Play game
Dahlia: The Onion Witch's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Accessibility | #2 | 4.179 | 4.179 |
| Overall | #13 | 3.755 | 3.755 |
| Theme | #16 | 4.231 | 4.231 |
| Audio | #18 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Controls | #25 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
| Fun | #32 | 3.410 | 3.410 |
| Graphics | #39 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Originality | #47 | 3.513 | 3.513 |
Ranked from 39 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
Godot 4.4.stable.official
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
Play as Dahlia, a lonely onion witch, and grow a plant Antipal to defeat your foes. Venture out to defeat creatures to collect food to feed and evolve your new friend.
How does your game tie into the theme?
You literally grow a plant monster and thematically growing as a person. Also the level design flourishes grow as well.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
@computerbug, @noctilie
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
5
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Wow, I really enjoyed this game. A really cohesive experience put together by this team. The visuals and audio were fantastic, the variability in play was impressive given the timeframe, great use of the theme, all wrapped in a proven, well-implemented gameplay loop, with a well-meaning story and polished to boot. Very well done! I'll be back for more after I do some more rating!
Your comment really made my day, thank you so much for your kind words. I am very grateful for having such a talented and passionate team working with me, and for players like you who give us the motivation to keep improving our craft. With love - ANTIHERO Harley
This game was very well crafted. I liked the vampire survivors feeling to it.
Thank you so much for playing our game! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
Fun polished little game
Thank you so much for playing our game!! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
Great job! This was a very polished little game. The art and sound were great. The story was good too, if a little rushed (understandable for a jam game) and a bit heavy on the explicit statements of "I'm growing too" (this is a very good case for show-don't-tell, but I get wanting to be explicit for the theme). I went for all endings and really enjoyed that you get the same story but different bits of character lore depending on which plant you grow.
The accessibility options were nice to see, and I'm happy there was controller support.
I had the "Badass Detection" option toggled on for my first playthrough, but I'm not really sure what it did.
The weakest element for me was, unfortunately, the gameplay itself. In the first one or two stages, you can just afk until the wave ends, and in later stages you just walk in a circle until the wave ends. Basically just waiting either way, which made going for all endings rather tedious.
I also found a bug when replaying where the first wave ends pretty much immediately on picking up the first drop and then you feed your plant hundreds of pickups. It looks like the pickup counter from the last wave of the previous playthrough doesn't get cleared when starting again from the beginning. I had to refresh the page each run to start fresh.
Thank you for playing our game, I’ve forwarded your feedback to our team! You are 100% on the money with being very explicit, our previous jam entries were too subtle and metaphorical so we went the opposite direction this time around. And yes, getting the same story with different lore and personality quirks helped cut down on the scope of the writing a lot. And Badass Detection is an homage to one of my biggest influences: Rock Band 2! So thank you for being a badass and playing our game. With love - ANTIHERO Harley
Wow super impressive for the scope of the jam. One of my favorite entries so far. I could see this being developed further. Nice work!
Thank you so much for your kind words! We had a blast working on Dahlia, and I’m glad it came together for you! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
WHERE! Did you get that cool Godot Engine splash screen! That was so cool! The choices made for SFX and Soundtrack is on point. I enjoyed all the screen transitional choices, including the plant growing scenes. I think this is the only game I’ve come across that has an achievement system.
Do the “pickups” represent different things based on where they are farmed, or are they really different based on location? Since the images were the same, I had to ask.
I may have found a way to hack and break your game a little, but I died trying to take this screenshot of it - there was a HUGE stack of pickups that I managed to accumulate near the center of the screen by just going around the peripherals (of course, at some point, the game was starting to jitter in terms of performance since I overdid it probably). Just thought you’d like to know!
The game is great - enjoyed playing it a lot!
Thank you SO much for your kind words and in depth reply. I forwarded this to our team, thank you for the nice catch! As for the pickups, every enemy has different drop rates for the alignment resources, and the different areas have different spawn rates for those enemies. Going to the angel area will give you more angel enemies that drop more angel resources, etc. Thank you for playing! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
That was a great twist on the survivors concept. Art was great! Sounds were great! Played well! Good story. Impressively complete for a 9 day game! Great job! Got ending C, will have to come back and get the others.
Your words mean the world to me and my team. Thank you. Truly. With love - ANTIHERO Harley
Really cool idea - I'd love to see a full game with more options for growing your monster!
