What a cool concept! Good job, playing your game was quite nice :)
Play game
The Gardener Prototype's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Controls | #10 | 3.864 | 3.864 |
| Fun | #23 | 3.636 | 3.636 |
| Originality | #31 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Overall | #45 | 3.273 | 3.273 |
| Accessibility | #62 | 2.955 | 2.955 |
| Graphics | #77 | 3.182 | 3.182 |
| Audio | #99 | 2.682 | 2.682 |
| Theme | #119 | 2.864 | 2.864 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
One-Handed
Game Description
A sokoban/the witness inspired puzzle game where you mow grass in specific patterns.
How does your game tie into the theme?
You are tasked with reclaiming an overgrown garden using your lawn mower. Each of the four areas teaches a new mechanic growing your knowledge. This grown knowledge will then be tested in the final hedge maze puzzle.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
ajwcw
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
3
Comments
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for playing & for the feedback. I have heard that piece of feedback before and plan to implement it while developing the game going forward!
I have been working on some graphical changes to the game which I'll be publishing once the jam is over. I'm then going to work on developing it further into a full fledged game so watch this space!
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm thinking going forward I might make it so that once you complete a puzzle it is locked and marked as completed. That means the whole vine attaching will disappear and I'm also thinking anywhere the vine-door it opens is not on screen there will be some camera movement to show what you've just activated . It is a great bit of feedback though as I do agree when a puzzle opens two vine-doors or a vine-door off screen it is confusing as to what you've achieved.
Thanks so much for playing and for the feedback.
Please could you elaborate on what you mean when you say you could 'redo' the tiles at the border? This sounds like it might have been a bug that I missed!
Also could you let me know where you managed to get softlocked? I thought I'd tested this well and by using undo you should always be able to get back the way you came and avoid the moles!
For some reason I haven't tested undoing the moles, so maybe that's the reason. Sorry about that!
The thing about redoing tiles overall is that you're able to cheese some levels, you don't really need to think about the path you're going to take, since you can just fix it by redoing the tile. I played it for a bit longer and realized that it does not apply to tiles at the border, but other ones as well.
On one hand I understand the intentions behind that (thats why I'm uncertain as to call it exploit ), it gives a less harsh penalty on the player. On the other, it may trivialize some puzzles found on the game. Maybe I'm sorely mistaken, but the redo button works less as a way of putting the player back on track and more to get away with mistakes.
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for the reply. The idea with the undo button is just to let you jump back a few turns in case you hit the wrong button or realise you've gone wrong on one of the puzzles. I played around with the idea of capping the length of the undo but I didn't want to make the game unaccessible to anyone so I left it endless. It's definitely something to consider and maybe I add it as an option in a 'accessible' mode option in the menus going forward.
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for playing! The camera zoom out was actually surprisingly easy to implement. I essentially just took the camera out of my 'player' node and attached a script to it. I then set a variable called target position in the camera to the players position and in the process function slowly moved it to match that target position. Once the player collided with an area2d I setup in the centre of the puzzles the cameras target position would zoom out to match the zoom and position I manually set. Finally once the player moved out of that area2d I set the target position back to the player!
Difficult puzzle game (good),
but a couple of gripes:
\1. I went to the moles, before I did flowers. Then passed a many-mole puzzle… only to be confronted by a puzzle I had no idea how to interact with.
Ok, no problem, just go back past- oh wait, I’m stuck (without ruining that puzzle).
This was an un-fun experience to encounter.
\2. I couldn’t actually figure out what the flowers were supposed to teach me.
How come both of these solutions are correct?
1 year ago(+1)
First of all thanks so much for playing and for your feedback! I'll address your gripes below in reverse order (should make sense why once you read them).
Gripe /2
It would appear you have found a glitch/error in one of the puzzles, specifically the one on the right in your screenshot. I will explain the rule of the flowers below so anyone reading this who wants to go in and play it first stop reading now! You've been warned...
The flowers represent which of the tiles diagonally should have 1 piece of grass and which should have 0 pieces of grass on. The flowers in the left puzzle indicate that the central tile should have no grass and all the others should have 1 piece. That means that the puzzle in question should be solved like it is below. This issue is this puzzle seems to only be checking how many tiles have 0 grass on and not where they are located on the puzzle! So your solution works as it has the correct 12 tiles with 0 grass on but the flower rule is essentially being ignored by the game! I will get this resolved and ready to push up once the jam deadline has ended!
Gripe /1
Now the flower rule has been explained. I created the mole puzzles before the flower puzzles and only added the latter in right at the end of the jam. I therefore decided to add the flower into any previous puzzle that featured grass tiles with 0 pieces of grass on, essentially just to keep the rules consistent across the whole game. I never considered that someone would see these earlier and believe that they were a puzzle mechanic so thanks for pointing that out. The hope was that you'd just think they were flowers but then once you got to the flower section you'd remember seeing them and realise then. The intention was that those final two mole puzzles are solvable without needing to understand or interact with the flowers. I realise now that's one of those things obvious to me as I built the game but not to a player so thanks for pointing that out!
1 year ago(+1)
No worries! It looks like only the two puzzle you've screenshotted aren't working as intended as I have no idea why right now!
Oh really? Each tile has a 'maximum length' to it which is set based on how long the grass starts. If you mow a grass down from 1 length to 0 length and then undo over that grass then it does put the grass back. The idea of the undo move is to let you go back to previous moves, meaning you can correct a mistake without having to start again.
Is there a bug in there which allows you to abuse that and do something you don't think you should be able to
Is there a bug in there which allows you to abuse that and do something you don’t think you should be able to
Yes.
It doesn’t matter what the tile ‘maximum length’ is.
This applies to every grass tile in the game.
-
Mow as much grass as you like. You can even mow all of it. In any pattern.
-
Enter a tile with grass height already at 0
-
Undo.
Expected behaviour:
- Character returns to tile you just came from.
- Grass height at tile you moved back from: stays at 0.
Actual behaviour:
- Character returns to tile you just came from.
- Grass height at tile you moved back from: changes to 1.
1 year ago(+1)
Ah thanks for the explanation! I hadn't considered that you were entering a tile that was already at 0, moving off of it and then undoing back over it. This is because I'm just checking if the grass length is less than it's 'maximum length' and increasing it if it is. I need to implement something that confirms if you have just mown a piece of grass on that turn to resolve this. Thanks for the feedback, I will add that to my list of bug fixes!
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks so much for playing! The bottom right puzzle was a tricky one to design so I'm glad that it stumped you for a bit!
Thanks so much for playing and for your feedback! I have had the feedback about the reset buttons being too close a few times now. I was planning to 'lock' a puzzle once it has been completed which means you can walk over it again without ruining the solution. I hadn't considered a confirmation button on the reset tile though, that might actually be a better solution.
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks so much for playing and for your feedback! The bottom right puzzle was a tricky one to put together so I'm glad it's stumping some people! I plan to keep developing the game based around the flowers and introducing other mechanics similar to those so watch this space! I agree with the larger puzzles it can be tricky to quickly see the status of the grass tiles so altering the art style to make that more obvious is on the to-do list.
Actualy i think it was just right for a "witnes like" puzzle game. It took me maybe 20-25 minutes, which is a commitment for a jam, yes.
But. All the shorter sections was crutialy important as a tutorial. The big boss in a bottom right corner of the map was a hard challenge.
And last central piece was more like ABZU ending where you blast throught, in this case by the knowlege of how puzzles work.
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