LudumData

A Necromancer's Guide To Happy Farming by TRUEchips

[raw]
made by TRUEchips for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

credits.png

Did you ever wanted to be a Necromancer? Suuuure you did.

Yeah so, well, you now play as one!

It seems that they are in enormous debt, as the funeral house claims to have lost 1 Million Dollars thanks to their Necromancing Shenanigans. And thus, they were assigned a godawful job at a farm, and now they are forced to be a farmer! However, their necromantic powers aren’t for show, and thus they created plantlings - cute lil’ creatures that are not a pain to harvest (THERE, WE SAID THE THEME). Your job is to get rich, to hopefully not have to live your life of a vegetable anymore!

And although the Necromancer can revive stuff, their power cannot revive its creators’ sanity after working non-stop for 3 days

hahaha

Anywho, this game was made for Ludum Dare 52 by Snailcat Studio made out of four people, although the game development was handled by me (Izzy the Owl also known as TRUEchips), and 99% of the graphics were handled by Sushi.

CHARACTERS.png

The Wizard Guy Wizard 2.png They are a grumpy necromancer in debt, desperate to pay it off. Just when they are about to pay it off, a disaster strikes! Their name isn't Jeremy, but that's how everyone calls them for some reason

Sketchy Jeff Sketchy Jeff.png He is a civil Servant, devoted to his job of making the life of every unemployed person on Earth as miserable as it is humanly possible. He also is a very corrupt official, and is known to have taken bribes. His friends call him "The Hopeless Jester".

CREDITS REAL.png - Izzy The Owl/TRUEchips (Me) - She handled all the code for the game, and assembled the game in 72 hours. It was her idea to do this the second time after the "ARG: The Journey for Sushitos" game.

  • Sushi - He made all the graphics you see in the game. If not for him, this wouldn't have been possible! Thanks so much, even thou I completely destroyed your sanity (sorry)

  • Enno - She made all the concept art for the game, and her sketches saved sushi's ass. Thank you girl!

  • Hanna - Although she only made one graphic, (the shopkeeper) - it still wouldn't have been possible without her. Thanks!

  • SumRndmDde, Yanfly and other people from the RPG MAKER MV community - They made all the amazing plugins I used to make this game not suck. Thanks guys!

  • Kevin MacLeod - Music I used. Thanks bro.

1.1 Update:

  • It fixed some bugs, they weren't game breaking, but they sure were annoying.

  • It tweaked some cutscenes very subtly (via sushi's request)

Farming the Windows: https://truechips.itch.io/a-necromancers-guide-to-happy-farming
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/a-necromancers-guide-to-happy-farming

Ratings

Overall 389th 3.522⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Fun 572th 3.065⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 666th 2.826⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Theme 250th 3.956⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 351th 3.75⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Humor 51th 3.989⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Mood 315th 3.587⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Given 58🗳️ 86🗨️

Feedback

Riesyeti
09. Jan 2023 · 23:24 UTC
I ended up playing this game for like half an hour. The drawings and the characters and the humor are top notch! This has honestly been my favorite game of this jam so far. The progression curves of having enough money for new crops is a bit steep but it makes me want to keep playing :D
🎤 TRUEchips
09. Jan 2023 · 23:33 UTC
@riesyeti Thank you! We really worked hard on this game!
ahintoflime
09. Jan 2023 · 23:34 UTC
Wow, I can tell playing this yall were having a BLAST making it lol. Full of character and humor and oh my god the quantity of writing in here is insane. I didn't have a huge amount of time to play so I didn't get further than a few days in but it has really nice art and a fun casual vibe, I loved it.
Gawain Doell
09. Jan 2023 · 23:36 UTC
It's really rough to start out, but the writing really helps make up for it. I thought the conversations for investigating things were pretty funny. The custom graphics are great, loved the full graphic intro!

The gameplay is a little boring though, it takes way too long to get going and the farming seems to be very painful and repetitive. Though given the theme of the storyline it does make sense, I still feel more could have been done to help the player smooth out the repetition. The dialog at first is funny but having it come up every time you manage a crop gets old really fast.

I had the game menu break on me and locked up with the pause menu open, it's probably an RPG maker bug though, so I didn't lower the score for it. Sadly, I never saved, so my whole farm went poof. I think having the game pull up the save menu when sleeping would be a good idea to prevent this.

Still, I had a lot of fun, and loved the ideas and character designs. Nice one! :smile:
OminusGalaxy44
10. Jan 2023 · 00:40 UTC
This game is so well made for a jam game! The art is great, the music and sounds are AMAZING, and the story's good too. However, farming without anything to break up the gameplay loop gets a bit boring after a while. Would be nice to see the progress of each plant as well, and it would be awesome to have multiple of the same plantling caged up, as it would be fun to spam cautious carrots.

