| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visuals | #17 | 4.600 | 4.600 |
| Audio | #86 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Innovation | #189 | 3.560 | 3.560 |
| Overall | #204 | 3.627 | 3.627 |
| Enjoyment | #388 | 3.440 | 3.440 |
| Gameplay | #452 | 3.240 | 3.240 |
| Theme | #876 | 3.120 | 3.120 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
Some are said in the cover image, others... we don't know how to say it without spoil the game (T_T)
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
Music and sound effects - Standard unity asset store eula license
Font - SIL open font license
Dotween - Standard unity asset store eula license
Fungus - MIT license
Everything else (art, code, text, etc.) are made by us from scratch during the jam.
How many people worked on the game?2
first of all the art style was the thing that catch my attention and simply soo cozy and cute the game was really a fun experience
this was refreshing to play as i always preferred to play either spooky or action kind off but this game hooked my attention
great work :))
I think many of the suggestions below to improve the game are very good. I think i wanted to add visual variety of the plant and visual clarification of the soil condition. the magnifier glass and the book is the perfect tool to do this. You will wanna let the players find out the game for themselves but you have to give them some clarification. Sometimes i don't know if the soil dry or wet or in between. I also don't know what if the different of the left and center position of the pot. If only i can use magnifier glass to tell me all these. Believe me, players love to read whether it is a hint of it is a full blown page explaination. Also better to put different leaves visual and flower visual to tell the player what each plant type is.
Another thing, when i survived the winter, there was no text about what happened to my plant. A button took me to a restart game in March. I think it is better to congratulate or something. I really think this could be a good game and could scale better given some fundamental gameplay fixed.
The strongest feature of this game is the visual, like others mentioned. And I believe the visual hook can usher this game to have a price tag like $4.99 on Steam.
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! It's great to know that players love to read even if it's a full blown page explaination. I'm always afraid no one would like to read pages of words in games. Though in this game I think I can keep each hint and description in two or three lines, I'm not sure if I can make it in each and every game. Thank you for letting me know it's okay to have more lines, even pages.
I guess you survived to the winter with no flowers, in this case, it will enter the bad ending, the same one as not survived to winter. I think you're right, surviving itself is also something worth celebrating. It doesn't have to lead to flower or seed. It's an end instead of a mean. It has meaning of itself. I just didn't realise that. Thank you, I think we'll add one in the post-jam version.
And thank you for your high praise for the art. The artist I work with is truly talented. A fun side effect is, I don't know how it happens, but I found my own aesthetic sense dramatically improved after working with her for only a week, I began to notice details that I never noticed before, like my brain got rewired.
I think many of the suggestions below to improve the game are very good. I think i wanted to add visual variety of the plant and visual clarification of the soil condition. the magnifier glass and the book is the perfect tool to do this. You will wanna let the players find out the game for themselves but you have to give them some clarification. Sometimes i don't know if the soil dry or wet or in between. I also don't know what if the different of the left and center position of the pot. If only i can use magnifier glass to tell me all these. Believe me, players love to read whether it is a hint of it is a full blown page explaination. Also better to put different leaves visual and flower visual to tell the player what each plant type is.
Another thing, when i survived the winter, there was no text about what happened to my plant. A button took me to a restart game in March. I think it is better to congratulate or something. I really think this could be a good game and could scale better given some fundamental gameplay fixed.
The strongest feature of this game is the visual, like others mentioned. And I believe the visual hook can usher this game to have a price tag like $4.99 on Steam.
First of all, wow, the artwork and visuals are simply amazing. This is absolutely the kind of game I usually love, and everything about the art style is right up my alley! The presentation page was also super cute, and I loved the animations too. I also really loved the adorable journal!
I think a short explanation at the beginning could be helpful, maybe as a little pop-up telling us which month we're starting in and explaining that we need to click on the journal to move forward in time. I sometimes had trouble understanding what I was supposed to do next, especially after the storm image and when “Unlock Trait: Trust No One” appeared. I think those parts could be explained a little more clearly so the player knows how to progress.
I also noticed that some of the text in the journal can get a little repetitive. It could be nice to have different entries as time goes on, so each season or attempt feels a little different and players feel like they're discovering something new. It could also be a great opportunity to develop the narrative further and keep players engaged throughout each new attempt.
