Arboressence by Aspect Studio
ARBORESSENCE
Humanity has gone too far this time, and nature is not gonna let us get away with it. Whatever we try, we will run out of fuel before they run out of wood. But if these stupid trees think they can catch us that easily, they are in for a big surprise. Our city is fast, our weapons are loaded, and we are ready to sacrifice everything we have left if it means burning a few thousands more of them before they reach us.
With me, comrades! Redirect all energy to the plasmaser! Aim the cryo-glue launcher at our back! Hell, catapult your house on their head if it can slow them just a little more!
There may be no human left on earth to remember this night, but we'll make sure THEY remember us.
HOW TO PLAY
Angry living trees are coming at you! If they reach you, they will attack your castle and its integrity will decrease. To stop them, you have to use some powerful makeshift weapons we just ... designed. There is ... just one tiny problem. We have neither the energy supply nor the ammunitions to reload them. We will have to use what we find in the castle, so ... using them will also decrease the castle integrity. You will have to be careful to not use these weapons too much, else you will just accelerate our end.
Makeshift Flamethrower (Shortcut R)
An improvised giant flamethrower! It will kill all the trees in a line, but it drains a lot of energy
Makeshift Cryo-Glue launcher (Shortcut T)
A cryo-glue launcher that will leave a freezing puddle where it shoots. It can slow them for a while and is relatively cheap to use.
Makeshift Trebuchet (Shortcut Y)
We have no projectiles to throw at them, but we can still drop some parts of the castle itself! It will not kill them and it will require a litlle bit of anticipation, but they will have to get rid of the debris before they can progress further. Very low integrity cost
Most of the dev team is French so we choose a French name for the game as well as french ingame quote. All in-game dialogues are just for context though, you won't miss anything gameplaywise if you don't understand French (mostly taunts, puns and humans panicking)
In French, "arborescence" is a hierarchical treelike structure with multiple branches spreading more and more. But "Arbre" means "tree", and "essence" can mean "essence" but also "gasoline". The name "arbor-essence" is then a mix of "tree" and "gasoline".
| Link | https://aspect-studio.itch.io/arboressence |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/inevitarbre |
Ratings
| Overall | 715th | 3.516⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 783th | 3.293⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 795th | 3.2⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 463th | 3.85⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 22th | 4.667⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 530th | 3.431⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 656th | 2.982⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 492th | 3.672⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
Loved the art in your game and the icons. Beautiful work! The concept was cool and I like the different mechanics implemented. I feel like there could have been more involved in the game, just felt a little stale after a while. Like maybe more rewards for the player as well. You keep the enemies off of the house, however I don't feel a sense of accomplishment or reward which makes it hard to want to keep playing.
Overall mood and aesthetic was super nice though 10/10 great work.
The gameplay was nice and simple. I was only able to last a little over a minute though, but perhaps I'm just bad. Nice work!
We had some better SFX in store but didn't had the time to add it to the final build sadly
That's right, we could definitely use more actions/mechanics for the player, or some minor objectives like a reward for killing a lot of enemies in a single shot.
Lack of time as always ^^
Thank you very much @kizu!
And thank you @100th_Coin!
Don't worry that's normal, you can't escape the trees eternally anyway :)
Games like Plants vs Zombies was one of our first inspirations so no wonder why it feels similar to a tower defense ^^
Bon jeu, quand même! J'ai créé un jeu à propos d'un arbre aussi ;)
All in-game dialogue are just for context, so you didn't miss any important information, just some puns and a few taunts ^^
Definitely gonna check your own game, just hope your tree is nicer than ours :D
Glad you liked it :D
The castle reminded me of Howl's moving castle and the "enemies" were weird in just the way I like it.
Great job on this!
Art is amazing, the disign of crawling trees reminds me of protoss reavers from StarCraft :sunglasses: So cool!
Fire go brrr
Really nice art it was so cool to look at all the nice 2d animations and the castle was designed in a pretty creative way. At first I was confused about what the non-fire abilities did but once I understood, I was at least able to make it a bit longer. My high score was 102 seconds ^^
Feu va brrr
Vraiment nice art c'était super cool de voir toutes les animations 2d et le château était conceptualisé de façon pas mal créative. Au début j'étais confus de ce que les abilités non-feu faisaient mais dès que j'ai compris, J'étais au moins capable de me rendre un peu plus loin. Mon highscore était 102 secondes ^^
This said, the graphics are GORGEOUS. I just wish the gameplay didn't feel so clumsy - it feels less like I'm being asked to "delay the inevitable" and more like I'm stuck flailing against an overwhelming enemy with an arsenal that fires too slowly to be really effective. The flamethrower is SATISFYING, though, even if it's tricky to get it to actually hit what you want. INCINERATION TIME!
The language thing was a team decision
Front page etc are in plain English, and as stated in the description, ingame dialogs are just context (mostly puns and taunts). Therefor, you will not miss any important information if you can't read them. But yeah, we totally understand that it can be disturbing since playing games that are not in our mother language is pretty much our daily experience of video games.
So that's why we choose to let the ingame dialog in french, for the few fellow french devs that will play it
Sure, French vocals with English subs would have been a good solution to that, but out of scope for our 2 days Jam
We hope you could enjoy Arboressence anyway, and thx again for the feedback :D
Pour moi les visuels sont clairement le point fort, mais tous les éléments contribuent dans l'ensemble. Les dessins sont très cools et chargés de détails, ce qui est très bon dans un jeu où l'oeil a le temps de s'attarder sur les sprites. J'adore cet arbre-monstre qui ressemble un peu beaucoup aux ômus dans Nausicaa :) la forteresse volante est trop cool bien sûr. Le gameplay est immédiatement compréhensible. J'ai juste lu la description du contexte mais je n'ai pas lu les instructions sur les commandes ou les effets des attaques, tout ça se comprend très facilement en jouant au jeu lui-même, donc bravo pour ça :slight_smile:
Le résultat est plaisant à jouer même si je ne suis pas un grand fan de tower defense (mais j'avoue que j'aime beaucoup les jeux d'arcade). Les SFX des attaques sont très fun, j'ai adoré ça aussi, ça donne de l'impact. Et merci pour les visuels des zones d'effet qui se rajoute aux dessins des attaques, sans eux je pense que ça aurait été plus dur de comprendre où on frappe exactement, donc bien joué.
J'ai envie de mentionner ça, l'histoire est quand même très bien trouvée pour le concept :laughing: on la vit un peu dans le gameplay et c'est cool. Donc un scénario catastrophe où le seul moyen pour lutter contre la crise c'est de lâcher du lest, et revenir aux bases ? Mais le pire c'est qu'on peut seulement retarder l'inévitable :sob: ? Heureusement que je suis un véritable expert pour apprécier les oeuvres de satire :smirk: ! Enfin je.. crois.. que c'est une satire.
très cool :)