Pseudo-Harvest by JfeeefL
Game Play
Pseudo-Harvest is a simple puzzle game.
You need to drag some stuff into the granary, and cover its surface with grain.
Make sure the lowest level of grain surface above the Harvest Line
Background
Background and idea derived from actual historial period The Great Leaps Forward.
When governors put their will above science and nature, bureaucracy breeds deception
When BUMPER HARVEST is a compulsory mission
What do you do if you just cannot meet the strict produce quotas?
And now, the officers are coming to inspect the granary.
How to finish the impossible mission -- reach the Harvest Line?
Game concept bases on a bureaucratic society based on a planned economy
You, as a farmer in Harvest Village, farming on a barren land, can only produce limited grain.
However, officials do not expect this ordinary result. They need some honorable achievements, at any cost.
They want to see a bumper HARVEST.
To survive in this extreme society, you have to cheat.
DECEIVE
Hide sundries beneath grain, to make it look like a full granary.
Be careful, do not be caught FAKING
If you want to see full walkthrough (but including spoiler), check the video below:
https://youtu.be/QPnadMPt1II
You can access my itch website and download the game at:
https://jfeeefl.itch.io/pseudo-harvest
2023/1/10 23:00 UTC+8 Updated v1.2, fixed bugs that can not perform interactions when switch scenes and menu.
2023/1/12 00:41 UTC+8 Updated v1.3, fixed bugs with audio playing and scene switching.
2023/1/12 23:03 UTC+8 Updated v1.4, fixed bugs with invalid drag and scene switching.
2023/1/17 01:09 UTC+8 Updated: Submitted Linux x86 build.
| x86-64 | https://jfeeefl.itch.io/pseudo-harvest |
| Link | https://jfeeefl.itch.io/pseudo-harvest |
| x86 | https://jfeeefl.itch.io/pseudo-harvest |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/pseudo-harvest |
Ratings
| Overall | 26th | 4.243⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 58th | 4.037⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 38th | 4.112⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 53th | 4.324⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 196th | 4.066⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 41th | 4.076⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 54th | 4.162⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 56🗳️ | 94🗨️ |
However (this is probably me being bad at puzzle games) I couldn't find a way to get past the 3rd level, the quilt just proved to be too finnicky and the time limit too restrictive to really allow me to figure out what to do before it ran out.
If the timer was lengthened or removed it'd make for a more casual and enjoyable experience, and being able to skip the dialogue on restart would make things a bit less frustrating.
I also ran into a bug after restarting a level where the camera was zoomed in, but the cutscene where the officials arrived played out like normal, and the camera remained in place.
Oh, also the audio when you win is insanely, insanely loud. It's a little rough :P
an interesting narrative about a farmer trying to make ends meet under strict produce quotas, all with a captivating art style and charming presentation
I tried to go to the itch page and it gives me a 404, though :(
F Pressers pay you respect
And the design of **Level 3** scene is also kinda misleading. It has multiple solutions, and the easiest solution do not even have to use the quilt! Only scaffolding and grain container itself is enough. This design firstly aims to encourage players
think different and enjoy Eureka moment when they find a special solution. However, it is proven to be not so effective and we should split the *"new mechanic introduction"* and *"think different"* in different levels.
Thanks for your advice!
Really thanks for your advice, and thanks for playing!
5 star rating!
Love the art style, simple but clear and the quick and fast mechanic is simple and effective.
Nice entry :smile:
The last level took me many attempts. I knew what I had to do, but physics objects kept jostling against eachother causing the structure to fall apart before the inspector climbed to the top of the ladder. But the actual selection of the objects to put them in place felt very natural.
My other main gripe is that restarting the level is very cumbersome. You have to go through a transition animation and wait for the dialogue-skip button to work. Very clunky. And if time runs out, you have no way at all of skipping the inspection.
Really neat concept for a game that ties unique gameplay and unique setting together perfectly. Great work!
Really nice entry, polished graphics and simple yet challenging gameplay! There is a lot of love in it :smile_cat:
Next time we will address more importance to optimizing user experience and reduce these garbage time.
Thanks again!
-It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to click on the farmer guy to end the level. IMO, it should end automatically once you succeed in your task.
-The cursor kiiinda looks like a middle finger...?
And without a quilt or a ladder!
This game will be even more fun and challenging to add a ranking scoreboard to show who reached the highest horizontal and who used less objects.
Harvest Line can be much higher for who likes challenges! And they deserve a extra bonus. In this way you can encourage players to dive deeper into the mechanics and achieve what was impossible.
It feels smooth to play and I can imagine myself playing this for a long time. I don't even have anything to criticize, maybe just that I would prefer if the game started immediately after I press restart - I don't want to have to skip the cutscene I'd already seen to be able to play.
Other than that, great work! One of my favorite games so far on this jam!
Really thanks for playing and your precious advice!
Sorry for your bad experience.
In this game tutorial there were too much "implication" but not a straight tutorial.
This is an attempt of our design (to use more implication), but from your feedback and after our consideration, it's true that we should make more obvious signals but not just "hope" the player could try something they possibly never thought about. It's designers duty to provide all players with smooth experience but not to provide them by possibility.
As you mentioned automatically succeed is also a feasible solution to this, we would consider it when making a similar design next time!
Really thanks for your advice, this is our very first LD jam participation and we will be more cautious when designing the tutorial!
As for the cursor, that's really sorry, we really had no offense, and our art he denied. He said it's not a middle finger but a first finger. But the curve of pixels maybe is just a little ... weird?
Really thanks for your advice! Hope you had a good time with this game!
Thanks you for playing!
also to learn from all mistakes made in this jam. These updates may then be published in my itch.io site.
The key is inside the oil drum. You can hear high pitch sound of collison when you shake the drum, or simply when you drag it. To take out the key, you can try to put the drum up side down and pour it out. Maybe when it's not working, try shake it again and finally it will come out.
After that you can drag the key to the farmer and he will give you more grain!
Here is a demonstration GIF:
I really enjoyed this game. It's an intuitive concept, yet not one that I've really seen or practiced before. You perfectly tie this in with the theme of inspections in a shady country to seal the deal.
The quilt was a brilliant idea. I've seen other stacking type games in the past, but none that used this sort of joint-system. It made it very unpredictable in a good way. Like some of the comments here mention, it was harrowing to watch as your perfect quilt sunk under the weight of the grain and have you lose in the end. Unlike the others, I found this fun and a nice challenge to overcome.
This appears to be your group's first LD entry, and it is SUPER impressive for being that. Hope to see more from your group in the future!
If you want to play it, you can have a try right now. You can report any bug if you meet any problem with it, and we will fix the bug as soon as possible.
Hope you can have fun!
I had to restart once cause there was some bit of furniture exposed, but I managed to finish the game :) I'm sad that the old man went away in the last round