This is such a cozy and cute game. I'll definitely come back to it, since cozy games are totally my thing!
Edit: I replayed it so many times. I GOT ONE FLOWER!!! I actually loved that I had to restart multiple times before finally getting one! I really enjoyed going through each season and having to experiment with different combinations to figure out what worked. I think it could also be nice to have the option to save our progress and keep the flowers we've successfully grown, then add more pots and try to grow different ones. It would give players a nice sense of progression while still keeping the trial-and-error aspect of the game.
2nd Edit: I think the encyclopedia idea suggested by another player is such a great idea! It would help us go in less blindly and at least give us an idea of what flowers we can grow and what we're working towards.
Thank you so so much for this detailed feedback. That's exactly something we really really need!
It's a good idea to have a short explanation, a little pop-up about the month we start, and where to finish the month into the journal. I think we'd add some kind of one line pop-up for month text and next month button to make that happen. The "Unlock Trait ..." text appeares after the plant died, and thank you for remind us, we forgot to add a short description for the restart button in that scene, and I think we'd add a popup text line to explain what to do next on hover over that button. And as for progression, we're thinking about making a collection/ encyclopedia system as suggested, and we'd like to put all plant traits there too, so that we can see more about the description and the progression.
The repetitive text in the journal is some kind of a design. I thought of making some text variation and pick one randomly each time, but then I gave up that idea, 'cause I kind of hope the repetition can add a little bit atmosphere of existentialism. I chose a music with some kind of a repetition structure for the same reason. And the year after year time loop, also for that. I guess I didn't build up that atmosphere well enough. Thank you so much for letting me know, though I currently have no idea how to improve that, it's very good to know there's something I still need to keep on working.
For the edits: Congratulations! And I'm so happy that you enjoy the trial and errors, I'm a huge fan of that mechanic as a gamer. I also think it's a very genius idea, a great suggestion to have a encyclopedia system. We'll work on that in the post-jam version :D
Such a lovely game!!
I really love the wordplay between "Trust No One" and "Trust Know One." You have to trust someone in order to get to know them, but you never know if that trust will eventually lead to failure. I really love this idea!
I also absolutely love the little duck planter!! 🦆 On my first playthrough, my flower bloomed, but I still didn't get to learn what flower it was...and then it died. That made me a little sad TT
Maybe adding some kind of collection or encyclopedia would be nice? Since the game is quite slow-paced, I think the amount of hints already feels fine, but I wish the overall goal of the game could be a little clearer! :D
Thank you so much for your feedback and your love to this game!
It's such a genius idea to have a collection or encyclopedia! We have been thinking about maybe make a collection system to unlock all colors of flowers in the post-jam version, and it would be much better if we combine that collection system together with some kind of a encyclopedia system! We can put even more items in it, like the plant traits, etc., making it also work as manual. I'm terrible at writing linear instructions, non-linear fragments writing for a collection and encyclopedia system would work much better for me! XD
I really like the art style and music — they’re both super cute! Maybe a few more hints or clearer guidance would make it easier to know what to do.
Nice idea!! We cannot trust how the plant can be growing or not!
I think the only suggestion is to make the hint more obvious for the root and the flower one? or to make the background more clearer if is for sunny or what does being in the middle mean. And maybe for polishing to add some animation in the background like a small wind on the curtain?
But other than that, great job!!! The art is so cute!
That's a very unique way of interpreting it hahaha XD
Though the plants are quite trustworthy in my opinion! Their behaviors are extremely consistent with their traits, except for survival choices (which is totally predictable). I once thought if it's better to give them some random choices that would be more realistic and more fun but then I decided to let them stick to their traits because of the theme. In this case, as long as you know the plants enough, you can always trust them growing and blooming in the end, even for those with the "trust no one" trait.
Thanks so much for your feedback, we're thinking about making the sunlight level of direct sunlight place and behind the thin curtain place visually different, and maybe add some direct hints, both visually and in text. Animation for polishing is a good idea, though time-wise it might be a little bit not that cost-effective for a two person team like us. Yet I think animation could be a great idea when there's some visual element we'd like to emphasize, visual clues that will be easily missed when they're static images. Thank you so much for bringing up this idea.
Really nice cozy game! The art is of course beautiful, and the audio is also nice! The game takes a very unique take on the theme, which is, in my opinion, really cool to see!
Although I was a bit stumped as to what I was doing wrong in the beginning, after some trial and error I figured out about the different spots having different light values. After that everything went much more smoothly!
I played a few times, and there's really lots of possible paths you can take! I've gotten I think three different colored flowers, and I still feel like there's a lot more possibilities out there!
Anyways, really great job, I'll maybe come back later on in the jam to try and find some new flowers :D
Congrats! And thank you so much for your feedback. It's great to hear you really enjoy this game.
There're seven colors of flowers in total, from the warmest red to the coldest blue, based on the places with different sunlight value you put them. More time under the direct sunlight, the warmer, more time in the shadow, the colder. For a while I was thinking of making it twenty-one so that each and every choice one made would make a difference. But then it occured to me that downsize it to seven would be better, 'cause in this case, some survival choices one have to make won't inevitably change their preferable color of the flowers.
It's not you doing anything wrong, but the game's lack of instructions. I'm horrible at writing instructions cause I rarely read instructions myself. I just try out things with intuition (which turn out to be wrong many times though T_T). So when it comes to write one, I always have no idea where to start. I wish I can make the infos to be received intuitively by people without having to read instructions, but I always fail. However, a very good thing about games and game prototype making is, there's no real price to be paid, no real cutting gets hurt when doing trials and errors, we can try as many rounds as we like, think as longer as we need, to figure things out.
Really apprieciate your feedback, wish you can find your favorate flower :D
The art is so beautiful! It was really such a lovely slow paced style and I LOVE the creative twist on the prompt name (: like others said though i really wish there were more queues to what you were supposed to do. I kept killing my plant and felt like i was just randomly watering/moving it to try to get it to survive past the third month ):
It would be cool if maybe at first you started with at least really vague instructions and as you grow more plants/learn what works, then more specific info/care instructions are revealed about how to make it thrive vs just survive? Or maybe if at the very start you got to select the cutting and all you knew was the name of the plant - then you can discover more info about them as you play?
Regardless, great work overall and an amazing concept! I would love to play any follow-up versions if your team decides to keep building off of this (: this could be such a fun mobile game when you want something cozy
Thank you so much for your detailed feedback, that's exactly what I needed to know. I'm the kind of person who don't quite read instructions myself, instead, I like testing things out. So when it comes to me to write a manual, I always have no idea where to start. (T_T)
It's a great idea to start from one info, and then one by one more. Actually that's something I was trying to do (and failed). If we choose the default beginner friendly plastic pot, and then the default soil fomula which gets dry in a moderate rate, then the only thing that would determin a cutting's life or death in the first 5 turns' summer is only the different places with different sunlight levels. After that, in the 6th turn when autumn comes, we'll meet the second factor, the weather. It will affect the soil moisture as well, but that can also be adjusting through simply place the plant at a different place with a different sunlight level. And after sucessfully survive to the first winter, and maybe see one or two colors of flowers. If we'd like to see more flowers in certain colors, and we know in order to achieve that, we'll have to put them in certain sunlight level without killing them, we need now begin to try out the combinations of different pots and different soils that can make them both survive and thrive, in a certain color, at a certain place of a certain sunlight level.
The tricky part for me is, I just don't know how to write it simple and clear in the manual, or even better, make it intuitively known by people without having to read a manual. I tried but it just dosen't seem to work. Thank you so much for your suggestions, I think I'll probablly try start with a vague instruction about places and sunlight levels, how they would affect the soil moisture, and how too dry or too wet soil would kill a plant. Maybe start with certain numbers of sun icons and water icons on each place to put the plant. And make soil moisture level be seen through both visual clue and some text descriptions using the magnifying glass tool. And maybe some warning tips about how too dry or too wet soil may make a plant sick and wilt move it to some place else through a popup when the leaves turn yellow for the first time. We may think it through during the rating period and try update the game after that to see how it works. Thank you so much for your constructive advices, would be very appreciated if there's more feedbacks in future.
my girlfriend made me play the game and it was very realistic which is not good for the plants :’(
she did coach me to the winter tho and it was very adorable <3
You're a very lucky guy to have a girlfriend who knows how to love and care a plant. I rarely envy people, but I do envy you. XD
And thank you for your feedback about the mechanics might be too realistic and the plant maybe too easy to die. Think we should add a soil moisture status tooltip on the magnifying glass tool, so that people don't have to know its importance until the plant's death.
honestly i think its more of a lack of instructions, my girlfriend just intuitet the whole game because she knows how to care for plants very very well. i dont think its too realistic or anything i just think you need to add a little plant growing manual inside the game and to better visually communicate where which lightlevel is :)
would have the cool sideeffect of maybe teaching some dumdums like me about how to touch grass
I think it would be a very bad game if someone have to have real life gardening knowledge to play a gardening sim game hahaha :( I prefer to believe that your girlfriend have a profound sensitivity to intuit the unspokens. That's why she knows how to take care of plants very very well in real life. Plants can't talk, unlike people, they can't come to us saying hey let's talk when they are drowning or in desperate need of water. That's also why she play this game so well, with me failed to write a proper manual.
We do have some visual clue about the light level though. Aside from the curtains above (no curtain vs. thin curtain vs. thick curtain), when we place the plant in the darkest place, under the thickest curtain, we'll see the whole plant become a little bit darker, as if it's in the shadow. But I guess it's not visually obvious enough so people are very likely to miss it. Maybe change it much more darker? And I guess it's probably better if we make the other two places' sunlight level visually different as well. And maybe add some direct descriptions, like different numbers of water icons on each place with different sunlight value, showing they comsume different amount of water.
Besides places with different sunlight value, every changing visual element in this game also matters to the soil moisture thus affect a plant's survival: the weather, the pot, and the soil formula. I think it's probably everything's all mixed up at once at the beginning so it's hard for people to figure out which one causes what. I'm thinking about maybe lock some choices at first, unlock them after survive the first winter, but I personally don't quite like the idea of making people have less choices in hands. So maybe learn from some classic games like two point series or so, make a level by level unlock mode, aside from the sandbox mode?
Thank you to who made this, somehow i got so sentimental Playing! You trully have a beautifull soul<3 ive rated over 30 Games already, but i think this is my Favourite. So simple yet perfect!!!
Really appreciate your love to this game. And thank you so much for your words, that's something I never expected.
I was quite sentimental before making this game. Then I put myself in this busy busy game making week. I thought I made a calm game, I felt calm designing mechanics and writing codes, like I always do. Never thought someone would see it, and felt the same sentimental while playing. You yourself trully have a very beautiful soul, incredibly empathetic, and incredibly good. I did't even realise I was still sentimental myself, not after the jam began, I thought it was over, but that's not true. Now with your words, it's all back, washing over me.
I'm so lucky to have you playing this game, and your words really means a lot to me. It's a fortune to have a chance to know myself better, knowing what's deep in my heart, knowing that I still care.
Yeah, the artist I work with is extremely talented, I adore her art as well. And thank you so much for your feedback about the instructions, would definitely add some in future.
And also thank you for the feedback about text color, I didn't realise it untill submit, maybe it's because I always turn the the system's night light on. XD We have changed the text color now, and would update if after the rating period.
Like others have said, the visual is superb. The systems of the game are a little confusing. Personally not a big fan of guessing trial and error games, but overall its a simple and cute experience.
Thank you for your feedback. Should really add hints and tutorials in future.
I personally love the trial and error mechaniques in games though. Maybe it's because I'm the explorer kind of gamer, and explore the unknowns through experiments is great fun to me. Of course, as long as the experiments require me think instead of using brute force.
Such a visual treat! The art style and music are both so nice and relaxing. I played three times and somehow got TRUST IN NO 1 every single time lol. How many traits are there to unlock in total?
I was also a little confused about when I should water and when I shouldn't. It would be nice to have a few more hints about the gameplay while playing!
Really enjoyed it though :D
The trait is completely random so you're very lucky to meet one same trait for three times. Possibility for that is below 5%. Time for lottery! XD Maybe we should consider make it less random so that these kind of things won't happen.
Both too dry and too wet soil will cause plant sick and dead, the best time to water it is when it's half wet, and the best place to place it is where the soil can be half wet.
Thank you so much for your feedback. I think we really need to have a hint system.
The music, the art and the trial and error are all great. I was addicted and dedicated to make my flower grow lol. Great game :) Please give mine a try!
The art style is beautiful and relaxing, and the fitting music makes the whole experience really enjoyable! It did take me quite a few tries to fully understand the gameplay though haha.
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