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Forest Ex Nihilo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #4 | 4.483 | 4.483 |
| Originality | #17 | 3.931 | 3.931 |
| Overall | #22 | 3.670 | 3.670 |
| Audio | #30 | 3.655 | 3.655 |
| Fun | #32 | 3.517 | 3.517 |
| Controls | #40 | 3.379 | 3.379 |
| Graphics | #50 | 3.690 | 3.690 |
| Accessibility | #57 | 3.034 | 3.034 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4.1
Wildcards Used
Autumnal
Cozy vibes and autumn-like atmosphere
Single Location
Use only once location
Limited Palette
Use a restricted color palette
Game Description
Build a forest in the middle of literal nowhere.
How does your game tie into the theme?
Start with minimal resources and grow your world
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
N/A
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
2
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Comments
Loved the vibe that the project had. I really liked playing through and growing the environment that I started out with. Keep making awesome stuff!
This was a pretty cool concept. I like how impactful it made player choices feel. It was really fun to see the world after a few grow multipliers were applied. Seeing a ripple fire of seeds roll out into the world is super satisfying.
A few critiques:
The VOD is linked below, and will be available for 60 days. This was my 2nd playthrough, my first one was during the previous day and I was too tired to give it a fair shot, and I'm really glad I came back to it:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2576769047?t=0h8m10s
It was absolutely amazing to be able to see your experience with the game. Thank you so much for sharing. It also answered some questions I had about how to proceed forward with developing it. The unresolved issues with the game were mostly a combination of bugs in the spaghetti and a looming deadline.
The black currency (pebble), is obtained as a reward for winning fights. However, something is was causing the reward screen to be skipped, which is also where skill cooldowns are reset. So that bug is a double whammy.
There is a restriction radius around each new planting to make sure things don't get too clustered and untraversable, I have the workings of a system to highlight that area when a planting fails, but because I'm still trying to grasp how to calculate a "change of basis matrix", that restriction radius looks like a broken fish instead of a solid block. But that broken fish sized restriction is enough to make sure you can't get trapped.
You were right about encounters being tied to land size, but also animal population and number of days passed. It calculates a challenge level which is used to populate the fights. The expansion you did near the end likely generated a 2 round fight, with 2 enemies in the first fight and 3 in the second, but the fight queue isn't functional yet.
You're definitely right about needing a better method of travel, and watching your VOD inspired a solution. The construction of waypoints by leaving a pile of resources.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I'm probably going to come back to it a few times to help with further development. It was equally exciting to see as well as inspirational for the direction of the game.
Really enjoyed this game's vibes, from the art to the music. I was little confused at first at what I was doing but I started to understand it more and more with each night and it ended with an overall pretty vibey experience. The animal animations of them going around your world were really well done too, it really brought some life to the world and made you feel like you were expanding it!
Some of the icons were a bit difficult to make out in the shop but that is nothing which a fullscreen or zooming in on my end can fix! The actual combat was surprising and I didn't expect it but it was actually pretty cool to see :)
Good submission overall!
the thing I liked the most is how every animal is animated differently, I loved the fox jump, truly, also I have a lot of respect for isometric maps rather than just top-down, I wanna learn that.
At the start I didn't really understand what I was doing or why I was doing it, after a couple nights I still didn't understand, but I didn't care at all, it just felt good :)
turn based took me back to FF9 with the time bar thing, if that was your inspiration, I respect it, very polished.
good one!
If you want to learn isometric maps, I'd say start here.
I was surprised how easily it can all come together. I just started dabbling with it a few weeks before the jam.I haven't played FF9 specifically, but I have played a number of Square's games that included their ActiveTimeBattle system which I personally find more engaging than just taking turns. So yeah, that inspiration was there.
As far as the character's motivation... I haven't quite worked that out. It's something I'm still struggling with because I think I still want to work on this project after the Jam and "make forest big" isn't really compelling enough.
Thanks so much for all the feedback. Much appreciated.
I really liked this one! Great concept with expanding the land by growing on it, and I really enjoyed watching the whole place expand and become a forest, with animals and all. It was a bit slow at first and I slept a lot, but as the forest grew, it got a lot better. I was totally not expecting the combat! But it was really fun and gave a real purpose to the animals besides friendship :)
Great job!
I do think sleep is over incentivised and rewarded. It's something I'd really like to improve in the early game. Thank you so much for the feedback. It's greatly appreciated.
