Wow, I wasn't expecting this kind of game in the zero category! I've played over 30 games right now and this is most definitely one of the best games of the whole jam I've seen so far. The polish, artwork, the overall feel and music fit so well together. You guys form a great team! Good luck!

edit: I’d love for you to try out my game as well! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/keyboard-warrior

Game Genres: Farming simulation + RPG!
The artworks are well-polished. Well-fitted music too!
Actually "farming" the souls instead of "farming" from other haha!
Great work!
Are the control inputs suppose to be well-executed like playing Dark Soul? The seeds hit hard!

Awesome idea : farm our enemies wth, perfectly executed, and very fun, I wish I could do the same wew 10/10 would play again

Cool graphics/sound and great combo of genres.

Feels really polished for a jam-game, though I did somehow get stuck inside the rightmost wall.

I hope you'll eventually get to adding some goals to the game.

You could throw some tower defence into this: Plant deadly plants to keep the creep at bay, but you have to fight through your own garden in order to upgrade and maintain it.

Whoa! You really nailed the game feel here. For an LD entry, this feels really polished and smooth to play. i also like how the game get organically more difficult as you progress. Definitely one of the best ones in this LD!

[The bug on Chrome, where the player keeps walking in a direction is fixed and the fog of war doesn't show up correctly, was a WebGL export issue]

Thanks for your kind comments everybody, we'll play your games this week end.

Cute graphics, great music. Good feel when playing. The mashup might have felt a little lacking in the Dark Souls department if it wasn't for the roll. Switching between plants mode and fight mode is neat.

Your game is awesome !!!!! I love it !!

A very polished game !
Good job !

Wooah, this might be the winner this LD ! Is a 5 stars all aroud for me, this is definitely one of my farourite jam games.

Awesomely executed and complete feeling polished entry, great job! Pixel art as perfectly done and I love color palette you chose. Music also fits the mood very well, bit repetitive in longer play though. Slight problem with the gameplay I had, was that it felt kinda aimless or lacking goal. I’m not familiar with Dark souls franchise but to me getting better weapons isn’t achievement enough for me. Also there is no reason to plant those things. Overall despite these nitpicks your game is one of the most polished game I’ve seen so far.

Of all the ones I tried, this is the game I played longer! Great game feel, addictive gameplay :) The only thing I feel it lacked a bit was a push to plant more. Something like a count-down, or a reward for planting (when the plant is watered it gives life? dunno)... Still, really good job!!!
It's a pity you don't "advertise" it more on the homepage. Spam it guys, this game deserves more votes!

Really well polished and good concept. Luved it!

Holy crap, how does this not have more votes?! Beautifully polished and excellent design. Needing to balance the rate at which you plant seeds against your level to make sure you don't screw yourself over is genius. The music was fitting and not too repetitive, and the graphics where just the right balance of cute and dark - reminding me a lot of Shovel Knight. Great team work, larger teams do tend to suffer sometimes with clashing styles or convoluted design, but this was a wonderfully simple, coherent and well directed experience from start to my embarrassing death being swarmed by the purple blighters near the hanging tree...

I played as well as I could on laptop with trackpad. :) Realy nice game. Good work!

Funny game! And would be good if we can spend souls for some upgrades weapon/watering can. ;)

This is, without a doubt, one of the best games I've seen in the jam so far.

The graphics and music are amazing, the combat is simple and addictive, and the concept is hilarious and fun.
Amazing work!

Okay, this was amazing! I'm surprised it has so few ratings, so far! Put out the word @Pietro Ferrantelli and @zguerrero , make some LD posts. This deserves to be played more! Has to potential to be one of the winners of the jam. Everything was just perfect. Super polished, no bugs(afaik), awesome graphics and music and more importantly, super fun gameplay. The perfect jam game(imo, atleast!).

This is an amazing game! The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay is reallly fun - the game steadily grows more difficult and it feels very well put together.

Best game I played so far for this jam. I don't really have much else to say. What an amazing work, really inspiring stuff.

Reached level 45 and 1792 souls. Probably not much but shit got intense at the end :P

Well polished game: great graphics, nice audio and really satisfying and motivating gameplay. The only negative point I have to mention is that you could've made it a bit easier to plant seeds. For example, just have one seed that spawns different plants at random, so you don't have to switch between the single seeds in the menu.

Level reached : 43
Souls farmed: 1621

This game is amazing. Perfect and brilliant.

Amazing game all around! Insanely good graphics, pumping music, cool sound effects, thick atmosphere and most of all a fun game! And everything feels so polished! Definitely one of the top entries!

The whole loop of farming your own enemies and unlocking items is genius and works really well. Controls are perfect too.

