Life is Fleeting: New Harvest by Sarah Alexa
https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest
I finally managed to get this in a somewhat playable and finished state. This is a remake of my entry for LD51.
The game this time is less focused, less frantic and tbh not as complete of an experienced as far as gameplay goes. This is mainly because this time I took it as a challenge to expand on things slightly, learn new things again and have much better and more consistent code instead of just slapping everything together.
The art I feel is better and more consistent, though there are tiling issues. The gameplay loop and features works but I don't think it's as fun as my last game. I think a few small changes could fix that but for the moment this is what I have.
I'm quite proud of what I managed to accomplish at least. I was tired throughout, I wasn't expecting the jam when it appeared and I somehow managed to fix a few completely random issues that popped up at the end that had the game completely unplayable. I experimented with state machines, I created a hotbar, I have multiple scenes with consistency in what the game keeps track of between them and for the first time, I created a settings menu and a pause menu... with a settings menu!
The settings menu I'm very pleased with. You can rebind keys, there's buttons to set binds back to default too. Last time, people mentioned wishing they could have the tile targetter/selector be beneath the player so I did just that but I added a checkbox so you can go between the old and the new! I also added a volume slider which is a bit iffy in actually working but it's there!
How to play:
Grab your tools and get started by watering the crops already in the field. After enough days of watering, you can harvest them. You sell them at the box for money which you can then use at the shop to the right to buy seeds. The goal is to get enough money to buy 3 gifts for your preferred outdoor NPC. Give 3 of the same and correct colour and you win!
Remember, you must have your tool/seed/gift selected in the hotbar for them to work.
This was hectic, I need a rest! Hope you get at least a little fun out of it!
| Source Code | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SU6MOMcXj46QKDxd5pg3p2yGcBICR_As/view?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/life-is-fleeting-harvest |
Ratings
| Overall | 731th | 2.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 635th | 2.921⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 779th | 2.395⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 456th | 3.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 625th | 3⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 392th | 3.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 589th | 2.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 735th | 2.75⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest](https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest)
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I just want to add that there's definitely issues with this game that I just didn't have the time to fix up. Here's some of them:
Some error/correction messages will just now disappear
There's some weird visual bugs when going between scenes
The NPCs you're supposed to advance your relationship with are absolutely tiny though they have big hearts to help them stand out at least
There's no walk audio because I forgot to add a state for keeping track of it
The pause menu has no dark background, I didn't have time to even throw one on
The volume slider doesn't really work as well as it should, if at all
There are no physical collisions on anything to prevent the player from walking through them
Sometimes tilled soil will just untill itself when crops are growing on them
The selected slot on the hotbar can be difficult to make out
Harvesting has AOE... this is now a feature
Other worthwhile mentions:
If I had more time, I would redo all character sprites including the player
I would also add in more animations and interactions with the environment
Some tiles don't tile terribly well with each other because of a lack of time
I kept forgetting I needed to have gifts selected to use them and it began to annoy me, I think with the short format game jam games have, it's a bit too tedious
I definitely felt limited by Construct 3 this time as things I wanted to do were limited in how I could go about it, making those things take a fair bit longer
All that said, it was a solo project and I'm quite pleased with what I got done. I was beating myself up about not being able to enter the compo but with doing so many new things and the game only being in a state where you can actually play it from start to end at the last minute.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing what others came up with!
Hey! [You can play my game here](https://fruittea.itch.io/lifeisfleeting-newharvest)
I’ve also included it in the first comment. The link was included with my submission but I guess something bugged out on the site or something as it didn’t include it. Seems to be showing now but linked in comments just in case.
Thank you for letting me know!
Good work!
- Sometimes I just couldn't plant seeds on titled, watered soil, no matter what. This seemed to persist between days, i.e. even on the next day I could use the tile (which remained tilted & watered), and on the next day, etc.
- For some reason it was really hard for me to find the watering can! It kind of blends in color saturation & intensity with the environment, and I just missed it. Only found it after restarting the game for a second playthrough :) Maybe making it glow or have a visible distinctive outline would help. Also the mechanic of picking up instruments feels a bit redundant since you don't really do anything after that, you just pick them once.
- Switching between instruments using the keyboards was a bit unintuitive & inconvenient, also most of the slots are unused most of the time. Maybe an inventory that grows on demand would be better, and you'd select the items by clicking on them with the mouse or by moving the "selected" cursor left/right with the keyboard?
- When using a tool, you have to repeatedly press [SPACE] in order to use it on each visited tile. I've found that if I press it fast enough, I can move through a row of tiles without stopping and tilt/water all of them, but that's not the most pleasant thing to do :) Maybe it would be better if the tool was used if the [SPACE] key is already pressed? I.e. I'd just keep in pressed down and move over soil tiles to tilt/water them all at once.
- Again, it was hard to find exactly where I'm supposed to sell the crops and buy new stuff! Maybe highlighting this places somehow so that they'd stand out of the surroundings would help.
Anyways, nice & promising submission, good job :)

@lisyarus Thank you for all the feedback! Was the stuff you couldn't till/farm on the upper 2 rows per chance? I had some issues with that happening in my tests and they really annoy me! It was one of those bugs I really wanted to fix but didn't have enough time to come back to at the end. If I'd had even 10 more minutes what I think I'd have done as a quick fix is just replace the problematic farm tiles with grass tiles.
The hoe and watering can graphics I actually hate. They look horrible and the colouring was very much placeholder stuff I realised I didn't have time to change but the glow/outline suggestion is actually great! Agree with picking the instruments up, the idea was that you'd initially purchase the watering can from the shop and then water the crops that are already planted until harvest and then use the money from that for seeds and the hoe to have a progression line which I wish I'd managed to get in there.
The cursor is something I'd work on a bit more for next time. I want it to glow more to be more obvious. I do have using the scroll wheel to switch as a thing and arrow keys were for movement as some prefer it but I definitely agree that it wasn't the most intuitive. In testing towards the end, I found I kept forgetting I needed to switch slots for stuff. I think for a short jam game, it def needs some work there.
Holding the key down to water and stuff was actually something I tried implementing but I encountered an odd bug that made it completely unusable. Construct has some weird quirks and for time's sake I had to scrap it but yeah holding it down was honestly way more fun other than it breaking the game haha.
Thank you for playing and for the thoughtful feedback! Some great suggestions there and it'll let me hopefully focus a bit more for the next game! One thing I'm going to spend a bit more time practicing is feedback and direction for starting the game so I can work on stuff quicker without having to figure out issues during jams as often!
Useability concerns really got me here. Days are *super short*! I always felt rushed, no matter what was going on. It was hard to tell at a glance what present went to which person, and the cheaper person was further away. It was awkward to select later presents because the slots aren't numbered, and scroll wheel is off limits for non-fullscreened web embeds. I also hit that bug where a crop square bugs out in each of the top two rows.
You really went for the theme and I appreciate that. This is also a game style I'm not used to seeing in LD, *and I wish I could have played more of these!* Really well done.
There were some minor issues like the popups to tell me how to interact seemed misplaced at times (telling me to water my plant after I harvested it).
I could only hold one present in inventory at a time, and after I gave the present to someone the next day the visual reset to 0, but the next present would bump the counter correctly -- so just a visual error.
I think it would also help to include a direction about how to switch your items.
Those were all pretty minor though, I enjoyed the game and was engaged to play til the end. :)
Nice game, loved the stardew valley vibes!
@gabrimer I did consider making the days have no timer but I did want a little of that feeling that you still needed to make good use of each day. I tried a minute for each day initially and it just felt far too long. Thank you!
@lomby Thank you!