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Pando Garden's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation - how game looks and sounds like | #13 | 3.762 | 3.762 |
| Overall - main category | #14 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Game Design - how good idea and mechanics design is | #22 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Wavedash Challenge - provide link to your game on Wavedash for the challenge:
https://wavedash.com/games/pando-garden
Heroic Labs Challenge
No
Photon Challenge
No
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Comments
Hello Helen!
Congratulations on Pando Garden placing 7th in the Wavedash Challenge at the Defold Game Jam 2026! 🎉
Your prize is €10 in Wavedash credit. To get it, please send me your email address you'd like to use for/already use for your Wavedash account in a message to my pawel@defold.se
What a calm and beautiful game! The night-sky palette and soft glow are lovely, and waking a tree that then provides water to wake the next one is an elegant take on chain reaction. The awakening feedback with the canopy lighting up felt rewarding. One suggestion: the onboarding could be clearer, since it took me a moment to realize I must drag nutrients from above the ground and that Grow does nothing until something is placed, so a short hint there would help. Lovely work!
I spent so much time on this - the night garden setting hit a nerve. Very satisfying and very pretty.
Very nice looking and very satisfying game - as soon as I figured out the reactions - it was very smooth and rewarding!
It’s so satisfying when you get a chain reaction going and just listen to those magical tones 😊 Visual style and music had that Brian Eno generative vibe for me - I truly adore his work with all my heart.
Amazing work and pure art, congrats!
Oh, mentioning Brian Eno vibes is such a compliment to me! I’m so glad you made that connection, and thank you so much for your kind words! 💜
Love the glowing roots, such a cozy vibe. Connecting a forest through its roots is such a fresh take on the theme.
softening experience. first i didn't know, but reading helped. then it went smooth. cool idea. could be more intuitive and be visualized by better graphics, but yea, different scope for this timeline i guess, I liiike it,
I really enjoyed playing it! It's very simple, and by my second run, I understood a lot of things and connected way more trees than I expected! Great concept :D
Very relaxing and soothing. Really liked this one! Congrats!
What a game! ❤️
Pretty simple mechanic, but it has endless depth to it. The visuals are really cute, and the bloom effect really makes it.
My run also ended because I hit a dead end. 😂
Thanks for your kind words!
My bad, I didn’t explain it well enough — you can use the water drop to make the sand (the five-dot square) wet, so the roots can grow through it. After the voting stage ends, I’ll definitely update the game to make this clearer 😅
Yeah I thought about that too, since you can put nodes on the sand, but it just wouldn't connect. Honestly though, now I'm not even sure if I was doing it right. 😄
Ah, I got it! You should add a water drop near the sand – so in some radius the drop makes all sands wet. It’s really unclear, so I’ll try to change it somehow 🤔
Ooh. 🤯
I did not try that. 😂
Do you have plans to keep developing this game? Yesterday I played your game, then went to cook food and came up with a whole incremental game concept built around this idea and mechanic, using pretty much the same simple shape visual style.
Sorry I missed the comment! Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, but right now I’m entirely focused on my other game, which I plan to release in the next two months. So only after that 😇, though we could still chat about collaborating anyway!
Lol, I reply on twitter and decided to come back here to re-read the messages. Missed your reply the exact same way. 😂
It happened right around the day I was getting the most feedback and replies to my own comments. I will write to you on Telegram. ❤️
Really enjoyed playing the game. Nice vibe and mechanic. Unfortunately, somehow I ended up with a wall of obstacles that was impossible to pass. Solid entry for a jam.
I agree with everything! And wonder if I was stopped by the same wall. Was really up to keep growing the trees but couldn't figure out how to pass that wall
Hello, and thank you for playing and for your warm words!
I guess you both found the spot between the rocks and sand, just like in the screenshot from the post. I didn’t explain this well enough, and I’m sorry! Rocks are impossible to pass through, but your roots can grow through the sand once it’s wet – so just use a blue water drop if you have one.
Very well presented game. So relaxing to play.
Beautiful game with a nice take on the chain reaction theme! Had a great time making it to the other side of the garden. Only thing I would add is a keyboard shortcut for the 'grow' action for those who play on desktop to speed things up.
Thank you so much for the nice words! Oh, I tested it on my phone just in case, but totally forgot about the keyboard controls. I’ll try to add them after the voting phase!