Rooted Deep by DzejPi
Job market’s desperate — so you answered a mysterious job offer. Now you’re deep underwater with no idea what’s coming next. Are you up to the task?
How to play
The corporation (you’re not allowed to name it — NDAs and all) is experimenting with underwater plant growth, and you’re the “volunteer” assigned to make it work.
Grow strange new plants, harvest their fruits, and sell back what you can. Oxygen is limited, resources are tight, and the corporation couldn’t care less about your comfort — only your output.
To escape your contract, you’ll need to earn 2500 currency — enough to buy your ticket out. Until then... keep planting. And keep breathing.
Gameplay
You start out with one Lunara seed:
You can press 1 and start planting the new plant. Confirm the plant with left click.
Plant will start growing its fruits right away. Once fruits are fully grown, you will see "Collect fruit" tooltip, which lets you know that you can harvest fruits. No need to click on each fruit separately, just hold your left mouse button.
Look out for the oxygen levels - only now you realise that you should have exercised a little bit more. Once you're out of breath, go to your safety pot.
Your safety pot contains a computer, which you can use by looking at it and pressing E.
This will show you the computer screen where you can:
- Sell your fruits - either by one, or all fruits at once
- Buy new seeds - you can buy seeds by one, or you can buy as many as you can afford.
- Upgrade - upgrades can increase your maximum oxygen, speed, profits. Last update is your ticket out.
If you have more than 250 #, you can upgrade your pots as well. Every non-upgraded pot will show you this prompt:
If you upgrade your pot by pressing E, fruits in that specific pod will autocollect themselves. You can also tell which pot is upgraded and which isn't, because you will see a new arrow object:
Good luck!
Controls
- WSAD: Move like in all 3D first person games.
- Space: Go upwards
- C/Q: Go downwards
- Left click: Interaction with items.
- 1-4: Star placing flower pot
- Escape: Toggle pause menu. Focus on HTML5 on Itchio is not perfect, so if you’re playing HTML5 version, press Esc twice and click on the Continue button with your mouse to focus it back properly.
- Shift (hold): Sprint (or well, its equivalent for swimming)
- E: Interact with computer/buy autoharvested update.
Tools used
Nothing fancy here.
- Game engine: Godot 4.3.
- Aseprite
- Blender
- Audacity
Known issues
- Sometimes you are thrown around a tiny bit - I have absolutely no idea why. I suspected some colliders, but there are no extra colliders anywhere, and it didn't happen in debug mode, which definitely makes everything more interesting. :face_palm:
- Web version - If you place around 135 flowers, all objects disappear. Unfortunately, this is Godot's web limitation. It happens once you go over a certain amount of nodes in the scene. Thankfully, this is way, way beyond reasonable number of flowers, so, this should not happen to you, unless you're testing limits. However, if you want to get serious with building your own garden, download local builds.
Commentary
This felt like a bit off more than I could chew, but I managed to get something playable out there. However, for the future, I think I will stick with my FPS games. Once games require some UI with more elements, it is my end, and I'm not that good at creating nice UIs quickly. On a positive note, I learned a lot about groups and shaders!
Ratings
| Overall | 58th | 3.778⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 91th | 3.556⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 119th | 3.463⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 62th | 3.946⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 73th | 3.911⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 70th | 3.804⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
Rated your game back!
Rated your game back!
I think the upgrade system is a little unutilized at the moment - I'm not sure if there's a reason to buy the oxygen and speed power ups, as it's very easy to just plant near your home. I bought the 2k profit upgrade and it's seem not to be worth it as you just need to get to 2.5k
Also I prefer in game tutorials so I skipped the one here, and actually it covered everything other than where the oxygen refill. I tried to swim up
But again, the graphics, sounds, interface - very well done!
@immortalfox got it, will speed the controls next time! Though hopefully at least those upgrades can make the life easier, haha. :wink:
@youcarryoats oh no, that's a good point I never considered. Shame on me. Double shame, actually, because I am left handed myself :laughing: . But as you can see, I use the typical layout of mouse in the right hand and WASD by left hand. I can't change the game now due to it going against Compo rules, but for the next time - what would work the best for you? I assume keyboard arrows for the movement? What keys would be best suited for going up/down, and confirming? I am all ears and I can make sure my next game is left handed friendly!
@atsh yeah, upgrade system is definitely not that well balanced, but I didn't want to keep the player waiting for too long before winning. Though if this turned into a full feature game, it would need a massive upgrade overhaul for sure.
Rated all of your games back!
I love your graphics, it gives a really good atmosphere to the game.
It's impressive to have done that in 48 hours, great job !
greatly done!
@xwilarg glad you liked the water movement, took me a little bit to figure out the shader. At least I know what the calculus in university was good for. And glad you liked the duration, I didn't want the game to be too long. :slight_smile:
@sayeg I'm super glad to hear that! :heart:
@helagos glad you liked the atmosphere and graphics!
@oxnh yeah, I am aware of this bug, but not actually quite sure how to fix it. I thought it was caused by some rogue collisons, but when I ran the game in debug, I couldn't see anything. And strangely, it didn't happen in debug mode, which makes it even more challenging, haha. I agree that music would increase the vibe, unfortunately, didn't have much time nor energy for it; maybe next time!
@onngd it's true that it kinda looks like PS1. With a little bit more finetuning, it could look very similar. And I will try to make figuring out the gameplay easier for the next time, it's true that it could be described better.
Thank you all again, and of course, as always, rated all of your games back! :slight_smile:
@liquid you're definitely right with adding some incentive to explore. I originally planned to have some specific plants that would generate oxygen, that would give you a reason to explore and risk more, but never got to it. And I definitely need to play Subnautica, it's been installed on my computer for a while, but I have never found a time for it, I guess the time is now!
@scott-r-howell nice, congratulations! I wanted to have some easter egg, so, this makes me super happy that you found it! If I had some price to give out, you would get it. :smile:
@mcramon thank you for the feedback! Yeah, it feels like there is some potential indeed, but 48 hours limit left a lot to be desired.
Rated all of your games back!
Graphically this all came together super well. All of the plants look good, but you really sold the underwater atmosphere. Definitely feels like you're 250m below the sea. Great use of color
The gameplay loop with the farming was nice and satisfying too. I always enjoy being able to do things like upgrade profits. Overall, I really think this was one of the more entertaining games to play. Good job!
I don't have really a core issue with this, just moreso scattered feedback
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* One thing is the plants didn't have the best indication of being ready for harvest. A simple subtle color change would have been significant. It lead to me doing lots of unnecessary mashing
* The movement was nice if a little slow, but it'd get annoying when you'd get stuck on the side of the planter. If you changed their hitbox from a box to a ramp, it'd help a lot.
* I imagine this is hard to balance in the right time frame, but a lot of the upgrades weren't useful. For example, the final 100% profit boost at a cost of $2000 is never going to help when you win by reaching $2500.
* Also, while I appreciated having a nice variety of plants to grow, I wish there was a bit of a reason to grow certain ones. The best strategy seemed to be getting the most expensive seeds ASAP, but even if there was a growth rate penalty to make them suboptimal, the strategy just becomes planting the most optimal ones instead. I think a good way to solve this is with milestones. Turn up that required $2500 to way higher, and introduce some achievements like "Sell 5 of every fruit" that give you more shmoney.
* Also I hate to say it, but I did not finish this game, as it crashed. I was so close to the end. These things happen.
Overall, this was a fantastic feat for 48 hours. Very entertaining, very much sold the mood and the theme. Looked good, sounded good. I don't have major issues with this one at all, really just minor nitpicks and ideas that prob aren't feasible in 48 hours. So overall great job, you should be happy with this.
Introduce some base building and underwater construction and I'll buy a copy, not kidding you.
@juliocezar that's super nice to hear! And I think your time is actually very impressive, because I don't think I have been able to win quicker than that, you have a natural talent. :slight_smile: And I see I already rated your game!
@swooty thank you for extremely deep and thorough feedback, I really appreciate that! Indication of plants being done with growing would definitely send this to another level, I should have thought about it. Or more like, it came to my mind couple of times, but I never wrote it down, and I completely forgot about it afterwards. Good point with better hitboxes, I'm usually trying to avoid using square ones unless they make sense, but I completely forgot here, plus I was so used to swimming that I didn't even hit them that much, so, it never bothered me to be like: "I must fix this," haha.
Balancing was quite challenging indeed, my top priority was making player able to win relatively quickly, since no-one wants to spend too much time on jam games, but you're absolutely right that there's not much of a reason to buy the last profit upgrade over just winning for at that point in game, couple of extra seconds of waiting.
Also, did your game hard crash, or did everything just disappear? It didn't crash on me, but I know about the disappearing issue. I assumed it happens due to way too many nodes present, and in this case, it would happen way too late into the game. It happened to me with like 130 plants, which I didn't think anyone would be willing to do. However, I had the same disappearance issue in my previous game, which I managed to tackle in the end, but, I'm really wondering whether I'm not hitting Godot (at least current) limits and whether Unity wouldn't be worth a try.
It's making me really happy saying that you would be glad to buy a copy if I turned this into full feature game. I indeed think that with many more things to do and some base building, this could be quite good. I very often want to continue on my games after LD, but I never keep up. I really need to break this and finally turn some game into a full feature one. I think this one could be quite fun, especially since I very much enjoy games where you can chill and perhaps even listen to podcast/watch videos when playing, but I would need to untangle the absolute mess that is the code under the computer screen. Or maybe even look into Unity. Rated your game back!
Reading through the comments I see that other people have already pointed some of the issues I've noticed, so there's not much more to add for me. One thing I'd add to that is that perhaps the sound on trying to pick up fruit shouldn't be played if the fruit is still growing, only when you do actually collect it. Or maybe have a different sound to let you know you can't pick it up yet?
I agree with liquid's comment, throwing in a Subnautica easter egg could be fun. And definitely try playing it, it's a really good game and might give you some inspiration for further expanding your concept. But keeping it mostly a farming game would definitely make it something unique. :)
Overall, it's a pretty impressive compo entry! I loved playing through it several times, even if it did cause a mild case of anatidaephobia.
@chiyeon great suggestions! I thought about giving the player ability to remove plants, but ultimately decided that it's fine to miss for a jam game. However, if I decide to take this further, I will definitely include that. And yeah, pot upgrades weren't communicated that well.
@jeremyfa glad to hear that! I keep seeing so many comments about the full feature game that it is very tempting. :smile:
@nimbushead yeah, fertilizer or something like that could make this more interesting. I wanted to give some incentives for player to leave the base and explore, but didn't have enough time, unfortunately.
@chuckiee yeah, you're right, there is a whole terrain like this, which I generated in TerreSculptor, but unfortunately, it's barren and unusued, ah the plans I always have and never have time for. :slight_smile:
@lcstark it's true that controls are floaty. Good observation with the picking sound still being played, I absolutely missed that. And since you're another person telling me to play Subnautica, then I sure will soon. And yes, there is always some duck watching, so, watch out!
Thank you all so much and I rated all of your games back! :heart:
The upgrades weren't really worth it as the final price was so low but it was so quickly achieved that I decided to buy them all anyways. And you only need a handful of plants to do so. Having more like 5-10 seemed like just waste as you couldn't harvest them fast enough. Usually you'd want your "win target" to be much higher and then have the upgrades be a gateway to making more easier like automation etc. I guess you know the formula...
The game looked and sounded great! Sweet cohesive art style and nice and moody sound scape, even without any music. Didn't even really miss any music, even though it obviously wouldn't have hurt either.
Controls were very good as well. There is a bit of an issue with the web version where if you're full screen and hit escape, the mouse lock is lost and you're stuck with not being able to look around fully. And I'm dumb enough to have done it twice and needed to do a full refresh to restart.
The whole swimming up and down was kinda pointless. Would have needed some reason to go up and down really. The obvious thing that comes to mind would be to have maybe the best selling plant have it's berries be high up so you couldn't reach them from the ground level. I also would have reused the same click behaviour for accessing the computer instead of adding a separate button for it.
Also having all those separate sell buttons and even the max buy buttons were very much pointless. I don't think there was any reason to ever not just sell all so one button would serve the same purpose. Unless of course you're going for the more manual labor aspect of clickers on it. Could of course be the product of planning more around it and having scrapped those out... 😉🤷♀️
Actually, now I read the full description and I guess there was some automation upgrades there indeed. But again, the target was so low that there was no need for it really.
Even if you over scoped a bit, you pulled it off nicely. Nothing really screams out unfinished. And of course learning is a big part of jamming experience.
And of course bonus points for using the correct "couldn't care less"! 😎
Good job! 👍
Yeah, upgrades were definitely quite unbalanced - there's not really a practical reason to buy the last bunch of upgrades when you can just wait a bit more and just win. Though in this specific case, I just wanted people to win relatively quickly, since I have a soft rule that my game shouldn't take more than couple of minutes, so, I didn't want to make winning way too expensive. But yeah, in full game, it would be more expensive — or probably not there at all.
Glad you liked the sounds! I bought a new microphone before this, since I used to record things on my phone, but it sure doesn't feel like I utilised it much, haha. Music was planned, but I had to drop it, unfortunately. I hit such a hard wall in later Sunday hours that I felt like I couldn't even press a single extra button. So, I just decided to run with some background ambience, which is actually just me with my hands over my mouth and making those sounds. Science!
Regarding focus — I think that if you press Esc twice when pausing, and then click on Continue (instead of pressing Esc again) to continue, it should grab the focus properly again, but it's a bad experience for sure, I really need to fix that already, it's been in all of my 3D jam games so far, and I haven't gotten into fixing it still.
Creating some plant with fruits growing high is amazing idea, that would definitely utilise swimming upwards much more. Maybe next time, or in a full game! I'm just glad noone tried to swim upwards completely out of the game, I don't even want to know what are the possibilities there. :see_no_evil:
You got it right with planning better UI and then scraping that, so yeah, single sell is quite pointless indeed. And when we talk about it - maybe I should have made "Sell literally everything" button or have autosell upgrade somewhere, because there's not really a point in saving any fruits anyway. Though I can imagine some mechanics in a potential full game what would give you a reason to only sell X amount and keep some Y amount for something else.
Thank you for praising my grammar. :laughing: I'm not a native speaker, which I think makes us actually less prone to getting these things wrong, so, at least something! But I am sure that since I just said this now, I will soon write something horribly wrong somewhere.
Thank you SO MUCH for the feedback. It really means a lot, especially from a very experienced developer like yourself. :heart:
Rated your game back!
On my first run, I managed to get to the end. I didn't notice I had spent already 15 minutes!
On my second try, to see if I could speedrun it a bit more, I was transported far away suddenly, but that did mean I saw the other ending as well. :slight_smile:
I didn't use swimming up and down that much on my first runs, so in my last run, I just planted everything really close to the safe station and collected by swimming above the plants. I didn't buy any upgrades, and got to the end much quicker this time :smile:
Overall, well done!
@alvaron thank you for playing! I am sure you had a huge backlog of games, so, I am glad you got to mine too. Already rated your game. :slight_smile:
I love how the goal is clear from the start (and somewhat optional), but you can take different roads there. Let me outline my road, which was exploring-and-chilling-oriented. First, I checked out everything on the computer. I planted one pot of every species to check out how they look like and behave. Not being sure what plant gets you better profits (the cheap one felt faster), I didn't focus on a single one. I upgraded their pots and doubled down on plants. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time outside, so I only bought a profit upgrade. I realized that the upgrade probably wasn't worth it and that I'm already on a realistic pace to the ticket outside. I watched my plants and the environment, analyzed the upgrades, and took off. Then I saw that it was timed, and I appreciated how it is not trivial what the fastest strategy is. Nevertheless, I decided I don't feel like speedruning, I liked the experience for what it was.
I loved the atmosphere, the graphics, the general idea of this game (and the splash screen that is insane quality for ludum dare). That crazy bug didn't bother me much, even though I got launched real far away in an instant once, and was very close to not making it back on time (it was exciting and funny ^^). What I would want of this game is a mouse sensitivity option, the default is way to low for me and my movement felt kinda hindered and clunky because of that. The upgrades could do with a little bit of balancing, but tbh, for a game like this, it would always be the case whatever you would do.
Oh, and I feel a need to apologize to you for not sharing with you how my last dare's amoebas work. It just so happened that the next day after my game rating marathon I got hit by weird ass heart issues (the health kind, not the romantic kind, lmao) and it was super-super scary and it stole a few months of my abilities to focus on anything else. It's a lot better now though (never underestimate the power of sleeping regularly, damn). What I want to say is, I didn't forget. I want to find a moment to get over my chaotic nature and write to you one day, when I'm hopefully done with all of the more pressing matters. Cheers!
Glad you liked the vibes and went for the relaxing way. The amount of people who just enjoyed relaxing experience makes me very happy and I am quite sure that I will continue working on this game afterwards. I am always thinking about that after LD, but I think this one is a really nice opportunity, and nice mix of things that don't make next development too challenging.
I really gotta figure that launching bug out, though. It didn't usually launch me very far away, but you're not the only one who mentioned that they were launched very far, and it's super annoying to have in the first place. And mouse sensitivity for sure, I learned the hard way here, as it's mentioned very often. :laughing: And balancing, yea, that's gonna be even tougher challenge.
Thank you very much, rated your game back! :slight_smile:
One of the best entries I played
Price of upgrades felt a little bit off to me, though, but i can't put my a finger on why exactly.
You're right with upgrades, not like they were optimised super well. If I decide to work on this full time, they will have to be reworked heavily for sure. Played and commented on your game. :slight_smile: