Gorgeous game, the graphics are really good, really fun!

Love the style of it. The animation is smooth, and it feels so good to watch this little fellow grow. Very relaxing indeed. I picture it as a cool and calming mobile game. Nicely done!

Very pretty and stylish.
The "game" element is a bit weak, though. There's not much choice and the results depend more on chance than skill. Still very enjoyable.

@bereg Thanks, I had a lot of fun with the design! It is up on itch.io already, and the HTML5 is not working on a mobile browser properly, but we will fix that after the jam deadline :)

Thank you @flaquero, I was trying to keep a consistent color and style, and @kazrath was animating thar root soo nicely :)

Thanks for the feedback @slowfrog-again, we need to playtest it more to make it challenging. But it is at least working now and as you said a fun little game. I like to watch the root growing, very relaxing. :)

really nice graphics. they were colorful and moody and pretty to look at. the gameplay was pretty good, but a problem i found was that there were sometimes not enough blue blobs and i died early. however, it was still very clever and i had a lot of fun with it :)

The vibes here are immaculate - excellent job! Cohesive art style, the colors were wonderful. Overall a very nice, beautifully chill game.

Really cool how the root grows and adapts to its environment! I enjoyed it :thumbsup:

Really nice! The art style is simple and wonderful. I loved how roots avoid stones, the beauty in little details.

@apaphy thank you! I know, we would need some more time to playtest the map more, I think. Luckily it is not a long game, so one can restart easily :)

@ekoxe and @chrisco thanks guys! Finetuning the pathfinding algorithm is the work of my teammate @kazmath ! He was putting a lot of effort into it!

Thank you @onlyallygrace! I wanted to keep a contrast in the design: a very vibrant living organism against a pale dead world. If you reach the goal of he game, you actually can see a different main screen telling a new colorful story :)

Nice game, I like watching when this roots grow :) but there is one minus gameplay is based on luck than player skill.

Nice graphics & tech, but could use some balancing of potential nodes generation. It seems that you almost never have any real choice on where to go next - you just select the node farthest from you and hope that some energy comes your way.

Awesome game! I love the graphics and the idea behind the game! I believe, with some sound and a few modifications regarding the actual gameplay (balancing, undo, etc.), this game has the potential to be an absolute banger! Well done!!!

@jonas-michael Thanks for playing and for the live feedback you gave on Twitch!

really neat idea. my main critique is just that it seems really rng-heavy, which detracts from player agency. eg: its not particularly uncommon to just have a section that's un-passable due to lack of water or obstacles that entirely block the path. and then for areas where the player can progress, there's not really much meaningful decision-making and/or skill involved. that said, really nice implementation, and i could definitely see this concept getting expanded and refined!

@miej thank you! We got a lot of constructive feedback from everyone along the same lines!

After loosing too many spores

Pros:

- Root-idea is very well executed
- Love the simple graphics
- Integrated tutorial
- Easy and understandable mechanics
- Quite good pathfinding
- No more Cola caps

Cons:

- Too much RNG, especially with levels generation. I tried over 15 times and max I got was 11/20 spores. Sometimes you just don't get enough water, no matter how good your path prediction is.
- Pathfinding sometimes went around obstacles, that were easily passable by root
- Wish there was more variety in
- Wish there was any audio :(

Actually, No More Cola Caps would make perfect in-game currency!

I see that game was scoped towards mobile, which I think is the best place to land. I would play it myself during toilet brakes (it's not an insult!!!!)

Good job!

Thanks for the detailed review @mikoziq!And thanks for playing so many times! Using random generated content is always double sided: it can make your game interesting and give more replay value, but it is hard to balance.

You are correct, we kinda aimed for a mobile version with the portrait screen orientation. And no, I would never take it as an insult when someone sais we made a game that is a good timewaster :)

The game is great! I cant believe it was made by two people for 72 hours

Thanks @lichead-studio - will go check out your game now! :)

What a beautiful game, I love the art so much and the animations are so well made. Great game guys, its fun, but a bit hard due to RNG.

Very well-made game, good job.

Very nice game! Feels super polished. A bit to hard for me, couldn't win.. :cry:

Very cool concept. Trying to grow your root as much as possible was quite fun. I also really liked the art style in general. Only the gameplay could probably use some more (plant-based? ;)) meat, as you're mostly hoping for lucky sequences with not a lot of decisions. Still, a very cool idea and a lot of potential for future updates.

Cool game. The art and "mood" are great (obviously music would only add to that)! Was a little surprised at losing when reaching the "end" of the level w/o enough spores - it kinda presented like it would just keep going until you ran out of energy or got to the spore count (to go to a new level maybe?).

