Total Pollination by homeworld

[raw]
made by homeworld for LD 40 (JAM)

As captain of a mining expedition, you're tasked to gather the precious fungal Spice. Build, expand and defend your mining facility, but make sure to send your stockpile back to the surface before lurking fungal monsters get drawn to your stash! The more you stockpile, the more aggressive and deadly the enemy becomes!

splash.png

screen1.png

screen2.png

How to play: Build with the buttons in the UI, or with the 1-6 keys. The game has a linking system: click on a building, then click on the other building you need it linked to. Mining facilities connect to depots, and depots connect to the rocket! Make sure your resource line is secure!

Credits:

Psyk - the face of the girl in the intro

Bram - Code, design

Mart - Code

Morr - Concept art, Assets, the splash screen illustration

Dan - Assets, a bit of design

NOTE: PLEASE download the LOW-QUALITY potato-pc version if you have a low-powered laptop or a potato pc! The high quality version is quite resource-intensive due to the technology we used!

Ratings

Overall 380th 3.625⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 696th 3.174⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 544th 3.188⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 221th 3.896⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 57th 4.5⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 253th 3.667⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

randompast
05. Dec 2017 · 03:29 UTC
Wow, ambitious, nice work!
SaphireS
05. Dec 2017 · 03:34 UTC
This looks sooo good, hats off! :O
Matthew Di Mare Miller
05. Dec 2017 · 03:37 UTC
I enjoyed the combination of base building and tower defense, also the presentation and introduction made getting into the game very smooth. However, audio effects would have gone a long way to providing more user feedback.
Ripper
05. Dec 2017 · 03:39 UTC
I put the graphics quality on very low and I still couldn't run the game, so unfortunately I can't rate it :| Looks like I need to upgrade my potato xD
NotSpaghettiGames
05. Dec 2017 · 03:42 UTC
Great graphics and connection to the theme! Was a little buggy though my money wouldn't increase, but overall Great Job!
hijomo
05. Dec 2017 · 03:45 UTC
Beautiful. Wow. I want more. This is one of the best things I have played from LD. Great work.
🎤 homeworld
05. Dec 2017 · 04:37 UTC
@ripper Apologies! We're using a realtime GI solution for the visuals called SEGI, and it's not light on the GPU; We'll make a potato-friendly build and upload within the next day or so!

@notspaghettigames Thanks for trying it out! The money only increases once a shipment flies off, looks something like this:
https://giant.gfycat.com/FicklePerfumedCurlew.webm
This also gets rid of your resource, which lowers the aggro and amount of enemies spawning, hence the theme!

@randompast Thank you! We bit off a bit more than we could chew, but glad it's out there!

@saphires Thank you!

@hijomo High praise! Thank you very much!

@matthew-di-mare-miller We're definitely recruiting a sound person for the next one, we just had to make the decision to abandon sound entirely at some point; very unfortunate!
merdeboi
05. Dec 2017 · 05:22 UTC
Looks great, good job!
Ramou
05. Dec 2017 · 12:15 UTC
I store the game on my pc, i love, but your mouse indicator it wrong ? you indicate right click for validate and left for cancel, but its invert

![bugjeu.jpg](///raw/53e/7/z/d6db.jpg)

It's really harm not audios effect and a quit button.
Great job
KeiLazu
05. Dec 2017 · 21:54 UTC
cool, cool, yes, how about range indicator i guess? anyways it's fun :D
SilvervaleGames
06. Dec 2017 · 03:34 UTC
Wow! How many people are on your team? Very well done!
Gufovsky
06. Dec 2017 · 21:43 UTC
I played in a lot of games of the tower defense genre and you got a neat and very beautiful game. A good idea to add RTS elements corresponds to a given theme. However, the flaws in the interface spoil the positive impression.
Drekler
07. Dec 2017 · 22:42 UTC
I love everything about this! I'm surpised that you don't have more ratings so far! I love the visual style and the splash screen image. That is one thing I would have liked to have made for our game but didn't have time. The main thing I thought was missing was the sound and music. I understand the time crunch though, as we only had time to include one song and no sound.

It took me about three minutes and then glancing at the comments to realize the mouse button indicators were swapped and I thought the connect mechanic just wasn't working. There also doesn't seem to be a way to pause, restart, or quit the game. The first time I played through, I thought the difficulty was way too high, but then I realized how much faster it is to get spice when you have the depot close to the mine and not having them walk from the spice areas close to the shuttle.

Overall, fantastic job! I would love to see this game fleshed out and have a full release after LD! Keep up the great work!
Zhorander
09. Dec 2017 · 13:47 UTC
Great looking game with smart mechanics and cool atmosphere! Shame it has sound yet, and the lack of exit menu disturbed me for a moment, but was fun to play =) I want MOAR
IllaBom
09. Dec 2017 · 17:23 UTC
Sick graphics, very well done


come check out my game if you like
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
Tay
09. Dec 2017 · 17:36 UTC
This look absolutely gorgeous, quite a ambitious project. I felt like some stuff was confusing(bit of lack of information to the player) like someone above mentioned, adding tower range would have helped. Really neat concept nonetheless, some sound/music would have helped with the mood. Hope you people continue working on this, really promising.
Joror
09. Dec 2017 · 17:41 UTC
Nice RTS + tower defense combo! Graphics are just... awesome. Really professional level stuff there.
Some music & sound effecto would have be really nice though. Don't forget, you are in the Jam! Use the Creative Commons music / generated music.

The mechanics were a bit klunky at times, response time between clicks and feedback on what succeeded and what didnt was a bit hard. (sound helps with this too)
fangzhangmnm
09. Dec 2017 · 17:43 UTC
Really nice and polished graphics.
NoAim91
09. Dec 2017 · 18:08 UTC
Its a neat game with a lot of content for that small time.
Is the only way to close the game alt+f4 ?
Nils -Gecko- Munch
09. Dec 2017 · 18:17 UTC
Ambitious but holy snacks, this game is more polished and refined than many actual games out there. Top scores all around!
TolMera
09. Dec 2017 · 18:19 UTC
Good enough for me to play it a couple of times, I like that you have the Damage Triangle, nicely animated mobs. Good tie in to the theme. Overall quite well done :)
rk0307
09. Dec 2017 · 18:32 UTC
i downloaded u r game but unable to play in my laptop ,even in very low settings...i am waiting for u r build ..graphics is mind blowing ..wanna play u r game...In the mean time can u please try our game...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EJwgR2i5TylM1iKH9BQqIWteyJlr0L1i/view?usp=sharing

Regards:
redlabs
🎤 homeworld
09. Dec 2017 · 19:26 UTC
@rk0307 I've played your game! I'll review it soon; i've also added a low-quality build on the itch.io page, hopefully you'll be able to run that one! It doesn't look quite as nice (had to give up on the realtime GI), but i hope it's still enjoyable!

@nils-gecko-munch Thank you for the kind words!

@tolmera Thank you!

@joror You're right, next time we'll definitely add a sound person to the team!

@tay Yes, tower range and easing the player into the game (so it's less confusing) would've gone a long way; if we end up working on it some more, they're definitely going in!

@illabom Thanks, We definitely will!

@drekler THANK YOU for taking the time to write the feedback! We considered a menu, but it felt like most people wouldn't actually bother spending time in there and just hitting "new game". However, we've received a lot of feedback about the lack of a way to elegantly exit the game or pause the game, so it's definitely going in for our next ludum dare, or if we end up working on this some more!

Unfortunately we've only noticed the flipped mouse tooltips after @ramou pointed it out in these comments, and we didn't feel comfortable with making any more additions and fixes to the build after the submission period ended, but it's definitely getting fixed after the voting period!

@gufovsky Thank you, we'll do better with communicating the mechanics next time!
Vasco Rodrigues
10. Dec 2017 · 01:11 UTC
Amazing game! The art is stunning, and although I'm not the biggest fan of RTS games, I can see there was a lot of work and thought put into this. Maybe consider adding sound if you improve the game in the future.
The only problem I found were the switched mouse controls. Other than that everything is great. Congratulations!
Raphael
12. Dec 2017 · 17:00 UTC
The graphics look really good but the game has some balancing issues.

At first it was very easy but then even though I didn't built any new structures it got much harder each wave (because of the spice I was accumulating) but because I didn't have any money left I couldn't do anything. I could only observe and see whether my units would survive. I also even though I had more than 15 spice packages I couldn't send my spaceship away.
Another thing, the game world is pretty small, I would have loved if I could expand more and have several bases.