This game has a massive amount of content for a jam game, and the humor is great! Good work!
Justine D
10. Jan 2023 · 00:45 UTC
Okay so I was preparing to go to sleep but my boyfriend was in the shower, so I thought "hey I have time for a little jam game"

I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into

So I start the game, the intro has me cracking up, really, the characters are funny and all and I'm like 'Okay I want to see the ending scene'

Impressive work on all the available interaction, don't know if I found them all, but love the humour.

Then I spent AN HOUR AND A HALF grinding, feeding my best plant, going to sleep, feeding my best plant, going to sleep, and so on, and I finally reach the point of being able to buy the golden carrot, day 46.
Maybe I missed something but I didn't find a way to farm faster
So I grow the carrot, summon it, check it's fed, and go to sleep
Next morning I run to the shop, see that I've gotten 500k from the carrot, and I'm thinking 'Oh great, just one more night and I'll have enough money to pay the debt off', buy premium treats to try them

And then, I go back to my carrot to feed it, and... it's not working. I can't feed it, the dialogue just cancels when I try
I try saving, reloading, nothing work
I'm like 'okay maybe I can do it with the brocoli, it's going to be a bit long, but I can try. How much money do I need, 750k? How much is one brocoli? 5k? So 150 more days, around 3 hours of farming, yup, no gonna do that'.
I was left with save editing as my only option, but of course RPG maker's save are encoded so I spent another half hour figuring out how to edit a save with online tools.

Inside the save file, I found evidences of other endings, something about spending 50years on the farm?!? I'm quite curious about that but I don't think I'll have the time to investigate.

Anyway, I managed to give myself enough money to pay off the debt, and finally got the ending.

It's 2AM, I have to get up to work tomorrow.

Worth it.
🎤 TRUEchips
10. Jan 2023 · 00:57 UTC
@justine-d yeah, um, there is a bug that basically makes it that if you feed the Golden carrot from the upper part of the gate the premium treats do nothing. I'm sorry that it caused you trouble but um, try to feed it from the lower part of the gate, or alternatively feed it normal treats! Sorry for that haha!
Justine D
10. Jan 2023 · 01:15 UTC
I sold back the golden treat and it still wouldn't work haha

Just tried both upper and lower part, same result, the dialogue just disappears

No worries I still managed to finish the game (although it was by cheating)
🎤 TRUEchips
10. Jan 2023 · 01:16 UTC
Ahaha~ Yeah I'll try to get that fixed after the 48 hour limit of updating expires, but it works for me, so I'll have to dig deeper to understand the problem!
Justine D
10. Jan 2023 · 01:26 UTC
Here are the save files if it helps (link expires in 24h) https://wormhole.app/dn7YX#mSrVS_zpSu18DPn3mD19MQ
Monoh Behavior
10. Jan 2023 · 15:49 UTC
Full of humor! I definitely love this game!
🎤 TRUEchips
10. Jan 2023 · 15:59 UTC
@monoh-behavior Thank you!
gamesplusjames
10. Jan 2023 · 17:15 UTC
Great writing and I really loved the art. Really great work!
NiceKot
10. Jan 2023 · 17:30 UTC
Hi!

I liked your take on the theme and art aesthetics.
Though not all jokes worked for me, but some of them were good. The curse of ludum dare deadline is legit!

For some reason all crops grown instantly and all I had to do is to run between the shop and the farm without doing anything else. I also didn't get the clock mechanic, but well... I'll definitely try another run.

Anyway, a solid entry!
Tevin
10. Jan 2023 · 18:44 UTC
Really funny game, well done!
Sad that i could only place one carrot in my cage :sweat_smile:
eeperdeheap
10. Jan 2023 · 19:05 UTC
Lots of funny dialogue! I loved it. Farming itself is fairly slow due to the low amount of money you start with. It looks really pretty as well.
samurai_jovani
10. Jan 2023 · 20:26 UTC
Really fun theme and story! There were some bug, like I didnt need to wait to crops to grow and kind of disappointed me the fact that there is no point planting things to sell since only the first 2 plants are worth selling. Then all I did was feed and sleep, feed and sleep ahhahaha Still is a addicting game, good job!
NG.ViciouS
10. Jan 2023 · 22:40 UTC
Beautiful art, nice humour, but the game is not for me haha. A little too wordy for my taste, took me out of the game and by the time I had to actually play, I got tired :tired_face:
Maybe I'll go back to it to try the actual game tho ^^
Shay Kopf
10. Jan 2023 · 22:41 UTC
The art the the humor made the experience for me. You can really see the effort being put to every line of text and interaction. Some times it was a bit to long but in general it was very good!
The game play matches the theme with a small twist which was a nice thing to see.
Overall really good job!
Shay Kopf
10. Jan 2023 · 22:41 UTC
The art the the humor made the experience for me. You can really see the effort being put to every line of text and interaction. Some times it was a bit to long but in general it was very good!
The game play matches the theme with a small twist which was a nice thing to see.
Overall really good job!
🎤 TRUEchips
10. Jan 2023 · 22:41 UTC
@ng-vicious yeah, well, the game is heavily story driven. You may not like those kind of games, sorry for that.