Really cool! was surprised by the enemy encounters and how you basically made 2 games in this one! Only feedback I have is that I wondered what it would have been like if the movement wasn't blocked by holes in the ground (like maybe the character would automatically jump over a distance of 1 hole?) since I found my flow to smtimes get disrupted by needing to navigate around holes. But enjoyed playing this and found the music pretty as well :) Great job!
I really love that jumping Idea. It would make Islands a viable stylistic choice for the player too. Although, Micrikacik recommended some changes that has made navigating narrow passages much more comfortable without the feeling of losing momentum. Really appreciate the feedback and compliments. Thanks so much.
Cozy vibes, animals are cute, good job ! :)
The music is cool too,theme is well respected and I liked the mechanics of expanding the terrain... well ok... I have the same one soof course I liked :D
I enjoyed the expanding land mechanic. Was very fun seeing my plot of land expand from the starting area. My inputs stopped registering at the shop screen after day 2 though, I’m not sure if it was because I tried to accept two free things or if it was a browser issue (Safari).
Actually, it's an anchoring bug. Sometimes the return to forest button moves up and to the right but the visuals stay behind. It actually moves to just above the word return. So no, I'm fairly certain it's not a browser thing and accepting all the free things shouldn't have an effect. It's that dang button loves to run away. Thanks for giving the game a shot and for the feedback.
Really enjoyed the music and the expansion mechanic was great! Well Done!
Very chill game. The land expansion mechanic reminds me of a game called Bastion which is always a good thing.
Very nice game. The expansion mechanic is pretty neat. Just the enemies could be more "voidy" in my opinion. I also had a problem that I got stuck when the terrain had many little holes in it. Part of this problem is probbably the fact, that although the player can move diagonnaly, the diagonal direction is slightly different from the direction of the tiles.
But otherwise pretty good game. Good job making it on your own!
Yeah. The movement math right now is calculated with future gamepad support in mind. So using the keyboard produces 45° movement where the collision shapes exist in the empty tiles with 60° edges. I tried turning friction down to 0 hoping that would allow for some leniency and sliding, but it didn't seem to work as intended. I do have some more voidly enemy art made for this, but this was my first attempt at a turn based system and I made enough spaghetti to make an Italian grandma feel insecure. For some reason having more than one enemy loaded in the director script's selection algorithm makes it so the game won't even launch. So with that deadline looming, the voidy enemies are missing as well as the elements that tie in the not so voidy ones. I really appreciate the feedback and thank you for taking the time to give it a try and share your thoughts.
Oh, the cursed pasta. I guess you are a bit new to Godot. You can use the CharacterBody2D node to easily implement the top-down movement with "sliding" (not sticking) on the walls. It can also be used in the side-scrolling games, and can do a lot of usefull stuff.
I was looking for that option forever. I think I recalled using it before in another project but I think I was also using jolt physics for that one. Not sure if that option would be available to me as I have the CharBody2D set to floating. Turns out the wall_min_slide_angle was set too high, Turning that down to 0 solves the sticking issue. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. It feels so much better now. Wish I could patch that in right now, but rules be rules. Code and learn, I suppose. The help is greatly appreciated.
Great game, I really like the atmosphere. I did not find out how to get the last resource, but it was fun to grow the forest and see the forest dwellers running around!
The last resource is a reward for defeating dark spirits. However, there's currently a bug which is skipping the rewards from the random encounters. I appreciate the comment and thank you for trying it out.
Absolutely beautiful. The art style is stunning and the atmosphere is so calming. I loved the feeling of growing the island bit by bit, it made the whole world feel alive and magical. Amazing work!
I love your theme, and the mechanic of gradually expanding space around the cave is really original. Great work!
Masterpiece.
i should have been playing this for like one hour.
The visuals are amazing, I really love this drawing style! The ability to create land by throwing seeds is fantastic; I love everything about it: how it feels, how it looks, and how it works. And yes, the island truly feels alive. Great job!
This game is Sick! the vibe, the music, THE CUTE FOXES!
I wana keep playing it but I keep getting a bug in the shop where an item appears like so, and the game crashes 😭😭😭
I couldn't figure out how to patch that in time for submission, but the button is actually kind of huge, you should be able to click anywhere else on the white square or around it to continue. Definitely a high priority fix and I feel like it ruins the experience, but it shouldn't be frozen or anything. I definitely need to practice my UI elements. Thank you for the feedback. It's greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately when it appears for me the whole game freezes and I cant play anymore…
but amazing game! really loved it.
Very cosy and I loved the artistic details like the little squirrel :)