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Petalbook: The Secret Garden's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #9 | 4.517 | 4.517 |
| Audio | #9 | 4.103 | 4.103 |
| Overall | #31 | 3.816 | 3.816 |
| Polish | #32 | 3.724 | 3.724 |
| Gameplay | #34 | 3.586 | 3.586 |
| Art | #47 | 4.034 | 4.034 |
| Limitation | #102 | 2.931 | 2.931 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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I had a lot of fun trying to figure out the different ways of planting the flowers, even though seeing something about ph made me a bit nervous at first :) I got into it pretty quickly anyway, thanks to the descriptions in the book!
I often opened the backpack and tried clicking the seeds / tools, hoping to be able to use them from there instead of having to scroll through the item bar, but it worked well overall.
It also would have been nice to use the magnifying glass with right click for a quick inspection, instead of having to get out the tool every time.
The way the plants reacted to the weather (both in animation and technically) was really cool to watch and the amount and variety were exciting to see too! Well done!
It's fun to discover new flowers. The UI is very big, but it's nice that the game is very mobile friendly. It's a bit frustrating that the storm, wind, and rain are sometimes occur for longer than 3 days, but that's a nice bit of challenge, just a bit unbalanced. And the music fits the vibe totally.
OST it's simply amazing!! Mechanics were engaging, but personally a bit too much to check from the start, maybe add more features as we unlock things? Overall really nice game and the title screen was peak spring! 💚
thank you so much!! I did the OST for the game :)
great great work! following rn
very impressive for a jam game, feels very complete: alot of interesting mechanics in here (weather, time, etc), pacing also felt quite nice, and gameplay/instructions were simple and clear.
games pretty solid for what it is, has enough in here to keep interest. would have been more interesting to have varying lose conditions.
You bring up a good point for the audio (I’m guessing it’s the SFX). I think in the future, I’ll make the sounds less lengthy so we don’t have that cracking issue. Granted I may have messed up a little on double checking for an audio fade on some of the SFX I made.
The hourly tracks themselves should be fine from what I know, but the time speed up track can def get tiring.
I love the ideas you suggested for more lose conditions.
Love this game!! Super cozy. I love the music loop during the gameplay :)
Although not my usual cup of tea since I prefer hyper ADHD games, the fact that there's details to keep track of such as the alkaline and the soil and theres varied plant sizes, make up for an interesting experiment type game. I culled every single tiny ones and only left the large seeds, if flowers near the end of their service, they too get culled. Only the pretty and the large remains... great game
ALSO the OST is PEAK holy moly!! I love the music when it speeds up, reminds me of the times I played harvest moon on an emulator (I hated the slowness of walking)
Thank you!!! I made the OST for this :D I'm so happy you enjoyed it :p
It's like Stardew Valley without the running around part! The game is super cozy and I like how the music speeds up when changing the time of day. The tutorial was quite heavy so I think it could be spread out a little. I enjoyed planting and ultimately neglecting my flowers. Well done!
Really nailed the theme of the Jam and super addictive. Once I got to harvest the first flower the whole game clicks and becomes a smooth and relaxing experience. Very in depth for the conditions and the variety of species. When you get into the habit of looking at the book, you can easily unlock different varieties of flowers.
For the controls I would like to have key binds for the tools since going up and down in the menu for the hoe and hammer is a bit unintuitive.
The addition of time management is a great touch. It gives players the choice to speed things up or let everything grow slowly in the background.
It’s impressively in-depth given the constraints, with a great variety of species. Well done!
Amazing concept, amazing music and such great polish put into this! Absolutely loved this game and felt like i needed to see every flower grow and bloom just because the sprites were so damn cute. I absolutely adore the roses and made a whole little area for them. Only issues i had were the sound glitch in web and something just QoL I'd enjoy (unsure if others would but) I sooo wish i could hold down left click instead of clicking with tools and planting. But seriously great entree and fantastic vibes :p
Thank you! I had a blast doing the sound and music for this one.
Amazing game! This has got to be one of the most "complete" packages. The art, music, and programming are REALLY well done.
I loved the music so much. You can tell the composer knows what they're doing. I liked the sped up music too--I went "aw that's nice" when I first sped up the time--but after a while it loses its novelty and feels a bit too on the nose.
The art is also amazing. The work done for the UI, the flowers, the environment; it's a lot, and it all looks very pretty.
And from a technical perspective, this game has quite a lot of depth. I haven't seen the code but there's a lot of moving parts and complexity so the effort there was probably great too.
As for the gameplay... yeah I was quite confused. The first red flag for me was the tutorial was quite long without really "showing" what you were talking about. The baby step approach where you introduce more complexity as you go fares better in games like these (esp. game jams) because getting info-dumped is a deterrent and lots of people don't really wanna spend time trial-and-erroring and tryna figure things out. I didn't really know why my stuff weren't growing and the inventory didn't have a blurb about it (was I supposed to look elsewhere?). Sometimes my poppies would grow and then hide? My Hibiscus's just didn't grow at all. Mannn I'm no farmer; I'm studying Computer Science
But otherwise I see the potential. It's a really polished game.