Thank you for your kind words! We love designing new Antipals so I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them yet :) - ANTIHERO Harley
Really cool story! I loved the music and atmosphere, though I wasn't sure on some of the gamplay.
Thank you for your feedback, I’ve forwarded it to the team! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
This short game that was made in a week has a better story than most AAA games nowadays xD. Amazing game. i wish there were upgrades for the main weapon, it became pretty much useless at the end bc of a small range. Would like to see more projects from your team in the future:)
Thank you SO much for your comment, it’s really heartwarming!! We loved writing it and trying to match the story with the theme was a fun challenge. For the upgrades, we wanted players to realize halfway through the later days that they had to rely on Planty to succeed. As the days go on, Dahlia can’t do this on her own and she doesn’t have to! That was the idea anyway. Regardless, thank you so much!! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
An interesting take on Vampire-like gameplay. Wish there was an upgrade to our weapon too - after level 2 it's not viable. Also I didn't understand what a Badass setting does, and what is the difference between different types of food. I love when developers include a Thank you at the end of the credits :)
I’m happy to answer your questions! The basic weapon not upgrading was a deliberate choice to have the player be more reliant on Planty, the food types evolve Planty in different ways, and the badass setting is a homage to one of my biggest inspirations: Rock Band 2! And I know you already got one but here’s another… thank you for playing our game! With love - ANTIHERO Harley
The story and the creatures were my favorite part! I enjoyed getting parts over time and almost wanted to play it more like a visual novel. For me I think the vampire survivor gameplay was too repetitive and I would have liked an option to either speed it up to just get to the story/creature growing over time part. I liked the sprite art a lot too!
I am so glad you enjoyed the story and little fellas! We had a blast making them. I forwarded your feedback to our team, so rest assured we’re taking a look into it. Thank you for playing our game! - ANTIHERO Harley
Very strong game all around. Multiple endings and music choices was a nice bonus. Good stuff!
The music choices were inspired by the real inability to select a single song for the main hub area. If we couldn’t pick one then naturally we had to include multiple! Glad that it resonated with you and thank you for playing our game. - ANTIHERO Harley
Super polished game with great sound and concept. Great job!
I shared your kind comment with our team. Thank you for playing our game! As for the music, once I found a free to use track by a composer I liked, I couldn’t help but include much more… hence the playlist feature and a prominent credit! Great work that helped inspire our game. - ANTIHERO Harley
Amazing game, really feature complete. the story was pretty good too. And the accesibility settings is the best i've seen, well, the settings in general. The idea is not so original but it was well executed and in acordance with the jam
Thank you for your kind words and feedback! I’ve forwarded it to the rest of our team! Spent the time since our last jam trying to address the accessibility comments we received, so the previous feedback helped a lot. And yeah, we put our inspirations on our sleeves! Thank you so much for playing it, with love - ANTIHERO Harley
You should sell this on steam for 30$, lol
The game bugs out the second time you play it btw. It's like the previous data carries over. Refreshing the browser worked to fix that though. I played through another time to get another planty version. Is it just cosmetic changes between the different plant versions, or do they do different things?
Thank you SO much for your kind words. We’ll take a look at your comment, but it doesn’t escape me that you enjoyed it enough to play through it an additional time. It’s truly kind of you. As for Planty, gameplay wise the different attacks were a “nice to have” feature that was on the cutting room floor to meet the deadline, but the dialogue is all different and reveals different parts of Dahlia’s backstory! - ANTIHERO Harley
Incredible work! Fun game with an actual story. Amazing that you created a whole game in just a week!
Love the commitment to accessibility.
Thank you so very much for your kind words. It was absolutely a team effort, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. And wrt accessibility, we took a lot of feedback from our other jams and made it a focus this time. Thank you once again, with love - ANTIHERO Harley
Ok, but where are those achievements? XD
Nice tilemap usage :)
I knew someone would catch that! The Achievements page wasn’t working right at the last minute and it was bottom tier priority so it was dropped for the deadline. You get a real life achievement from me for playing our game though, thank you so much :) - ANTIHERO Harley
This was great, sort of like vampire survivors meets pokemon with an actual story. Great game!
Thank you very much for playing our game and for your kind words. With love - ANTIHERO Harley
The story was very cute, i enjoyed the game loop and very fun to see how your choices impact the story and dialogue, great game!
Thank you so much for the kind words and for playing our game. We love telling stories and I’m glad you enjoyed this one! With love - ANTIHERO Harley