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A Garden Lost in Time's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cozy Spring Vibes | #56 | 3.563 | 4.444 |
| Overall | #68 | 3.207 | 4.000 |
| Presentation | #70 | 3.118 | 3.889 |
| Enjoyment | #73 | 2.940 | 3.667 |
| Creativity | #81 | 3.207 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The game's pretty creative, and I really liked the 2D art and all the hand-drawn assets in it. I would argue that the (pixel art style) game's logo doesn't match the same art style as the game art (2d rendered/textured simple-shaped style). I loved the music as well, it was very cozy and nice to hear! Adding a how-to-play section was amazing to ensure smooth player navigation. I would say maybe after a certain number of crops are unlocked, open up the End Season button because I thought it meant End Game, so I was reluctant to click on it at the start. I also found a bug when you click the how to play UI, it actually stays til when the game starts, so I couldn't read the text. However, awesome work on the game. The gameplay is in-depth and polished. I loved the art direction (music + art) for this game. Awesome work to everyone who worked on this game!
I accidentally pressed the button to end the season halfway through my first playthrough. The humiliation the game inflicted on me, saying "Did you even try?", motivated me to discover a wide variety of wildlife in my second playthrough. An innovative experience with extremely satisfying sound effects. Excellent title!
I loved this! It reminds me of various flash games I'd sink hours of time into.
The presentation is great. Music is fantastic, art is clean and beautiful. I did notice some problems although nothing game breaking and most are pretty simple fixes.
Before I get into the problems I'll mention this which may have been unintended but I feel like it helped the gameplay. In game the click actions register on both press and release which actually made the game much snappier to play as I could interact with two tiles by clicking and releasing at the right time. As I got used to it, it felt really smooth and helped me tend the garden with ease. I am genuinely curious if this was intentional or not so please let me know!
The first actual problem I came across was that on the main menu when you have how to or credits open and click play, then that stays on screen until (I assume) the scene changes. Nothing too major since it won't actually interfere with the game much other than covering the initial text.
Speaking of text, I'd suggest a slightly modified approach to text streaming. A few weeks ago I was experimenting with this same thing and found that a cleaner way would be to send all of the text to the label and instead start at visible_characters = 0 and use physics_process to add to it. The result is that as the text is streaming, it won't get cut off at the end of the line and snap to the next once the word is complete. Again, nothing too major and I probably wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't experimented with it myself recently.
There was only one problem that I felt like actually affected the game in a noticeable way. When multiple fauna appear at the same time, then the music overlays for a few seconds and breaks until another one appears. I'm not too sure what's going on under the hood so I don't have any suggestions for this.
Don't worry, despite me talking about the issues for so long, I did really enjoy it. The issues I listed are pretty minor but I just wanted to give some insight, especially with the text streaming as it's something I tackled before myself. I wish more people would give this a try but I guess people really don't feel like playing submissions if there isn't a browser version available. Still at least all the people that commented, have all enjoyed it!
Oh one more thing about the text streaming as I think you'd have to set this too for it to actually function the way I described.
Hey there! I appreciate your detailed review :) The click and release interaction was not intended, but it does seem to be a "happy accident" that people that people enjoy. I think it's a good medium between individual tile clicks and hold+drag to interact with tiles (which I feel would trivialize the game).
Yeah we found the menu glitch after the jam ended. Very quick fix, but alas, didn't see it in time.
I am curious what you mean about the text streaming, because I am using visible_characters rather than updating the actual label text. Perhaps there's a setting I am missing? Feel free to dm me @chriqqq on Discord if you'd be willing to explain further! (Edit: yes, seems I'm missing the visible_characters_behavior, I'll give it a shot. thanks!)
With the multiple fauna bug, I'll have to look into what's going on and put up a fix after the jam ends. The music trigger logic was very last minute, so it could definitely be better, haha.
But thank you so much for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)
thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed the music! I also noticed the bug that happens if you unlock two animals at the same time. An easy fix I’m sure, but we noticed it too late! These things happen when you make a game in 3 days haha.
It's nice to play this game, the music and graphics are very cute and cozy
Glad you enjoyed!
This was very cozy and fun! I liked the relaxing vibes and the bees and other fauna. I would play more of this.
Thanks so much! Glad you liked it :)
This was very cozy and fun! I liked the relaxing vibes and the bees and other fauna. I would play more of this.
I made it through a couple of time jumps.
Progressively unlocking more plants is a good move to not front load the complexity.
Getting fauna to move in was a nice incentive to keep playing - although I wished for a little more interaction when it comes to clicking through the tools. It would've been fun if you for example had to do like a raking movement when digging through the grass, or shaking the can to get some water out. Or things like the ground drying up again.
I was fairly soon just turning the entire field to muddy brown and then just redigging a square once I harvested a plant.
Cute graphics and chill music.