Living Forrest by Majadroid
In my game "Living Forrest" for Ludum Dare 45 you take control over a forrest. But you have to start with nothing. There is not a single tree.
You have to manage your forrest to protect it from the human lumberjacks. Choose the right trees to plant. You will have to expand to survive. Make sure, that you have always enough water. Plant strong trees to hold back the heavy machines that come the human cities.
How to play: - You can only plant trees on the grass. - To expand the grass area, you have to plant the "Tree Of Life". It will spread out the grass. - To plant trees, you need water. The "Deep Root Trees" will extract water from the ground. - To attack the lumberjack machines, you can use the "Spike Tree". But they cost you one water per month each. - Spike trees have not so much health. You can protect them with "Hard Wood Trees". The spikes can still attack, if there are other trees in front of them. - If you don't have water, your Spike Trees won't attack. - When your trees are not attacked by lumberjacks, they will heal - or even grow, if they are healthy. - Try to survive as long as possible. - To win the game, you have to destroy the cities to the left and right with your spike trees. - If there is no tree and no grass left, you have lost.
For the source file use ZIP the password "LD45".
I released version 1.2 as Post-LD-Version, where I decreased the difficulty a little bit and added some tiny new features. Both versions are available on itch.io.
| Youtube | https://majadroid.itch.io/living-forrest |
| Youtube | https://majadroid.itch.io/living-forrest |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/living-forrest |
Ratings
| Overall | 100th | 3.761⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 128th | 3.565⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 89th | 3.772⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 133th | 3.728⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 208th | 3.435⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 152th | 3.38⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 147th | 3.467⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 48🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
(very difficult though, could maybe be a bit more balanced and with a better feedback at how attacking trees are dealing damage but still very nicely done for that little amount of time !)
Liked the music and the sound effects, especially the chomp :laughing:
One minor thing I'd have liked to see is having the various types of tree you can or can't currently plant be highlighted.
Unfortunately is the topic such an important one....
It's a nice touch to see the trees slowly growing over time, especially when you manage to survive for more than a couple of years - good job with the graphics too, everything is really nice to look at!
There are a few things I would adjust:
1. When you try to change the tree type while you are in a position where you can plant, you will plant the currently selected tree before switching over. I would suggest you check if one of the tree buttons is pressed and if so don't plant the tree. Alternatively only plant trees when the mouse is above the groundplane.
2. New patches of grass grow too slow. Even with multiple trees of live you can not replant fast enough against the bulldozers. I was accumalating a lot of water but had no way of spending it fast enough against the bulldozers
Overall a very good entry, well done
But I like it, great and funny idea.
+ for music and sounds
Simple vector graphics fits in to the mood of music.
Fun, but hard, but I uderstand that there is no time for play testing and balancing :)
For me, it actually is balanced. It is intended to be hard, but it is possible to survive and even to destroy the cities. Try expanding with trees of life and immidatedly protecting them with up to three spike trees and one hard wood tree, as grass spreads out. With this in mind, it is possible to wind the game.
It seems you found a good strategy to survive. Maybe you are in the mood to try out the post-LD-version. There has not much changed, but now there is a heavier enemy later in the game and more important: It is now possible to destroy the enemy cities and win the game.