You do have the option to skip the intro though.
🎤 TRUEchips
10. Jan 2023 · 22:45 UTC
@shay-kopf This may be a surprise, but we actually hoped that this was going to be the theme, as we already had the idea for it, haha!
tiniuclx
11. Jan 2023 · 00:01 UTC
The start takes some time to get going, but the farming & the theme are pretty fun!
mrs.wheelsx
11. Jan 2023 · 02:42 UTC
![NecromancersGuideToHappyFarming.png](///raw/b78/82/z/560c2.png) Great little game!
FancyReckless
11. Jan 2023 · 10:48 UTC
Love the story, it has both great art and loads of humor. There were a good amount of bugs, but that's understandable for a jam game. Gameplay wise reminded of stardev valley with necromantic twist, which fits the theme quite well.
Flatgub
11. Jan 2023 · 10:55 UTC
Really charming! All the drawn art is wonderful and I like the jokes! Really enjoyed it!
TRraim
11. Jan 2023 · 17:35 UTC
The humor and characters are so good, you just want to read all interactions in this game.
Yubs
11. Jan 2023 · 18:23 UTC
Love the opening art for the game! Really cute :) Beat the game is like 59 days? Golden Carrot too op!
rhewid
11. Jan 2023 · 19:24 UTC
Liked the art and the humor, rarely seeing a rpgmaker game. Cool entry!
JCMonkey
11. Jan 2023 · 19:49 UTC
normally i get turned off by these type of text games, but your banter between the characters and items were pretty amusing so it kept me interested to continue playing the game. the art is really nice and fits together, and i almost missed the cute little emotion effects on the main chacter in the text window. overall what i played of this seems to be a pretty solid game for the jam. i didnt find any problems or bugs with the game. from the itch page i chose to play the jamversion, since i think that was the one to play and rate? other then that nice job on this.
🎤 TRUEchips
11. Jan 2023 · 19:54 UTC
@jcmonkey No no, the jam version is just for archive sake, the updated one only fixes annoying bugs. thanks tho.
JustinMullin
11. Jan 2023 · 20:00 UTC
I'm a sucker for a good old fashioned farming game, and there was some interesting stuff here to keep it fresh. I enjoyed the writing a fair amount, though it did get pretty old by the 15th-16th time for some of the interactions. I have a few minor quibbles about the economy (you actually lose money feeding carrots, and growing plantlings is profitable for carrots and cauliflower, but loses a ton of money for any other plants?), but other than that this worked pretty solidly. A couple of small bugs. Towards the end it was pretty repetitive, but I wanted to see that golden carrot, dang it, so I pushed through it. I absolutely love the art on the little veggies. They're adorable! Fun little entry, nice work, and I'm always pleased to see folks making RPG Maker work for them in game jams. =)
Pfannkuchen
12. Jan 2023 · 08:37 UTC
cute and funny game. The dialogues are wonderfully written, although they are too often repeated when clicking on the same items. The drawn graphics look cute, I love that. Although the beginning of the game is a bit slow.
I noticed the joke about the "ludum dare curse" :)
LDJam user 251967
12. Jan 2023 · 19:53 UTC
Great game!
asfdfdfd
12. Jan 2023 · 20:20 UTC
finally 100h RPG on ludum Dare e-he-he. Congrats!
parkuhrmd
12. Jan 2023 · 21:16 UTC
I really liked the art, especially of the main character. The music was well matched and made for a happy farming game. Some really fun puns i had to share with others :D A bit too much text though for my taste. Great game overall, keep up the good work!
sakura_magika
14. Jan 2023 · 19:06 UTC
this looks cute! is an HTML or mac version possible?
🎤 TRUEchips
14. Jan 2023 · 21:08 UTC
@sakura-magika I have a MAC version ready, however I didn't publish it, as I do not own a MAC, and thus cannot be sure if it works. I'm gonna publish it now, howevre if it doesn't work I also found this guide

https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/how-to-play-any-rpgmaker-on-mac-os-x-updated-in-2020.123790
Elgin Ciani
23. Jan 2023 · 20:46 UTC
![Game_mqkVv9WY9l.png](///raw/65d/c4/z/56c04.png)
Took me over an hour, but I beat the game! I can tell a lot of effort was put into this game, and I thought the art and writing was charming. However, the core loop got very repetitive very fast. At the very least, I really really really would've benefited from something like a 'Feed All' button. I found the draw of spamming the go to sleep option too forthcoming not to do constantly.