The tutorial says "left arrow to midair dash" but this doesn't seem to do anything for me? or Shift?

Lovely audio work! Love the character sprites and animation!

I think the arena is perhaps a bit too large. I imagine it'd be perfect for a multiplayer co op style.
The jump control could be polished, i'd love to see tapping jump to have a shorter jump rather than having the same speed.

Nice work! Just need to find a dreamcast now :s

@binney I'm not sure why left arrow wouldn't work. The dash starts out pretty weak and mainly gets noticeable as your speed increases in the game. When you press left arrow in the air, does the character flash yellow?

@deathbysnail Thanks for the feedback! The soundtrack was from an album by abstractionmusic.com, while I did the sound effects. I agree having jump power increase if you hold the button down would feel better.

The graphics are very charming. The gameplay was pretty addictive, I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how much land I could easily protect from the ghosts.

Masterful character design, really cute and satisfying music and sound effects. Great job!

I love it!
Controls feel tight and movement is super fluid.
The only issues I had is that the dash doesn't really feel like it does anything, and the map is a little too big.
other than that, the game is plenty fun!
good work!

Cool game! I was impressed that you even added a whole tutorial stage to teach all the mechanics through practice. I like how the same attack can be used for combat and for harvesting. The double-jump feels really satisfying and punchy, and the short attack range took some getting used to, but I actually really like the challenge of it now! Great work on this one :)

Nice concept and real feeling of flow state when juggling all the activities (planting, defending, attacking, harvesting). I found it a bit too challenging and the controls a little awkward at first for me on a laptop keyboard but enjoyed it and wanted to play again!

@malcore @mynvs Thank you for the kind feedback! I had a lot of fun with the art.

@tavevil Thank you! The dash starts out super weak but gets stronger as your speed increases with upgrades. At the beginning though it i *very* weak and if I made the game again I would scale the dash differently than just multiplying speed.

@chompdev Thank you! I felt having a tutorial would be very important because I realized there's a lot going on in my game, and that reading instructions would be boring for players who are trying to play 20+ games in a few days.

@simono Thank you! The difficulty was my biggest concern when publishing this game. I think it works best for players like me who really like something fast paced with a lot of rapid button clicking. Also I definitely would have had configurable controls given more time, as different people enjoy different control schemes.

The graphic are simplistic but this feels really nice to control and it's a great concept/use of the theme. I think the play area is ever-so-slightly too big, meaning it's hard to know what's going on with those pesky ghosts

This is my favorite game I've played on Ludum Dare before, great job! The gameplay is fun getting to amass lasting powerups while defending your land.

For future gameplay polish, I feel like having a way to return to the ground faster would be nice for greater control. Whether that is making holding jump go full height so a tap does less, letting you dash downward, or making you heavier while carrying a seed, I often find myself scrambling in midair to land.

More weapons could be cool, maybe granted by reclaiming a haunted house for long enough to have it drop a weapon like a boomerang, or a lance that has a big forward hitbox while charging and a smaller hitbox at the tip while holding it upright. Or maybe you go inside the house and defeat 6 ghosts to free it, and then it also lets you hold an extra seed and counts as a shack for providing more seeds.

Also having a way to increase the time limit would be nice. Maybe there are special enemies that leave after a while and drop stop watches for +5 seconds each.

Making the player invincible was a good idea since the kobold-like hero has a stubby range. I also like how the attack lasts long enough you can hit multiple ghosts in one swing at higher speeds.

THOSE DAMN GHOSTS I HATE THEM

and love music

I had fun playing the game, controls are really good for the game.

Keys where a little weird, as it I'm not used to use arrow keys to do actions. Also, W should jump. The idea is cool tho, and art has its charm. Good job!

Nice platformer) I liked responsive controls and detailed tutorial. Dash ability is kinda useless (?) tho. Nice programmer art btw, really liked it too))

The controls and platforming was really good

@asfdfdfd @chiranjiv @bangkerpow Thanks for the feedback!

@hfsevans Thanks! I was hoping that the speed upgrades would help make the map feel smaller, but it is very big still. It's not required to defend all of the farmland, so part of the strategy comes from figuring out which part of the map you want to defend.

@nbumgardner Thank you for the detailed comment! I think these are all good ideas for improving the gameplay. I had considered adding a button to make you fall faster, but ended up not including it as I wasn't sure how it would feel to play. My original conception also had the player taking damage, but I realized quickly the gameplay was too hectic for the player to have to think about that.

@eranot Thanks! If I had more time I would have made the controls configurable.

@mightybanana Thanks! If I had more time I would have tried to integrate the dash better in the gameplay. The tutorial doesn't cover this, but the dash does 33% more knockback and half as much damage as the attack, so it can be good for delaying the ghosts for a bit and rushing to the other side of the screen.

Nice work! I've played a number of action-ey games this LD, but they didn't really lean into the "harvest" side of things (other than the sort of macabre take of "harvesting" the baddies). In this one, my attention was split between replanting crops, repairing farmland and fighting off ghosts - the harvest was plenty on my mind, in a really good way.

The game's pace is kinda unrelenting (those ghosts just don't give up!) which I think is to the game's benefit. When it first started, I had the feeling that keeping all of the ghosts out would be impossible. There was too much ground to cover, too many ghosts, and too many crops in hard-to-reach spaces.

The way the player ramps up in power and speed after harvests was great, though. It created a turning point about halfway through: I started moving fast enough (and I knew the map layout well enough) that I could bounce from one end of the farm to the other while staying ahead of the ghosts. I was even able to reclaim most of the farmland (though the most exterior spots still tended to get gobbled up). It was really fun, running back and forth and mentally juggling the different priorities I had to balance.

Like a lot of folks mentioned in the comments, I didn't end up using the dash mechanic too much. I did notice a difference in speed when it activated but it was pretty subtle. I didn't actually realize that it could knock back ghosts until I saw you mention it in the comments, but in the end the sword was more than sufficient to get the job done.

Stepping outside of the gameplay for a moment, I have to say that I think you scoped this project really well, especially as a solo project (which is always tough to do).

The environmental art serves its gameplay function perfectly - everything's readable at a glance. The main character's couple of animations bring a lot of personality to the table. I especially like how their mouth opens up as they swing and how they get angry eyebrows when you trigger the airdash. The ghosts are simple, but they fit the sort of style you established with the main character - it's all looking good. Oh, and the menu graphics are great too!

Building in a playable tutorial to demonstrate the mechanics was great too. That piece of polish made the game way more accessible to pick up in a way that paragraphs of description could not.

Your selection of music was also solid, it really helped get me in the zone. Even when you're not making the music yourself, it takes time to select the music and implement it - time well spent, in my opinion.

So nice work - not just on building a fun game, but on balancing the different aspects of game-making along the way!

@doctor-zeus Thanks for trying out my game! I'm glad you had the experience I was hoping players would have: you start off weak and against overwhelming odds, and get upgrades that make you super strong. Prioritizing where to defend is a big part of the gameplay. Something I really like about these jams is that they train my ability to make games that are simple and fun.