Natura by DzejPi
Welcome to the enchanting world of Natura! Step onto a tiny island paradise, where the air is filled with the sweet scent of blooming flowers and the gentle buzz of busy bees! You are the steward of a fragile ecosystem, a beekeeper tasked with creating a harmonious home for your winged companions.
Gameplay: around 5 minutes. 4 minutes, if you're really good.
How to play
The world of Natura is changing very rapidly. Every season lasts only 60 seconds! The only exception is winter. Winters are short on this island, so they last only 30 seconds. Like every human, even you need to eat. Collect berries from flowers and apples from trees in order to survive. When you collect flowers and apples, you occassionaly find a flower seeds and tree seedlings. It's the best to place them as quickly as you can, so your bee friends have more pollen to eat! If you want to, you can also steal some honey from your bee friends. However, if you do that, they will not breed, until they collect enough honey again.
Trees usually drop some old branches in the winter. Collect them with your axe and build a beehive for your bee friends, or shelter for butterflies!
You can do many actions. Switch between items either by using middle mouse button or by pressing 1, 2, ... , 0 on your keyboard.
- 1: Nothing
- 2: Axe. Use it to collect the wooden planks on the floor.
- 3: Place flowers, if you have seeds.
- 4: Place tree, if you have a seedlings.
- 5: Put a fireplace on the ground, if you have enough wooden planks.
- 6: Build another beehive for your bees.
- 7: Build a shelter for butterflies.
- 8: Select honey for eating. Hold left mouse button to eat.
- 9: Select berries for eating. Hold left mouse button to eat.
- 0: Select apples for eating. Hold left mouse button to eat.
Do not be surprised that you need to eat a lot of quantities. This kind of food does not have that many calories, and you need many.
Keep in mind your goal, which is to try breed 100 bees as quickly as you can!
If you simply want to vibe and have a relaxing time, select Endless in the main menu. The game is the same, but it go forever (at least until you don't starve to death).
Controls
WSAD: Move like in all 3D first person games.Left click: Interaction with items.Middle mouse button scroll: Circle between items in the right menu.1-9-0: Switching between items.Escape: Toggle pause menu. If you're playing in HTML5, pressEsctwice and then click on theContinuebutton with your mouse to focus it back properly. You can close the pause menu withEscas well, and mouse should get captured in a second or two.Shift (hold): Focus. No sprint — you're sprinting by default. You're welcome!Space: Jump.
Tools used
- Game engine: Godot v3.5.1
- Aseprite
- Blender
- Audacity
Links
- https://dzejpi.itch.io/natura - Download or play in your browser on itch.io
- https://github.com/dzejpi/natura - Check the source code here.
- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/natura - Ludum Dare page.
My commentary
This was a lot of fun, but was beyond my scope. I was planning to include many more things, but balancing even this took a long time! And I didn't even have a time to make music, so if you're listening to something nice, then keep doing that! That said, I can't wait to hear your feedback, because I can imagine actually finishing this after the LD and making a full feature game out of it. As always, I am rating all games back, so I can't wait to see what you think about this!
| Source code on GitHub | https://github.com/dzejpi/natura |
| HTML5 | https://dzejpi.itch.io/natura |
| Windows build | https://dzejpi.itch.io/natura |
| Linux build (untested) | https://dzejpi.itch.io/natura |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/natura |
Ratings
| Overall | 262th | 3.293⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 267th | 3.138⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 313th | 2.828⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 288th | 3.138⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 235th | 3.276⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 201th | 3.241⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
That shelter definitely had limited space
This game was very confusing at first, I needed to refer to the instructions manual several times to get an idea of what I had to do. It also took me a while to realize that my objective was to breed 100 bees. I guess I suck cause I spent more than 10 minutes on this and I've still made little progress. I think the game could use some more visual or audio feedback to reinforce worthwhile actions, I honestly had no clue what I was doing, lol. That aside, this is good entry. I like the visual style that you were going for, the combination of the simple pixel art on 3D meshes creates an interesting look that I think could be expanded into something more. Good luck in the jam!
I managed to breed 100 bees in 303 seconds, but I guess it could be faster as I made the mistake to place the flowers far away from the bee hives.
Well done for the work!
@congeesetador I can understand how controls can be overwhelming a little bit. And this is after simplifying them, actually! I totally agree with you about the music; I wanted to create it, but I was unfortunately desperately running out of time. Thank you for the review!
@forewillow glad you liked it, I am actually considering making a full feature game out of this, as I think this has a lot of potential, so thank you for motivating me further!
@huga true, perhaps shelter should have been a little bit bigger, I am taking notes!
@scolondev you're definitely right with the game not communicating well enough, I will keep that in mind. And I am glad that you liked the graphics style, I was inspired by Proteus. :)
@rena you mean your browser was too small? True that perhaps 1600 x 900 was a little big. Glad you had a good time still!
@foreyes nice cute ugly graphics, I need to print that somewhere, haha! Yeah, it's definitely confusing, I was planning to implement cutting down trees, but I was short on time, and was concerned about implementing the beehive removal logic too, if it would be a part of cut down tree. Now that I think about it, it shouldn't be terribly hard.
@godsboss oh no, yeah, that's true, those colliders can... collide. Anyway, that's still pretty fast, well done!
@bernhard yeah, I was planning icons, but ran out of time a little bit, whoops! Yeah, shelter is a little bit useless (or more like, it is allowing butterflies to survive in the winter, but butterflies are actually not doing much), but glad it at least brought some happiness, haha!
@pierre-marie thank you, glad you liked the season change! Fun fact - winter is twice as fast as other seasons.
I rated every single game back, and thank you all for amazing feedback! I am taking notes, since those are all great ideas!
During the party I just need to eat one time (the honey I collect at the beginning of the game in a tree), maybe it is too little ?
I think it will be nice to have a pointer because most of the time I didn't know if I was pointing in the wrong place or if there was nothing to point.
Nevertheless the game was very fun to discover. Good job!
I love the bees they are very cute. Lots of personality with minimalist design, nice!
It was fun to run around the island and collect stuff and build houses and beehives and plant trees :) I'm not really sure if there was a purpose to the fire place and the house but I built them anyway. I think if there was one thing I'd change I'd either make there be some visual feedback when you collect an item
The bees are really cute, and it's quite fun just sitting and watching them fly around.
I found two small bugs with the colliders. One is that there is something invisible I keep colliding with near one of the starting trees. Somewhere around this place:
there is something like an invisible tree - running forward just makes me run in place unless I move sideways to pass it.
Another bug is the ability to place stuff on top of other things - which felt weird when I accidentally placed a tree in another tree so high I couldn't get the apples, but felt great when I realized I could create Sky Hives:
@danielshershnev2game1 glad you liked the game!
@n3k noted. I was thinking about making autumn much longer, because there is not much to do the other seasons, when you think about it.
@jozgames muito obrigado!
@squiggelsquirrel true with the axe, I wanted to implement cutting trees down, but was out of time, unfortunately, so it had to work at least like that so it wasn't completely useless. :) Good point with shadows. I was trying to emulate a certain look, but you're right that it would help with that, will keep in mind!
@limichou good point with pointer, that would actually be a good idea. I was thinking about it, but then forgot. And it would be such an easy improvement! You're right that fireplace has no usage, and shelter is only for hosting butterflies in the winter, so... pretty much useless too, haha.
@thelastslowpoke thank you, I will be finishing this after the jam, or rather, make a whole game out of this! Stacking is pretty fun, but I know why it happens - because those items have colliders and it didn't occur to me that colliders would let the player stack things on it, good stuff. I work as a QA, so I should have caught that, lol!
@cheesepencil glad you liked the bees and had iron stomach, I didn't have time to balance that out, so I rather played it safe there.
@technonugget glad you enjoyed walking on the island. You're right that there was not really any purpose in fireplace. Visual feedback is a great idea, thank you for that!
@lcstark yea, for a full game, those seasons would have to be definitely much longer. I noticed the invisible collider in the middle of the island, but I was not able to figure it out... I had nothing in that place in the editor, and even outputting the name of the collider into console didn't return anything, so that is truly haunted, but good thinking about stacking things on it, actually! And good point with stacking overall, didn't realise that since those items had colliders, it would be possible to place things on them, haha!
Thank you once again to your awesome feedback! I rated all of your games back, if not rated already. Love the feedback and amazing ideas you all have!
Visually it's super unique. Not sure if you plan to keep the solid-color shading, but it felt a little awkward on the ground, since you can't actually see the terrain. I wonder if you could add additional layers (kind of like the sand next to the water).
Once you add music and some more features, I could see this being a really relaxing experience.
Finished in 518 seconds :)
GG.
@sudocoffee yeah, that is a very good idea, it indeed makes the terrain invisible. I am already thinking about how to make it, great idea!
@kris3 indeed, unfortunately, I ran out of time for music. I had some tutorial planned too, but I ran out of time too. Glad you liked the season change!
@hakro & @geckoo1337 I'm super glad that you enjoyed this!
Rated all your games back, if not already!