| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Farming Complexity | #9 | 3.207 | 3.429 |
| Lore | #9 | 3.207 | 3.429 |
| Overall | #11 | 2.967 | 3.171 |
| Game Loop | #12 | 2.806 | 3.000 |
| Audio | #13 | 2.673 | 2.857 |
| Enjoyment | #13 | 2.940 | 3.143 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Okay first of all, congrats on releasing your first game, you should be proud as this is very well made. I love the darkwood style lighting system, really adds to the atmosphere. Super interesting premise too. I have some feedbacks that might help improve the player experience:
- It was quite unclear what you need to plant seed. I tried pressing E like 50 times before realizing that you need to plant them near a lantern. Things like this might be clear to you as the developer, but you need to communicate it to the player, at least if it's not something intuitively real like "attacked = hurt" type of thing. Off the top of my head, you could communicate that planting requires lantern by adding some sort of highlights in radius around the lanterns. You should also add an error message when pressing E while not close to a lantern, something along the lines of "You need light to plant" or something.
- Super important UI elements should not be obscured at any point. I'm talking about this one in particular:
That screenshot is a little hard to see but that's exactly my point.
- You should make controls that are simple but intuitive. There's no reason to make harvest and plant 2 different buttons. Especially when those two buttons occupy the same finger (index finger for E and F, plus WASD). We're trying to play a farming game, not play twisters with our fingers. Make it contextual. What I mean by this is that try making one button do all the leg work. Or picture this, how about planting by using the mouse seeing as the cursor is always visible instead of planting where your character is at. I truly thing it would make it way more intuitive to plant, you don't have to position your player just right and then having to move your index finger from D to E.
But yeah I don't want to overwhelm you with feedbacks so I will leave it at those. Hope I can be somewhat helpful in your game dev journey and keep grinding, love what I'm seeing so far.
I really appreciate this feedback, I did struggle a bit with the controls and how to get things to work with the same input.. so I do totally agree with you on the harvesting vs planting issues.
I did have a bit of dialogue at the beginning of the game to try and help players understand what the lanterns were for, but I can completely understand where it would be confusing to someone just hopping in for the first time. I definitely need to take that into consideration as I develop more games and try to make things as user friendly as possible.
also I cant see the screenshot you are referring to at all, its just a white line, can you explain which part of the UI you are referring to? I tried to make things very easy to see and select but would love to know how I can improve with what you are referencing.
Thanks again so much for your feedback!! I truly loved your game so I am very honored to hear what you have to suggest :)
OHHHHH, that's valid.. I was trying to figure out the best way to make it bob so the player would notice it when getting closer, but also make sure its not like covering half of the building and the area above it.. but I understand where you are coming from and can see why that would be hard to read for players
Thank you so much!! I am glad you liked it, and I tried my best to make it feel both like a cozy farm game but a more ominous environment. I did think about implementing a mechanic where you could move the lanterns after placing them, but ill be honest I was struggling to figure out how to do that in the time frame that we had, and then on top of that I thought that it kind of added to the strategy of the game where you have to think about every choice to optimize your farming. thank you so much for playing and for your feedback <3
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