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A jam submission

Cactus CareView game page

Only the Audacious Cacti Grow!!
Submitted by threee.partners (@threee_partners), DrDre3k, harrizzn, Willydudr — 11 minutes, 33 seconds before the deadline
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Cactus Care's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#682.9332.933
Gameplay/Design#682.8672.867
Graphics#703.0003.000
Overall#782.9002.900
Fun#802.8002.800

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What would you like feedback on?
Overall gameplay loop, suggestions for balance, and ideas for communicating how the game works.

What did you update?
Updated and added much to the UI, added music and sounds, added a few cards, fixed a few bugs.

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Comments

Submitted

A very cool game. I love the idea of playing alongside the farmer and weather, whose cards you can't control. It would have been nice to have some more visual feedback on the cactus about the number of flowers, similar to the growth.

Nice work!

Submitted (1 edit)

If I better understood what I was supposed to be doing, this game could be great. The idea is there, but I never got the primary gameplay loop. Maybe showing the effect each card has would help. When you play a card in most card game, the game shows that card leaving your hand and having an effect on something in the game. Seeing the effect of the weather, the farmer, and yourself would make this much more interesting. Also, adding more actions that counteract or enhance the actions of the farmer and weather would make this more dynamic, because I never saw a reason to not pick maximum growth. This could be a great game if your flesh it out more, but it is just not there yet. To end on a positive note, I really like the music and graphics in this because it makes it feel wonderfully whimsical. 

Submitted

This concept has potential.

Submitted

Very cute! I love that there's helpful information that comes up when you hover over cards, that helped me understand better.
It was really short though so maybe more rounds or some opposing force to make it challenging may make the loop more fun!

Submitted

I remember seeing this game on one of Mark's streams. I can see it's been improved upon quite a bit. The UI has become much more clear and the gameplay is more fleshed out.

While I got into the game without much difficulty, I think a small intro, perhaps something tutorial-like that leads you through the first turn, explaining your options and what steps to take, could still be a good addition.

Hovering over cards, I expected an explanation and only saw that an info card does pop up until much later. I definitely moved the mouse too fast to be able to notice that. Think it's better to just have it pop up immediately on mouse-hover, no real reason to put in a delay.

After playing the full game, all the cards and their effects are clear to me and I was able to win. It was fun, but it was also not terribly challenging. As someone else pointed out, I'd also expected the farmer to make moves that you might have to counter. As a random idea: the farmer might simply have ulterior goals? Growing other plants that require other types of care; not a lot of farmers trying to grow cacti I bet. The nature cards also sometimes halted my growth somewhat, but didn't do much damage either. I didn't feel like I had to plan ahead for winter, for example; I just kinda played whatever random card the game provided for me, usually picking flowers.

I just watched a documentary covering cacti actually, so if you'll allow me to spew some random ideas: given that cacti store water so well, there's lot of animals (mainly birds) that try to get a sip of that, so there are ideas for other obstacles to encounter, and expanding on that, perhaps the cactus must make different choices to survive those obstacles; flowers as the end goal or growing spikes for self-defense. For that matter, flowers are grown to create 'offspring', so perhaps it becomes a choice of growing your main cactus taller, or growing flowers to spawn new cacti. Anyway, just thinking out loud here.

Submitted

Nice twist idea. Really could work but needs some kind of balance to make you actually think it through. I expected the farmer to make moves too that you had to sort of counter. Also really wished it didn't go to a whole new screen every time you make a move. The graphics aren't exactly pretty but the art style really works anyway. I would like to see a more refined version down the road

Submitted

Interesting game, the concept feels different and it's really nice

I couldn't get my head around the mechanics at first but then as most people mentioned it gets really easy.

i played around with the different cards seeing how it affects the growth on the cactus and everything works well, but it needs to be longer, and i couldn't find an scenario where i would lose, so maybe will be nice if you play around that part adding more difficulty to it. 

I see a lot of future on the game if you twitch that, and maybe improve a bit on the music and work around the graphics, which are nice now but i think among time it can get better.

Keep up with the great work, this is really nice!

Submitted (1 edit)

I like the concept,

But I felt the game was very short. I also felt like I can just choose growth and always win.

I think this would be nice to expand upon, also if you have multiple cacti maybe you choose which ones use which resources.

But needs to be slightly longer. with more choices.

The first few rounds are all growth or nothing, and there is no reason to choose nothing, so everyone will always choose growth ( I think😂) so maybe changing that up a bit would be nice

But Good job!

Submitted (1 edit)

Really interesting concept!

Having to work with the farmer and nature's side effects was cool

For a few minutes I missread the 0 as an 8 which consused me a little but I guess that's my bad.

I really like the panel that shows the new stats on each turn! Very clear design 👌

Two issues I found is that the first year pretty much always goes the same, and that once you reach year 2 the best option is almost always to grow flowers to get the best score because other resources balance themselves thanks to the side effects.

Pretty fun still ;)

Submitted

Fun game, should probably prevent cards from appearing if they are directly worse than other cards in the same round.

Submitted

Fun but a bit short

Submitted

Hello,

cool idea. I would add more rounds to the game - you would probably need to strategize more and at least for me, it would be more fun.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I think making the game longer is a great suggestion

Submitted( 1)

I really liked the idea for the game and it's a nice start. I think a few improvements would help, such as making the game a bit more balanced, as I found that I usually only had one choice that would make sense. Also at the start there are several rounds where you can only choose to increase growth and it feels a bit boring. Keep working on it :)

Submitted

I think the presentation is nice, overall I think the current gameplay loop in kind of boring, there are many variables but If I just focus on growth it is difficult to lose. I think that if I could have more than 1 cactus and I had to manage their health and try to keep them all alive and happy until the end it would have been a bit more entertaining than just trying to get the highest score at the end, but that's just my opinion. I hope you keep improving the concept :)

Developer

Thank you for the feedback! The Growth meta is very strong lol

The initial brainstorm idea actually had multiple cacti! My teammate and I will have to reopen that discussion, because I think you're right, that would make the game more fun and interesting

Submitted

Nice game!