Super Plantoid by dans17
Known issue: analog down + jump doesn't work on platforms(WebGL only, d-pad + jump also works fine), working on a fix
Super Plantoid is a plant-based metroidvania where you play as an astrobotanist who crash-lands on an alien planet. Use your botanical skills to navigate the treacherous alien landscape and find a way to refuel your rocket, but be careful... the plant life might not be vegetarian.
Important
- When the game starts, player can only move around, jump and jump down from the platforms(to do this you need to press arrow key down + jump, s + jump or dpad down on the controller + jump).
- You can use glowing spots on the ground (soil spots) after you collect the seeds.

Your goal is to collect all four solar flowers and then return to your rocket. Seeds you pick up along the way will give you access to new plants that you can plant and harvest fruits from. Various optional collectibles also offer an extra challenge.
Credits:
Programming
- Bartosz “Sztobar” Szewczyk
Art and Level Design - Lucas “Shogun” Michalczyk
Music and SFX - Daniel “Dans17” Sousa
| Link | https://dans17.itch.io/super-plantoid |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/astrobotanist |
Ratings
| Overall | 40th | 4.175⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 100th | 3.925⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 208th | 3.61⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 129th | 4.15⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 67th | 4.393⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 44th | 4.085⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 119th | 3.974⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
Overall, I think this is a very neat game with a great atmosphere, and I finished it to the end. I think if the issues I mentioned above are fixed, it would be even better.
@joe-eric thank you so much, we're happy you enjoyed playing our game.
I'd say the level design is both the best and worst point of this game, it makes you feel clever when you understand what you're supposed to do, juggling through the different powers, but when you're stuck it's really frustrating. For instance I had to look up a streamer's playthrough to understand where to go after the 2nd flower (you can jump to the platform right of the ship with the bubble). It also has some rather unexpected difficulty spikes (a room full of spikes?? in the dark?? ...gives me Rayman 1 (https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQJAo_0UaY4) war flashbacks.
The only giveaway that this is actually a jam game is the ending which feels a bit rushed, but considering the unreasonable amount of content here, it's hard to fault you for it. I completed the game with 18/20 collectibles. I had a good time and I'm not one for platformers/metroidvanias usually. My only advice is that you should really indicate somewhere here or on itch.io the down+space trick to going down platforms, and perhaps give a few more hints in-game for n00bs like me.
the map and the length of the game is pretty big for a jam.
some jumps to the spike area are brutal. overall very good job and very polished game.
### Things I liked
1. The visuals are fantastic
2. The audio is amazing (the jump sound is sooo cute)
3. I 100% took the animations for granted because they looked so good
4. Enemies don't immediately take away your life points, which gives you an opportunity to get away from them
### Things I noticed
1. I couldn't interact with anything! `j` and `z` wouldn't pick stuff up from the interactive areas and I died when I encountered the first enemy! If I'm doing something wrong please let me know, I'd really like to play this game through for myself (this is why the review is based mostly on a stream)
Please let me know if there's something I should be doing differently!
Hoope you give it another go and enjoy the rest of the game. Good luck o7
Apart from that i really mean when i say i have no clue how you couldev made something so awesome in such short of a time! And im curious if you are thinking of making a longer game out of it? :D.
About how we manage to make it in such short time, trust us, we are as surprised as you are, cause we cannot believe ourselves. If you would like to hear more in details, each one of team members is planning to write down a blog about his experience this jam and what each one of us did and how we did this.So follow us up here on LD page to be notified when those blog post eventually go up.
About the artijokes, first, it makes me so happy to know there are people who like playing our game so much they wanted to finish it 100%. I don't want to spoil completely what happens when you collect all of them to other people, so I'll leave with a hint. Your fantastic, amazing and definitely not disappointing reward for collecting all of the artijoke you can find at the end of the game credits :P We hope you find it worth your time and effort, and not lame at all :P
Ohh also I gave your game to one of the streamers who played LD games and they liked it a lot ;)
Also then it seems ill wait till the patch and replay the game fully then!
Level design, art, sound, the feel of the gameplay mechanic. It all felt like a fully polished game. Good job! Really hope you plan to continue and make a full experience (either from this game or something completely different) because I would love to play that :smile:
Thank you so much for making the game!