Wow. Very good game. Everything about it was super well done.

I'm amazed by the level of quality and polish. This could really be turned to a full game. Love the "build your own level and difficulty" factor. Congratulations!

God damn it I just have a problem

this game is incredible, I already love playing it I can't wait to see a final product


Thanks for you kind comments everybody !

@benpeterson Wow, the highest score in our team is hold by @NoNameNoSocks (Robin), and it was 50, you're a pro player, you can't imagine how happy i am to see someone liking it so much,

EDIT : I just reached level 87, i had to try hard ahah, you're really good

The game looks awesome and it is really fun! I noticed a bug where if you click attack during item upgrade notification popups the character spends its stamina even though it cannot attack.

I really liked this entry! Thank you for making this game!

GUYS, that is awesome! :D Art is perfect. Incredible feeling! Nice idea, when you have to make game harder on yourself to make progress faster. Reminds me Hero Siege a bit. to After a while (when I have got about 38th level) there was nothing to do imo, but it is just because it was just a game jam. YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP IT. Do you hear me? YOU HAVE TO, the concept is soooo promising! JUST DO IT! :D

This is the best game I played this jam ! I played for a very long time and didn't get bored. I won't start enumerating all the good aspects of this game, the list is too long. It was hard for me to read some of the text in the beginning but honestly the UI is so good I didn't need any tutorial. I was just a bit curious about the background story ?
What do I have to do to work with you guys ? ;-) 5/5

@Pietro Ferrantelli Hahaha man you guys need some pro-er user testers, I broke 100 and the level counter didn't even support it it cut off and just said ten. I started recording after level 97 but it's just a box in the top right corner of the screen cause I was doing unity screen caps and forgot to switch it back lol so not too useful.

Are you supposed to not be able to place seeds after a certain point or did you just not add enough game objects to the object pool :laughing:


that was awesome, my favorite so far, reached lvl 42 before I died. The graphics are on point especially with the smooth lighting. It gave me a very good mood and wasn't too hard at all. I really liked the kinda auto attack, that I didn't had to worry about aim. the only two minor problems I had were first the rotation of the 3 items felt kinda 'cheap' and I got stuck and could only move after a hit/click sometimes

WOW \o/ here is my vote, fantastic polished game! props!

fantastic game, well done! great idea, amazing execution, kind of wish there was more variety, but was very impressed by what was there for a jam entry. I'm curious on "how" things got harder because I didn't "feel it", but I died after a long time. can we run out of space? I covered a lot of the available ground. Rotating while awesome with wheel (props), still got hectic when things were challenging. wish one key was always reserved for weapon(say space).
Good going!

This game is awesome. I love game flow, Art is brilliant, theme combine awesome, gameplay addicted. 10 out of 10.

Holy... SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY 6/5 Fucking amazing, would buy this game on Steam right now. So much fun !!

Excellente dynamique de jeu, la difficulté augmente crescendo et je ne m'en suis pas lassé, félicitations !

Fantastic game, everything from the graphics to the sound to the music is top notch. One of the most fun, juicy and satisfying LD games I've played so far. It would be nice to unlock some plants that are on your side as well so plants would start fighting each other :laughing: Anyway I reached level 46.

Fantastic game overall and in every category! I feel like it could've been a bit harder considering the source material is dark souls. (But I find Dark Souls too hard so this was perfect for me hehe) I loved the diversity of the crops and how they sometimes spawned elite units. Completely addictive. Will play more.

This is super polished and really fun! I love how the difficulty scales up naturally the more plants you grow. Atmosphere + graphics + music are obviously amazing.

I would probably have liked the grown/evil plants to keep shooting enemies and bullets even when you aren't close to them - it would have made the difficulty scale faster and made it more intense quicker. But this is pretty personal and I'm sure lots of people prefer it not to be that fast paced.

I'm more of a controller/keyboard guy as well - I would maybe have liked the attack to just go in the same direction you're facing (like the roll), but the mouse aiming is needed for the watering so I guess it would be weird to change this.

Would have worked well for last LD theme as well!

I only got to level 39, but I had a blast! The combat in this game is incredibly satisfying, and there is an impressive variety of enemies and weapons. The pixel art is great, very alive and fun, great colours, with a good separation between gameplay and background elements. The music is also fantastic. If I had to criticise something I guess it would be that the weapons didn't really seem to have any difference between them gameplay wise, and it would be a nice addition to allow some choices there. Other than that I really have nothing negative to say, I loved this game!

