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Speedy Bonsai's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #14 | 3.758 | 3.758 |
| Theme | #43 | 3.455 | 3.455 |
| Graphics | #52 | 3.515 | 3.515 |
| Overall | #81 | 2.897 | 2.897 |
| Gameplay | #124 | 2.545 | 2.545 |
| Audio | #183 | 1.212 | 1.212 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/cobrajs/gamedevjs_jam_2023
Challenge
Open Source
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Comments
Well done portraying the theme. The gameplay reminds me of an old flash game that needs to interact with certain people in a building. But this one is a plant. Really good! Well done.
REALLY great take on the theme.
Well done mechanics.
A peculiar one still one of my favourites thus far.
Thanks for the review! Glad you enjoyed it!!
Interesting take on the theme, and such a relaxing zen game. I think I did pretty well taking care of my bonsai tree (just kidding, my tree looks awful.)
Thanks!! Yeah, that’s what most trees tend towards due to the growing algorithm (didn’t leave time for tweaking it to perfection haha)!
Quite a unique game (or perhaps - toy?) and and original interpretation of the jam theme. Very cool visual style, kind of reminded me of ZX Spectrum times. My only complaint is that starts to use CPU quite heavily after some time.
Thanks!! Definitely just a toy since there’s no goal haha! And yeah, the tree growth algorithm I used is terribly inefficient, along with it re-rendering the entire tree basically every other frame. Still trying to think of ways to make it more efficient post-jam, though if I go the route I’m thinking (basically making it even more of toy and removing the time flies and just making it about pruning and growing the bonsai with more control) it should be a little more efficient just because I won’t have to worry about it tracking the time flies haha.
love the visual style of this. I think leaning into its non-gameness would make it really cool. Kind of like a generative tool with some sliders to adjust for different outcomes! Keep it up!
Post-jam that’s definitely the direction I’m taking this! I need to relook through all the comments because there’s been a ton of good suggestions, but for sure I’m going to have a way to control the speed of growth, and a tool for making a branch follow the cursor, and likely one for adding subbranches. Though having sliders to like adjust for frequency of subbranch creation, or some other series of things would be cool!
Thanks for the review!!
Pretty original entry. After some minutes game tends to lack, i suppose is consuming so much memory processing. I'm not sure if this is a game or a toy, but it was fun to play with it.
Thanks! Yeah, my growing algorithm is a bit spendy on the memory side, especially when the tree gets really big with lots of branches. Definitely need to change it so that it “bakes” the parts of the tree that are finished growing, or something like that. Glad you enjoyed it!
Really unique entry :)
Thanks! :D
Really cool concept! It would be awesome if you could adjust the speed of how fast the tree were growing, as it felt pretty rapid at times. It was really fun trying to make a nice looking tree. Well done, thanks for the game :-D
Thanks! I’m leaning towards a mode post-comp where there’s no flies, and there’s a tool to have the branch follow the cursor with a controllable time speed. It would be a lot more sandbox-y, but then this kinda is too since there’s no real point haha
This made we wanna buy a bonai three :3
This was my alternative to getting into bonsai hahaha
Pretty original idea! I'm not good at growing trees but I had fun nonetheless. A mechanic to influence speed would be a nice touch. Great work!
Thanks!! So you mean like being able to control the speed of growth, so that instead of growing/not growing, there would be a way to grow at like half speed? That would definitely make it a less frenetic haha!
I definitely have plans to add some things to this post jam, most especially like some kind of sound, and visual effects to show the effect of actions, so adding some new mechanics might be fun while I’m updating it!
Yep something like that! Have fun improving it :)
Nice game. The visual is simple yet pleasant to the eyes, it's also blended with your page, that's cool.
I let mine grow monstrous, and then cut off everything including the planter.
Haha thanks!! Even though it’s a bit wonky, I really like how the pruning visuals turned out. Very satisfying just chopping all the branches off in my opinion haha
I really enjoyed this! "This is not how trees actually grow (I don't know how trees grow)" made me laugh too. Beautiful style and very innovative game, well done!
Thank you!! I also had a line in there acknowledging the fact that there were no leaves on the trees, but I went ahead and implemented the leaves in the last like forty minutes haha
Very unique art style, I like it very much, but there is no feedback on operation, it is a bit confusing to play, adding some sound effects would be better, a good game.
Thanks!! I had a lot of procrastination so the majority of the game happened a few days before the deadline. I added leaves in the last hour haha! I’m hoping to add some feedback and sound effects after the voting period so it’s a bit more complete, because I like the concept.
I loved it, an awesome concept. I felt like the Karate kid.
For some reason my bonsai would often get stuck like this.
Ahh yeah, so I made it so that once you prune a branch, then that branch wouldn’t grow anymore. The pruning tool is a bit wonky though haha. It’s still possible to hit a time fly into the branch and get a new branch growing out of it (at least in theory… I should have done more testing haha). Thanks for the review!
The idea is super cool!
Thanks! If I had planned my time better, the idea was to try and grow bonsai into certain shapes for points/money. That got scrapped because I did everything at the very last minute haha
Nice simulation game. Did you use L-systems to grow the tree?
I found the snip tool a bit confusing to use actually. I could never control what was being cut. Maybe some more visual indicators would have been helpful. Was there any difference between daytime and nighttime? I think that would've added to the theme a bit more.
Thanks!! That would have been smarter: it’s actually just an array of points, and when the simulation is running I extend the last point in the array until it is a certain distance then add another point. I give it width by caching two points that are like perpendicular to the two vectors on either side of a point, and each point can have sub-branches that grow out of either side.
I should have had the points be deltas so that when I rendered the tree the sub-branches would actually be attached to the sides and would grow out, but I ran out of time and hard-coding the points worked okay.
Yeah, I spent a bit of time trying to debug that, but I couldn’t figure out why it doesn’t cut exactly where you click. If you snip/prune at the same spot multiple times, eventually it’s cuts it done to where you had originally clicked it. I’m doing a distance search of every point to find the nearest one, so it must be finding the wrong point or something.
I briefly thought about day/night theming, but somewhere along the way I decided to make it monochromatic and I couldn’t decided on something different that should happen. Maybe like decrease the light bloom at night… although that would essentially just make everything pulse when the simulation is running haha
This was really interesting. I love the aesthetic!
Thank you!!
I like the retro, line based graphics, and the glow effect! I appreciate that you used JavaScript instead of Unity. The time passing animation is really good, overall a great game! It would be great to add some music/sound to it! Time flies!
Thanks!! I should have added a bit of sound/music (I really enjoy that part when I get to it) instead of making it so the moon goes through the phases each time it passes haha
Interesting bonsai growing simulation game! Love the visual style but would love more UX feedback when interacting :O
Thanks!! Yeah there’s nothing really now except for a glow over the buttons. That’s what happens when the majority of the game gets finished a few hours before the deadline haha