For flower bloom & grow condition, you need to look into the book.
Each has their own bloom condition, they will unbloom when condition is not met.
I'm pretty active in the comfy jam server, let me know if there's anything you don't understand
AWWWWW Thank you!!!!!!!!! I'm the composer who did all the sound and music stuff for this, I really appreciate it!
Also yeah the speed-up can get a bti repetitive haha. I think maybe we'll consider keeping it to just fading between the tracks rather than having a sped up version of the main menu
Really cozy farming game! Reminds me of Stardew Valley, but the game is a little bit harder because of pH value and all of my Hibiscus(?) kept dying. Appreciate that I can just skip time instead of wait, and also love the weather effect.
Edit: just got to replay the game, finally got past the Hibiscus thing, now I unlocked about 17/30 flowers.
The art is so cosy and cute!! Super interesting concept with how in-depth the growth cycles of each flower is, as well as the soils pH level effecting the variations given. The whole game is so charming, the art, the music, everything. such a great job, well done :)
Really impressive game. The weather effects were super cool and done really well, they made a big impression on the environment. I liked the zoom-out feature too, and the quest list gave me something to shoot for in the beginning. What really stood out though was how much depth there was here. The pH system, weather, bloom timing, and flower variants all worked together in a way that made discovering new flowers feel really rewarding. The glow on the adult blooms at night was such a nice touch too. Sound design was really well done as well, very gentle and cozy but still clear and communicative. The visuals are great, and it was exciting every time I bloomed a new flower for the first time. Really well-polished game here.
Thank you so much!!! - Sound person :3
This was beautiful and very enjoyable. I really loved the art and the polish you took the time to put in
You managed to make me feel like a gardener, and to live moment of pure pride, I had a great time! As other stated the start is a bit rough, and it's unfortunate that the music is sped up by the time skip button. I also thought I was stuck in inventory for a few second, I even wonder if that back pack was a necessary addition? Any way, great work! There is potential to this kind of gardening-puzzly game! I really enjoy games where you have to find out and discover things by yourself, where you have to pay attention and all. There are still some stuff I didn't fully understand (the soil quality incidence and water quantity influence are ones), but it didn't keep me to fill all the quest at the end! 🦾
Thanks for playing!!!
Backpack is for item descriptions and also allow player to rearrange their stuffs for hotbars.
Wanted to add shop system too if possible.. but cant...
Soil have Health, Water and PH.
Health & Water affect plants growth, while PH decides what variant it is.
Honestly, don't have to know too much on the PH, its only for nerds who wanna fine tune their flower breed.
You can easily get the flower variants by planting alot of the flowers since each soil tile have different PH.
I can not overstate how happy I am the Quest system was added. The start was rough, I got a bit frustrated and confused initially how to grow the hibiscus (I know the hints were there, but not sure they clicked -enough-). But I braved on just to spite the quest and was really satisfied and had like a 'YEAHH' moment when they finally started to bloom.
Pretty neat, loved the weather effects, the little leaves and stuff like fireflies in the night were really charming.
My main complaint is surprisingly the way the time worked, it was both charming with the way the sfx sped up but over time the speeding up sfx started being unpleasant when I was doing it frequently.
Seeking out the different soil with the magnifying glass was also a bit frustrating sometimes, wish there were more visual tells which soil acidity was which.
And there was a bit too much sudden written tutorial at the start for my dumb brain to understand.
Overall, pretty neat.
I really like it. Especially for a jam game, it's surprisingly complex when it comes to the mechanics. Overall I very much enjoy the ambience (animations, weather & effects, day night cycle, etc.). When it comes to the gameplay loop itself, I have to admit it felt a little bit forced (like trying to figure out the conditions or then being screwed over by RNG to get said conditions), though maybe I was just too slow in figuring out how it works lol. (Also the HUD was overlapping the edges of the map a little :D) But overall, the growth cycles, pH levels, flower variations, weather effects etc make it really quite fun, and with some more polish post-jam this would be a really cool game I think!
Cute garden simulator uwu
Since the main goal is about collecting, a save system would be nice to have imo
Great pixel art and music. Love the sound effects during time fast forward and I can't believe how much content you built into the game (weather, pH, plant varieties...). Nice and cozy.
Thanks for playing!!!
Yea, is was pretty headache to code this game cuz of the depth of the systems. It got grow condition, time condition, weather condition, soil condition, etc.
Im glad i made it, i really learned alot about system designs.
Getting all those systems to come together without the whole thing becoming noodles on the ground is a huge undertaking. Well done!
Pretty art and great music! Game's fun to play as well.
I did find myself losing a bit of momentum after a while. I think a small system or two to nudge the player forward could help. Overall though, really nice experience. Super polished and the tutorial right over the game screen was really nice, I always forget what does what in a farming game, so that was really helpful. Noice work!