Superbloom by devook

[raw]
made by devook for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Deliver pollen and grow a beautiful little meadow as a bumbley bee.

Bee Piloting Quick Tip: Technically, you are steering the camera, not the bee! Don't worry if the bee moves a little erratically or goes off camera for a bit, you'll always fly where the camera is pointing.

flyingsparkle.gif

sparklessitski.gif

Known Issues * The tutorial can get confused if you go too fast. * Menu navigation not working for gamepad

Features Coming Soon * Audio volume sliders * More flower types

Features We Could Implement But Probably Won't * Mesh instancing for flowers (to speed up rendering a LOT) * Quest system for those who crave structure * Bee stamina system for Breath of the Wild fans * Cooperative multiplayer

Ratings

Overall 359th 3.786⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 553th 3.476⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 251th 3.75⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 477th 4⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 184th 4.295⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 89th 4.119⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 579th 3.094⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 94th 4.205⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 43🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

picross
04. May 2023 · 03:10 UTC
Really cute and fun game! I liked having no specific goal. Made some freakin sick flowers. I definitely crash landed a few times at the start lol. Super cohesive graphics, music, presentation. I appreciate the speed up button. Great work!![superbloom.png](///raw/5a6/c2/z/5b330.png)
LDJam user 282870
04. May 2023 · 17:35 UTC
This was just exceptional. Great music, great graphics, super idea, but, the controls are way too sensitive. The newest version of World of Warcraft implemented solo flying. It was so very well done. You should watch some videos on that and see how they handle the flying controls.

Thanks for the great play.
InitialPosition
04. May 2023 · 17:40 UTC
Excellent mood in this game. When I realized I had no real goal the game became incredibly relaxing which is very nice. I also enjoyed the background music, the graphics and how well everything worked. Sometimes when you fly too fast the camera starts doing backflips though and you can't really control your character when that happens. Otherwise, very relaxing little game!
drazil100
05. May 2023 · 01:28 UTC
The gameplay loop on this is really soothing. The camera takes a little too long to catch up to the direction of the bee though causing me to completely lose control every now and then as I try to figure out what direction I need to correct towards to go where I want to go.

This game is good though. I like it :)
LDJam user 271014
06. May 2023 · 01:25 UTC
Super cute! I really liked the camera transitions. The flowers were pretty, and the rolling hills were a nice touch too. The sense of scale was just right for making you feel like a bee. Good stuff!
Esther128
06. May 2023 · 23:53 UTC
Feels greate to play!!!
Colin Misbach
06. May 2023 · 23:56 UTC
Like the concept. I got a bug where after pollinating a flower the camera freaked out and my movement took me under the floor. The camera/movement felt a little chaotic for a relaxing game (that's the best way I can describe it).

The world is nice and vibrant, and the music is calming.
AnnaBella T
11. May 2023 · 00:18 UTC
That was very fun, I liked the mechanics and mixing the flowers and the flight was very satisfying.
MintBreak
11. May 2023 · 09:24 UTC
Good tutorial, Nice flying mechnaics, adorable animation of the pollinating and the satisying mix of the flowers you pollinated. I agree with drazil's feedback with the camera. Chill game guys :) Nice work
Sempra
11. May 2023 · 16:03 UTC
I'm so relaxed i could totally do this every day after work :)

Pleasing to see a view into the future with the list of features you would implement, it really helps imagining what the game could be. The experience was great!

Edit: As an AZERTY user, bonus point for using physical keys instead of classic WASD. That eased the testing a little and this was much appreciated!
kanity
11. May 2023 · 18:10 UTC
The music and the visuals are nice and relaxing, and the bee is too cute! Unfortunately I couldn't quite get a hang of mechanics, the tutorial suggests gamepad buttons, is it only playable on gamebad? I could move a camera with WASD and tried using arrow keys also, but ended up falling into the white abyss ^^''
JoshuaRabbit
16. May 2023 · 15:26 UTC
The graphic is so cuuuute and I like it
🎤 devook
17. May 2023 · 03:02 UTC
@kanity Should work with either gamepad or WASD, although the tutorial prompts can get confused sometimes when on m&kb with a gamepad plugged in. If you had a really hard time controlling, it might feel better after inverting the y-axis in settings?
🎤 devook
17. May 2023 · 03:57 UTC
@drazil100 We got a bit of feedback like this so just wanted to clarify: the bee is just a visual! You are actually only steering the camera, so you don't need to correct for any erratic movement from the bee. We definitely could have communicated this to players better with a reticle in the middle of the screen or something.
Jeremy Ryan
19. May 2023 · 01:59 UTC
Nice relaxing entry!

![beegame.png](///raw/aba/3/z/5bdd8.png)

I really enjoy this genre of game jam game, where there's no real objective and you're just trying to relax and enjoy the experience. The visuals are beautiful, and the bee character is very cute. I liked the variety of flower types and the stylized landscape, and the visuals were complimented well by the music, which was very well done if a little short of a loop. The menu and UI were also really well made.

I will say that the game does suffer from the slightly funky camera controls. I think the camera took a bit too much time to speed up and slow down, while also having too high of a max speed. This meant I often overshot and had to frantically move it back and forth to get going in the right direction. The transition when landing on a flower was also a little jarring since it moves so tight over the player. Maybe something like the following could feel a little smoother:

![bee_camera.png](///raw/aba/3/z/5bdda.png)

After tweaking the camera movement, I think this would really be close to the perfect game for relaxing, since that really was the singular piece-of-gravel-in-your-shoe for an otherwise beautiful and heartwarming walk along the beach (that metaphor got away from me a bit).

Overall, great work and especially impressive you made something so cohesive with such a large team! You must have had some pretty effective direction/project management.

I drew your spherical bee and put him in the pixel fan art compilation on [my profile](https://ldjam.com/users/jeremy-ryan/) (complete with tiny cat ears).

![beeart.png](///raw/aba/3/z/5bddc.png)

Awesome work for 72 hours, and good luck during the rest of play and rate!
🎤 devook
19. May 2023 · 21:09 UTC
@jeremy-ryan Every game jam I tell myself I'm not going to make a physics-based character controller because they're so hard to tune, and yet...!

Thanks so much for the in-depth response and the little fan-art! That's a first for our team! And yes we definitely spend a lot of energy purely on coordination and getting everyone's assets in. We always have a few brand new people each jam, but we also have a bit of an advantage as a few of us are professional developers who have worked together at Unity for a few years. I've been acting technical lead for the last four years, so my major focus on these jams is often just keeping our scope under control and ensuring everyone is empowered to do good work. Our [Global Game Jam team](https://leftout.itch.io/the-killing-tree) was actually almost twice as large!