Kevin the Can by BoltKey

[raw]
made by BoltKey for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

A game of skill and speed about keeping plants alive.

Play now in your browser! https://boltkey.cz/kevinthecan/

Move with arrow keys or wasd, shoot water with space, save flowers.

R to restart level, N for next level.

menubackground.png

Kevin is a humble watering can living a calm life in a country side cottage.

One day, a near disaster happened! The flowers around the cottage are in danger of drying up!

Fortunately, there is water leaking from the eaves! Collect that water and deliver it to the flowers before it's too late!

Explore 3 different environments, save all the flowers as fast as you can and fight for the leaderboards!

can.png

In each level, there is some leaking water. You have to deliver enough water to flowers scattered around to save them. If a flower dies, you lose. You win once all the flowers are saved.

Each flower has different water requirements. Some start almost dead, some start healthy but lose health faster. You will have to think quick to save them all!

The team

We are a brother and sister.

@BoltKey, a Ludum Dare veteran with 12 completed Ludum Dare compos under his belt. Programming, level design, sound design, game design.

@klara-spanelova, a digital artist and graphic designer always looking for new challenges. Decided to team up and bring her cute style to the table. It was her first Ludum Dare, and first game she worked on ever! Illustrations, graphic design.

Levels

The game features 15 levels with scaling difficulty in 3 different environments, with the last level being considerably harder than your average platformer final level.

Audio

We have created all the sound effects ourselves. We have recorded an actual watering can to create the walking and jumping sounds, and the speech is a result of @BoltKey's brilliant voice acting.

We have used music that we have not created though, so we had to opt-out of the audio rating category.

Scoring system

The game features online high-score system, where the best 10 times are displayed, for each level individually. Also, there is an offline medal system, where the best medal is @BoltKeys best time at the time of release, and other medal times are calculated off of that. So if you want to take on the challenge and truly complete the game, try and obtain all 60 medals.

Ratings

Overall 349th 3.894⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Fun 295th 3.833⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 364th 3.758⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Theme 201th 4.182⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1380th 3.515⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Humor 611th 3.394⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Mood 626th 3.712⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 35🗨️

Feedback

Furfel
20. Apr 2020 · 19:45 UTC
Pretty graphics, good audio, challenging gameplay and levels, instructions. What I would change are the sizes of the objects visible, it would be cool to have it zoomed in and just pointers to the flowers needing attention on the screen, so partially blindly exploring the world.
HEXIEZ123
21. Apr 2020 · 00:50 UTC
Great music and sound effects. I wish there was a way to maximize the browser window though.
maxim218
21. Apr 2020 · 00:52 UTC
Cool music. Good mechanics taking water and bringing it to flower. Many levels created. Good game.
hiisileiri
21. Apr 2020 · 00:54 UTC
Very good concept! Also liking the fun sounds. However, i'm not liking the background music, because it does not fit well in the game. The layout scale is also too large, rather could be the game would be more closer to the character. Plants should give more feedback when 'ready' (f.e grow it's flowers)
🎤 BoltKey
21. Apr 2020 · 01:21 UTC
Thanks for feedback everyone!

@furfel While I understand your opinion, I was aiming more at the puzzle platformer where you see the whole level and need to figure out solution, rather than "explore" platformer genre. Also, that would require more detailed sprites, and we may have not had enough time to make that look good.

@hexiez123 Agreed, but with time restrictions, I decided to go with fixed resolution as I didn't want to deal with reponsivity.

@hiisileiri I don't think I understand your remark about flower feedback. When you save a flower, there is a sound effect and the plant grows yellow flowers.
Gray Fustos
21. Apr 2020 · 01:50 UTC
Graphics were good. Also TBH most background tracks I've listened to so far for these games are discordant nonsense, I thought y'alls was fine.
Kyle Bowman
21. Apr 2020 · 02:53 UTC
Haha wow absolutely loved this. Your game seemed very well done, I didn't notice anything that stuck out as incomplete. A+ voice acting lol. I found level 15 to be too difficult, but i'm sure it could be done. Loved how I could actually like throw the water around the place when i'm jumping and it would still water plants. Great job!
Bobothegreat
21. Apr 2020 · 02:55 UTC
It was a cute little game! Controls were a little floaty, but it still was a good platformer
BootyGangDisciple
21. Apr 2020 · 02:56 UTC
This was definitely a fun, cute little game. I liked the concept, as it was very unique.
cannedveg
21. Apr 2020 · 04:24 UTC
Very cute! Everything felt very intuitive and the addition of personal bests was very impressive!
FizzyApple12
21. Apr 2020 · 04:28 UTC
I loved it. It was so much fun to play as a watering can watering plants. Plus, the graphics were cute and there were so many levels to play through.
goblinkingmatt
21. Apr 2020 · 04:54 UTC
Fun game, great job with the theme, and I love the voice lines. Everything about this game screams charm.
erebus
21. Apr 2020 · 09:57 UTC
Really interesting concept! As always, thanks for bringing the game by the stream!
GrizzliusMaximus
21. Apr 2020 · 14:43 UTC
Lots of good mechanics in this game. I always love a good challenging platform. Good job!
radow
21. Apr 2020 · 14:45 UTC
That's one game I definitely haven't played before! I liked the detail that the ability to jump grew weaker the fuller the can got and the can was just generally cute =)
NightVision65
21. Apr 2020 · 17:52 UTC
Beat the final level. The mechanics are really interesting and amazing. The level design is also nicely done. Also I like the voice of flowers, they just suit perfectly.
Trexxak
23. Apr 2020 · 04:07 UTC
I really didn't think I'd like this game so much!

In terms of mechanics there's just so much more than what meets the eye with this game, there's real depth to it, which is remarkable for the short timespan.

It's also great you have the medal and highscore system in place - really adds to the replayability a lot. I for one couldn't pass the first level until I got the best medal (other levels aren't as important, but the first one always has to be S-Rankable :D )

I would say that it feels a bit frustrating to need to be so precise with Kevin, but the aforementioned Scoreboard really doesn't agree with me - there are people who enjoy to overcome this challenge and this game seems to already have found it's audience.

Great work! Will surely come back to play again some time :D
Shunaky
23. Apr 2020 · 19:30 UTC
This game looks that is gonna get boring very soon, BUT IT DIDN'T

Pretty simple mechanics but everything works really well
Congrats ^^
Gamer Fates
25. Apr 2020 · 15:42 UTC
OMG this was fun! Haha. I also lobe the Metal sounds!!! LOL!
Robber
03. May 2020 · 11:35 UTC
very cute game!
elysiagriffin
09. May 2020 · 18:58 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615928274?t=3h29m32s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin