[Don't] Prune the Money Tree by Orionhart
"I'm afraid to Prune my Money Tree." - Brian David Gilbert
It's a terrifying prospect. It's the only plant that you've ever grown well... but in this case, it's a real money tree; and it's your own source of income!
Your goal is to keep the tree alive as long as possible. As the tree grows, upkeep costs will become more and more steep, since the tree requires more and more water, food and light to survive. Upgrade the pot to let the tree grow larger, but be wary: More limbs means more to feed!
Consider this a simulator of sorts. The sort of simulator where you are terrible at your job and the tree will die. That sort.
Features complete saveable options, high scores, and more. Compete against yourself or other jammers to get the longest uptime on your money tree before you inevitably go bankrupt.
Music done by the illustrious Aidan Jones. Art by Photosynthesaurus, JW, and TaffyCat. Coding by Orionhart.
Pay close attention to your Tree Monitor. You can see the decay stat, which is how much health is drained per second, and the heal rate-- shown as a composite number-- which shows how much you're healing plus decaying. If you can get this number into the positive, you should be able to survive a while.
Cutting too much from one base branch will yield that branch unusable forever!
Everything you do might push you closer to destruction.
Either way... you have to prune the money tree.
ATTENTION:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50577473/unity-game-compiled-in-windows-doesn-t-open-in-mac
For Mac OS builds, users who haven't run unauthorized software before have to follow the instructions under the header "If you want to open an app that hasn’t been notarized or is from an unidentified developer" on this page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491
CHANGELOG As Per the Ludum Dare Rules: I have a) uploaded a change to allow Mac builds to work (it needed to be zipped in a .app folder), and b) in addition fixed two bugs which impacted the ability to play the game. This is all. If there are any issues regarding this, please let me know. I made sure to read the rules thoroughly. There will be no further updates.
Unfortunately, even after two days of light testing, WebGL exports uploaded to itch feature extreme screen-tearing and issues with rendering the camera. Download will be the only way to access the game until further notice (read: jam period over).
Screenshots below:
Ratings
| Overall | 475th | 3.684⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 896th | 3.192⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 273th | 3.724⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 524th | 3.803⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 397th | 4⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 324th | 3.714⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 451th | 3.365⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 676th | 3.486⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 41🗳️ | 56🗨️ |
The upgrades were a nice touch but I couldn't really see any appreciable affect they had outside of the light bulb which I'm not sure I actually needed in the first place. I also never actually ran into a situation where a branch would stop growing from clipping it too much although maybe I just never clicked it soon enough since there wasn't any incentive to clip them when they were small.
Anyway, I got a few upgrades, seems like staying not upgraded as long as possible was actually the way to go for me.
I felt so powerless to save my tree.... Overall very creative, though as a game, I feel almost depressed after being such a mean, cold-hearted, ineffective caretaker :house_with_garden:
Thank you so much for your ratings and comments so far! All criticism is valid. This game is its own kind of weird.
I kept playing for a while and wasted all my money on upgrades inadvertedly hehehe
Great execution overall!
I have one big issue with the UI though :s. The font at the start wasn't easily readable (maybe that's just me) and on the windows build, the buttons for the shop and option menu were really small, I noticed them after 2-3 min of playtime.
There are some tension whenever you have to cut a branch, I really like that.
Also, about your problem with screen-tearing when building WebGl version, we ran into a similar problem and solved it by downloading an alternative builder here -> https://seansleblanc.itch.io/better-minimal-webgl-template
I hope it can help you too!
In terms of the gameplay I was very relaxed and managed to keep the plant going for nearly ten minutes. I don't know if there's a cap but based on the theme, I didn't think so. It was a really enjoyable play, but I do have a couple of suggestions for future revisions. The shop menu was pretty much out of sight out of mind. By the time I remembered it existed, I didn't have the ability left to use it. Maybe have their be an alert if the player hasn't used it yet after a minute or two? Just to remind them it's there. A similar thing goes for the monitor. It seemed like it would be useful to check, but off to the side that way, I didn't want to leave the tree.
Lastly I think the pruning indicators might catch some people as misleading. I know that it just means they're mature but it gives the player the impression that it's "okay to cut" and it seemed like I was harming the plant when I was cutting "good" branches. I'm sure that's unintentional, but I think that can be fixed.
In terms of a jam game this is super polished and well put together. I hope you all keep working on it and thank you again for playing and rating The Apocawiz! :)
Here is my playtest with some mumbling:
https://youtu.be/6szNWIl0RSQ
@fizzbark pruning a massive branch allows you to sell all the branches at the same trade rate (outlined in the top right corner) versus pruning in multiple batches which affects the trade rate multiple times.
@adam-probert thanks for that! my artists worked hard and I tried to implement their stuff as best I could!
@real-flamingicecubegames I'm having trouble beating 10 minutes as well! my buddy got 20 but I have no idea how o-o
@nardandas we took "Delay The Inevitable" in a cynical way, so that's totally a valid conclusion for you to come to x)
@icxon thanks for the playtest! we considered having green leaves in the form of dollar bills, but the tree generation proved more than enough for me to tackle as a solo coder, so I opted to just have the branches be worth cash. it also let us focus on the core mechanic more, though I agree with you (a money tree with actual money sounds amazing!)
I also think it would be nice if there was a way to see some more information on the main screen without having to switch screens, but that could also be an intentional choice in terms of management so I could see it going either way.
I do wish there was a bit more variety to the nature of different upgrades, but considering the timeframe of the jam, what's there is great. I played a few runs but wasn't able to get TOO far, so I might also be missing any of the later upgrades. It's an interesting sort of 'simulation' type of game
glad you enjoyed it. I did end up having to come up with what the upgrades did pretty late on in development so they are relatively similar, but they're different enough (and we did some math) that deciding what to use is usually a "value over time" versus "smaller value up front" dilemma in a lot of cases. Like, the lvl 1 watering can is technically a heal of 25 HP over time, but the fertilizer is 20 hp up front for the same price. most of the upgrades are balanced with this sort of thing in mind. you end up having to choose based on how dire the situation is.
this is all to say that your criticism, as similar criticisms have been, is completely valid! thank you for the feedback.
The artstyle and audio is good, albeit the tree itself being a bit creepy - I guess that's fine given that it grows us money ;).
Congrats on a cool game!
Great music and graphics too
cool game :)