Guys, this is by far the best entry I've been able to test.
It's really amazing and I would 10/10 buy it if you could continue working on it so that it reaches Steam.
Sincerely, I've had so much fun and found the concept so cool, I'm impressed.

If you have some time, I'd really like to get some feedback from you on my own entry, since you seem to have a lot of experience.

Once again, great job

My only complaint was it got a bit repetitive after running out of plant types, but honestly that's very minor as everything about this is amazing! The art, audio and gameplay all fit together incredibly well, the level of polish is astounding. Great job all around :grin:

Awesome game, it combines both genres with humor and fantastic graphics/sounds ! It's really fun to play, and the difficulty scale makes it more and more intense !
If anything, I would just point the fact tutorial text and error text are overlapping when playing the first time. Not a big deal, but I'm sure you'd like to know ^^ Also, it's probably only me but it feels like the scroll is going the wrong way (don't know why I expect the cursor to go left when scrolling up, and right when scrolling down). Apart from that, I can't find any flaw, great job !

I was holding high expectations from playing other entries of yours from past editions and they were met for sure! :slight_smile:

The take on the theme was well thought (most of my favourite entries so far include farming, so I'd dare say that farming + anything is a winning combination); music was catchy, gameplay was solid with smooth controls and player progression and the graphics had this blend of retro, creepy and cute style I really liked.

As others have mentioned, eventually it got a bit repetitive, but I think you already have the core ready to quickly improve that part if you keep working on the game after the jam.

A very good entry as usual, congrats! :smile:

"Peaceful life as a gardener" yeah right.

G.O.T.Y !! You really managed to apply this dare's theme geniously!
Both genres merged in a way that not only benefits each other but also auto regulate dificulty based on player's strategy. It all comes together like a high cuisine delicatessen. Is amazing much much you've done in one weekend. Great team you got there!
I suppose you do this for a living. If not, you should.
Hats off! 5/5

This game is amazing, seriously, i could see this as a full release on my steam right now! One minor thing i would've done differently would've been making the seeds unlock over time in a slower pace but else for that it's amazing! got lvl 21 before i killed myself by getting trapped xD

Reached level 46. At the beginning it's looks really easy but to the end it was really hard. I like the tactical concept that you better think twice in which areas you want to plant at first. I will try it again but at this time will plant from the outside to the inside. :D

that was very very fun.
Congrats on the whole team, everything is of high quality and goes well together.

This is a truly excellent game! The controls feel really polished and responsive, which makes the combat very enjoyable. I love how the difficulty increases on your own terms; having the seeds you plant spawn the enemies is an ingenious game mechanic, as it allows the player to increase the difficulty when they feel ready. The art and music were also ace, especially considering the very short time you had to make them :) I think that this has a lot of potential to be expanded into a full game, I'd love to see this with more enemy types, weapons, etc. (I'd definitely buy it!)

An outstanding game ! Excellent work for a game jam : O Your mechanics are really well polish and the feeling is super fun. I love the idea of creating our own pathfinding

Extremely well polished game. Played to level 64. Absolutely love the design and the game feel. I wish there were more sound effects like for picking up seeds and finishing growing plants. Small bug: you can swing during the level up and item pick up effects which uses up your stamina but doesn't actually attack. Also I found those effects to be on screen for too short of a time the first couple times I saw them, so I couldnt read the whole thing. Would also appreciate a pause button.

looks like you just set the bar for any other game wanting to get 5s in just about any category

I'm going to have to say this is probably my favorite game this Ludum Dare. Most of the time I play each game for only a few minutes but I actually put significantly more time playing this one then others. Well done guys! Loved the art.

Wow, just wow.

well done game! had a blast playing it, looked great and the combat was simple and smooth

Really great idea for a game! damn!

Definitely best game here, gameplay is very engaging, it's so polished that you could basically put it out to store as is. Very impressive work.

Hi Dark Soil Team,

This one is great. I really like the animations, art, and music. Props to your team. I really had a lot of fun playing this one. It took me a little bit to get used to the controls, but I really like the idea of having various seeds, switching between planting, watering, and attacking their offspring. Really fun idea here. The powerups help keep things interesting. Again music and sound really help keep the player engaged.

My only comment is that the text goes way too fast. I can’t read read half of it before it goes away. You can lengthen the time by 2x or 3x to help the player.

Great job guys!

Best,

Dave

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/rex-mcfury-public-defender

Wow this is a very beautiful art and a cool idea!

Wow, hiden gem! 5/5

Great game. The genre mash up is perfect, the graphics are charming, the music is pleasant to listen to and the game play is solid. I really hope you expand on this as it has so much potential.

Wow - disappointed I didn't see this sooner. Solid gameplay, great music, beautiful art. Only got to level 45 with 1777 souls farmed, but it was great fun.