Overall, the gameplay is really smooth; however, I don't seem to be able to interact with anything. The first pumpkin enemy was impassable and I couldn't figure out how to drop through the floor, use the wispy light thing you see on the first hill or go back or anything. I tried on keyboard and mouse as well as an Xbox controller.
Am I missing something?
EDIT: I see now that you're working on a fix, but hopefully my feedback helps find the issue
You won't be able to interact with anything till you get to the first power up, when you start the game all you can do is jump, run around and jump down from the platforms.
EDIT: We also agreed with the team that we have to make some sort of indicator that you can jump down through the platforms. For people who never played platformers or sidescrollers is not obvious and they often think they are stuck which is not good.
I didn't have any problems with controlling the little man, but I found the lack of any information inside the game itself to be a little frustrating and pace breaking, so I just stumbled around for a bit. It also wasn't obvious to me that the seeds are infinite which caused some more stumbling, but that's on me. While the gameplay is responsive, the lack of any map system makes exploring feel unrewarding and slow.
Still, I had my fun! Great job with finishing such a polished experience in time.

@la-bread you can avoid hitting the ceiling with your head by adjusting your jump height. Depending on how long you hold your jump down, the longer it is the higher the character jumps.If you just slightly tap the key button character should jump way lower avoiding does nasty bruises ;)
Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/gfUiPVIkyL0?t=8703
Very polished entry, and such a lot of content! Will be coming back to it to try to get all the Artijokes!
What I particularly like the most was the flotato, in terms of design, it was pretty much professional level... The fact that there were 2 key features in this game and that was holding the plant and shooting the plant, the flotato covers both areas in a very well-made manner. Hold the plant to float, or shoot it to make a bouncy bubble... Good stuff. The animations were cute and felt polished. Controls seemed a bit confusing at first, but it worked nonetheless.
A part that I had mixed feelings on (sorry if it sounds a bit mean, but I just want to give honest feedback) was the dark part. Sure the glow fruit was cool with its effects and stuff, however, it sort of mitigates everything else about the game. To clarify, you basically cannot progress if you didn't have the fruit, plus when you get hit, you lose the fruit... So essentially this part requires you to hold only 1 type of fruit, while not being able to shoot it, and you basically only have 1 life. A suggestion I have for this is making the glow fruit similar to the bubble, whereas when you shoot it, it sort of stays in place for quite some time, before slowly decaying.
That's really the only major complaint... One minor complaint was that the planting sound got a little repetitive XD. Other than that, the rest of the sounds were nice, the music was fitting, the atmosphere definitely suits the game. I like how you guys were able to put some extra quests for the game, those little seed coins, within the time frame, that's just insane. I wouldn't be able to get them tho, the main game was already hard enough XD.
Another wow thing was that the level was quite huge considering the time, and the fact that each part felt unique and still filled with content, it does not disappoint. I also liked the fact that the main stage was sort of connected to a lot of the parts, completing certain parts would take you back to the main stage, and parts that were unreachable at first now slowly unlocked not by hard-unlocking them, but by granting you mechanics that allow you to overcome the problem that hindered you from entering those new parts in the first place.
Overall well done! Great Job!
The pixel art was incredible, as was the music. All of the areas felt like they had distinct identities and the quality of the art was really consistent throughout. A real accomplishment for so many tilesets! Great job!
I'll replay this game to get 100% someday but for now this is the best entry from this jam so far.
The carryable light source and bubbles were such cool ideas, and I really liked how tense the platforming became when you couldn't risk getting hit and losing your carried item. The double jump/double bubble system was really cool as well, and though the timing was tricky, it was a great challenge. The dark areas reminded me of some of Hollow Knight's great moments of spelunking in a dark cave and nervously looking around for spikes and enemies just out of your lantern's range. Your music and audio design is perfect, too. Excellent work on creating such a fun and satisfying jam game, you guys!
Astounding job, all of you! Here's a round of applause from me! :clap: :clap: :clap:
(also, the planet surface reminded me of "Dark Bramble" from Outer Wilds; not really much of a point towards the game, but I thought it was funny xD)