itch.io/dmgot |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/does-money-grow-on-trees |
Ratings
| Given | 14๐ณ๏ธ | 19๐จ๏ธ |
Is there a system how to plant to maximize revenue (something like rules in classic "game of life") or the plans die/fruit randomly? It could be fun to know there is such a system and trying to figure it out. Maybe there is, I'll have to try it again :)
Anyway, great work man!
The gameplay is fun, the story interesting, and the overall aesthetic seems to have a lot of heart put into it, which translated into me feeling like a happy bloody farmer! Nice game!
I did notice the text being a little blurry and could always clearly see it. For eg:

Also, initially i died right after the first day, and had to refresh the page as the game was not restarting:

I really really enjoyed the fact that you programmed in the game of life with the plants!! Super cool work!
Liked how the euros are not money you can use anymore^^
I had a little bit of trouble getting to grips with your game's mechanics, maybe it was just something I wasn't quite understanding, but I did die several times trying to figure it out and am still a little confused as to how I could sustain my income. The fertiliser also seemed very inconsistent as to where I could and couldn't place it. Perhaps there was a bug, or maybe I just missed something?
I think you've done a great job of using the theme to come up with an interesting concept, and you certainly have a good eye for striking game visuals and good UI design. I didn't encounter any bugs either so you've probably got your coding ability nailed too. Nice entry, thank you for sharing it with me.
You can use fertilizer only on the 10x10 grid in about the middle of the screen but not on places that are grass already (since it converts blank ground to grass). The plants grow and die following the rules of **Game of Life**. As a hindsight, maybe I should have actually told about it somewhere and even have the rules there.
So the death mechanic goes like this. You pretty much have 4 health and lose one every time you plant. If you eat and sleep, your health is restored back to max. But if you've planted more than 4 times, it will not heal you and you die instead on that night.
If I had something to criticize, it would be the outside background looks a bit off. Maybe it's the fences or the perspective of the house or the bushes, I don't really know. Apart from that, I didn't know that the plants followed the game of life rules, so they just kept dying and I thought it was random.
Anyways, incredible job!
Very good game you have here, and in compo !
I liked the ambiance, the graphics of course, the feel (UI, juice, etc).
Special mention to the ambiance: harming ourselves being the main interaction we have to win the game, plus the whole backstory that unfolds if we're curious enough on the web is really a good idea. What you do here is very clever: you are neither telling nor showing us a story but rather making us doing it (by having us harming ourselves), thus you create a very cool implication for us in the story, as small and vague as it is. Nice work.
Some ways for improvement:
- your sound effects were a bit too high pitched for me
And that's about it, for a compo game, very nicely done.
Please check out our game about robots that has to be fixed: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-corp
See ya.
I really wish the day end and start transition animation was faster, the black boxes from the top and bottom bouncing got old really fast, especially if you're replaying the game to try and find out the pattern for the plants.
Liked all the little details you put in, like the emails! Good job! :herb:
PS: No toasters :p
Had fun trying to suss out the rules for plant living/dying. Played a few times, never quite managed to pay rent for the first couple of weeks but I have an itch to go back and try again and see if I can make it happen.