@maaxoom
thank you, yes, it is too hard in this form. I sadly did not hear back from anyone who could finish it.

@mololo, @fargred and @saintchristopher777 thank you both for the review. I agree, it needs more balancing, the level is a bit too random now. We will playtest it more later and balance it out.

Excellent game! I really loved the mood and art direction on this!

As mentioned in some of the comments above I agree that you are a bit at the mercy of the random number gods. It might make sense to weight the numbers based on requirements (if energy is low boost the odds of getting energy). As you can't see that far ahead you can change elements and the player won't know.

I don't think it is necessary for players to click on the root node every time they want to make the next decision, simply clicking on the next target should grow the roots there.

Pathfinding occasionally took some strange paths, but overall worked very well and most importantly looked natural.

On my final run I ran into a unpassable bit where there were obstacles across the width of the screen.

@nsadie Thank you for all the feedback! Yes, we need to balance those random elements. We are working with patterns and try to build it in a playable way, but energy is too scarce as it seems.

About the node selection: we were thinking about that, but you actually can pan the screen up and down and select previous nodes too. And more importantly you can split a note! And to do that we always have to define the start and the end points. Does it makes sense like this to you?

You can split nodes?! I completely missed that. Went back to try it again and it makes a big difference strategically!

Maybe just increase the energy gain slightly?

@nsadie yes, maybe! We jsut need to find some time together with the developer for that :)

It's a great looking game, and a great feeling game, but my main complaint is that it's a mite... impossible.

@wizard-sino I agree at the moment. We will try to make some updates :)

I really liked this game, the idea is great and the art feels awesome (sadly there's no music).

I also think you did a nice job with the "tutorial", the only thing that I didn't get was the ability to select any previous node again to create a new path (I had to read the instructions because it was weird to me that never kept the last one selected haha).

Even though I never was near to win it, I think you have a solid base for a game, just need some balancing (something I learnt from previous jams is that it's better to have an easy game that a real hard one, so if you're running out of time or don't have anyone to do play testing, just make it easier).

Once again, great game. Congrats for your submission!

This is a beautiful game! As noted before it could use some balancing though, too often I ran out of energy without ever having a chance to refill. I went from a full bar of energy to empty because the pathfinding tried to find a path around rocks that extended past the edge of the screen, and it was going for a path outside the screen instead of taking the one that made the most sense (and was a lot shorter). Very cool entry though, this is one of the highest scores I've given so far!

@sigill thanks! I just realized the other day, that as the designer, I have a hand in the pathfinding too. I have to draw the stones closer to each other so they don't show fake paths to the player.

@kotzi Thank you! Our goal for the next jam is to make a game that people can actually win!

And I should have write at the start of the game that you can scroll back and split the nodes. A lot of people missed that info :/

Fantastic! The game is absolutely gorgeous; I can't believe how good the fungus looks! Mechanics are simple yet engaging and you have to pay attention. I would suggest auto-selecting the node when you arrive at a new place, because that's where you want to start from 90% of the time, but at the same time, not auto-selecting it implies that you can start from farther back, which some players might miss. Great entry, congrats!

Thank you @madbarron! Yes, you can also split the nodes and that makes it a bit more strategic :)

I like the motto of the game!:) Very nice idea, simple. The game is very easy to understand. You need to plan the route carefully to be able to finish the game. I would maybe make it more difficult by making a little time limit for each move:) That would be crazy intense! :) It would be nice to hear some sounds or music too. Anyway, I had a lot of fun! Great work!

@filgru thanks! Before the bugfix it was far too heavy to finish :D You ar one of the players who actually saw the motto and the end scene :) Thanks for playing!


What a great entry! The aesthetics are lovely (that branching! The art!), the navigation around obstacles is flawless, and the mechanics are simple to learn but difficult to master. I do believe the game can generate many unwinnable layouts, but conquering one that is winnable is a real joy. Thank you for the experience, and good job!

@eden-shazar Thank you! :) I am glad you like the art, and @kazrath is very happy when people comment his root growing animations!

Great entry! From the root growing games I played, this is the one I liked the most. The graphics and mechanics are so nice and easy to understand... Very good job to the team.

Great game! Love the graphics :smile: I played some times and almost all of them I couldn't move deeper because there were no elements in the range, and I had to refresh the page because I did not find a way to restart from the game. Maybe you could detect this and show it as "game over" and back to the beginning. However, nice job!!! :trophy:

@villanelle thank you! I think there were a lot of great root games in this jam, and they all use different methods. We wanted to be a bit more strategic, more like a puzzle game.

@laurari thank you for playing! We did not have that before the bugfix update, at least not that mich! I think this is the classic case of "clearing out a bug is creating 3 new ones" :D