Really well done!

I really enjoyed this! I'm glad you mentioned that you made a gardening game as well because it was super fun to play! The game was super polished and juicy, I loved all the the art and the combat felt great as well! For the lighting in the game did you just use sprite masks or did you write a shader for it? Sorry if the question seems dumb I'd just like to know so that I can improve in the future :p. Again super wonderful game! I hope you guys win jam!

/deep bow

Very beautiful and well working. Feels better than some full priced games. Good job. :bow_tone3:

Wow, what a polished and great looking game. Nothing more to say. This is great!

I have nothing but great things to say about this game! Well done!

This was absolutely awesome. Most polished game I've played so far.

(Level 48, 1746 souls)

Wow this was so top-notch. The idea was very cool with multiple design ideas I liked: the create-your-own-problem, an the task-switching between priorities. The art was just fantastic, as was the sound and music. I was really grooving in this one, and falling more into the game without a lot of sense of time passing.

The controls were pretty tight, and I especially liked the choice to have the attack lunge toward enemies and also exhaust a meter, giving me two reasons to be careful about just mega-spamming, but not being too punishing about quick bursts of controlled spam. The walking around was also great. The only aspect of the controls that intruded on my sense of flow state was the juggling between equipment slots. It was probably okay that this felt a little awkward, though, because it created a need to plan a bit and put some tension into the situation.

Only other hiccup was that the sanctuary text went by a little too fast for me to read. (Edit: I also never noticed there was a roll feature)

Really excellent job here, congrats on a strong entry across all the categories.

Wow... I don't know what to say, this is so well polished and incredibly fun! You guys did an amazing job!

Awesome game!
Don't like the DS series but undersanding the humor. Game is very fun itslef with great visuals and sounds. Game mechanic is simple and genious. I love the games where player generate content. The best survivial games in the shops XD

Enjoyed a lot and gave 5/5 in each category! Thanks for good job!

J'ai pas trop compris ce qu'il fallait faire, mais j'ai bien aimé l'environment et les graphismes :-)

Voilà ma prestation de ce jeu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cze6Dpc6JQ

Thanks for you comments everybody !

@JackLeHamster tu n'as pas commencé le jeu à vrai dire ^^, tu dois juste arroser les graines que tu plantes et ça commence parce que ça fait apparaître les monstres :) C'est un mix de jeu de fight et de jardinage et tu as ni vu la fight ni vu le jardinage ahah. Mais merci tout de même pour la vidéo, j'espère que tu trouveras le temps d'y jouer vraiment

Dans l'interface les icônes que tu dois utiliser sont indiqués par une petite flèche pour le tuto au début du jeu, tu plantes une graine dans la terre, l'arrose, elle grandit, et fait apparaitre des monstres qui droppent de nouvelles graines. Si ta molette est trop sensible tu peux toujours utiliser les boutons 1,2,3,4,5 pour sélectionner l'item que tu veux.

I played this game so much since I discovered it on itch.io a few days ago, I truly hope this win the jam. I just beat my own highscore, reached level 104 :)

Wow this combination of the two genres work amazingly well! Not only that, the gameplay is soooo fluid and the art is very well done. The attacks feels like it borrows a lot from Mobs.Inc which also has a very fluid combat system. Thoroughly enjoyed this game!

@KingofWhaWha actually I'm the game designer and programmer of Mobs Inc ahah, thanks !

Wow, I keep being more and more impressed as I see what people mananged to build in a weekend! The gameplay is fun and the art is amazing! I wish I had something more constructive to give as feedback, haha. Great job!

D'accord @Pietro Ferrantelli , je veux bien essayer un coup.

Good job! Cool game!

I loved the mechanics and I believe that with more work in level design this game can be sold, and I would pay to play. Needing help in development just call.

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape

Love the idea and the art! The gameplay wasn't what I expected, (not pattern-based like souls?) but putting this aside, the overall polish, control and balance is remarkable. good work!

Excellent arcade game ! The gaemdesign is very well done, quite addictive, nice job !

The idea is really fun! Nice graphics and animations

Amusing idea for the theme. Cool graphics, good controls, nice music. I was hoping to kindle a second bonfire. Good job.

Amazing work. Great graphics: animations, visual effects, screen effects, everything was visually very very pleasing. You have talented people in the team. One tiny complaint: Font could have been slightly more readable.

Alright, this game is really cool.

Super concept, perfect for the theme, and I had a ton of fun playing it !
Juste : pretty good job, I want more !

Hey there, I gave your game another try. Growing and wacking monsters was fun! Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbsX4yIevU4

Very interesting combination of themes. The graphics, animations and generally the atmosphere of the game are great at pulling you in, and the gameplay is fun. Very polished game, great work!

Fantastic job! One of the best entries I've seen. It's very impressive that you pulled this off in 3 days. I enjoyed the game a lot, my only complaint is it was confusing figuring out all the mechanics right from the start of the game, but that wasn't too bad. And I wish there was an indicator showing how close you are to levelling up. Those are very minor things though, great job overall!

Your game will definitely be in the top 10. This is a great game and was a lot of fun to try. (lv39) The only thing I didn't like was the selection of the action with the mouse wheel. Either it has changed too quickly or it would need feedback. Just perfect, best ld41 game so far.

Would be great if you could try our game too. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/astropover

There's been a lot of farming/rpg where you plant your monsters during this ludum dare, but this one is by far the best.

Well this is just about the best game I've played this event. The graphics look great, the audio is sounds amazing, and the gameplay works very well! There's only a few bugs/issues that may have already been pointed out:

1. The level display only displays the first two digits of your level, meaning if the player reaches level 100, the game shows that they're at level 10.
2. There's a plot of soil on the west side of the farm that doesn't act as actual soil; the player can't place seeds on it.
3. There's a hard cap to the number of each plant the player can place; once you plant a certain number of seeds of a certain type, trying to plant any more of that type will consume the seed, but not plant it in the soil. This may be intentional, but I feel like the player should be able to fill up every plot of dirt, and not run into a plant cap.

Aside from those bugs, this game is absolutely phenomenal! I also really think that this game would benefit from some sort of achievement system, so the player has more goals than simply to reach the highest level they can.

I really love this game. The combination of farm and fight, is really very interesting. the music is great and the graphics are excellent.

Junste a little thing, the effects of lights remain for me the only little point that I like least. There is no doubt that the game is really good and very well done. Super nice job.

Hung together nicely! Particularly impressed with the simple but juicy combat feel. I wish the lighting was a little less stark, I'd actually have preferred no lighting at all.

The sprites and the animation are adoraballs. I love the mechanic of planting your own enemy spawners and "farming" them. +1 for the smart pun in the title.

really enjoyed this game. graphic and music are awesome and :thumbsup: for the combination genres. love your work!

Wow, really cool, the graphics are very well done and consistent. I loved the gameplay, could fit on the last LD. The music and sounds fit perfectly with the game.

Well done!

Really polished game! Played for a bit.. think I got to around level 40 or so, is there an end?
Besides that, awesome entry. :)

Wow!Amazing work!Oustanding!No words haha!The art is very good and the mechanics too!The game feel really polished!Amazing team!Would like to see more!!Good job for 72h! :)

Here is our game if you want to try it!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/me-da-miedito-la-oscuridad-i-get-goosebumps-in-the-dark

Awesome! Such a great game for so little time! Animations are cool!

It was so funny and the game feel was so good if not perfect. I liked the graphics and the music. The concept was cool but after some time it became a little bit repetitive. Maybe you should decrease the time between each spawn so I kill more souls XD. Good game!


This is a thing of beauty! Really cute and yet disturbing D: Great music great visuals great smooth fluid juicy gameplay - The concept is hilarious as well - love the bit of exposition at the beginning.

This is a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally good game I really enjoyed it! It's really well-polished the animation is really cute, the mechanics work really well, the game is not bugged, the soundtrack is neat AF... I'd argue that mechanically with the storyline it doesn't make THAT much sense to plant plants that are gonna try to kill you but I mean... I don't have that much of a problem doing that so I get to fight said monsters ^^# - very good game, really impressive in 72h, good job :-O

5 stars! When I watered a plant and it grew and then spawned minions I felt engaged. If you continue to develop this, when the minions attacked, and I was trying to plant and water by switching inventory items with the number keys on the keyboard, and then switch the clicking on the trackpad to swing a sword and missed several times, I felt clumsy.

Growing your own enemies is such a neat idea. The art and sound are wonderful as well. Great work on this game!

Well done )

I think I won xD


All possible seeds planted and grown, 99 every seed collected and I was able to play safe and keep kinght alive, I think, forever.

It is an awesome entry.

**Deserved rates, guys! Congratulations! :3**

Being able to do something with the plants after they've been planted would have been nice also you'll eventually run out of planting spots so maybe something like being able to combine plants to make them take less space but be stronger could be good.

That was a truly great game :) ! Super pixel art, very smooth controls ! And I loved the Dark Souls vibe !

the LD site showed me this as a new game instead of one from an older jam, whoops.

lol this posted twice for some reason