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A jam submission

The Harvest CurseView game page

Pumpkin Ghosts Want to Ruin Your Harvest!
Submitted by piotrbizzle (@piotrbizzle) — 1 hour, 8 minutes before the deadline
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The Harvest Curse's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme / Rules#34.1884.188
Musics / Sounds#63.6883.688
Gameplay#73.4383.438
Overall#83.4383.438
Graphisms#133.5003.500

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

nice game and very nice music! the game is only one minute, so its ok, when there are many ghosts. but it would be better for another jam this game with not so many ghosts and longer than one minte. good work!!

Developer

Thanks for playing! I think it's a good observation that the number of ghosts at the end wouldn't work at all if the game was any longer. I've gotten a lot of feedback about the very end of the game, it's definitely something I want to keep working on

Submitted(+1)

I love this game! There is so much nuance to the strategy for the game, do you prioritize getting the valuable pumpkins, or getting the old ones to stop the ghosts. The pacing is perfect and I also like the fact that the maps are randomly generated so each play-through is different. Also I had a love/hate relationship with when the  ghost would possess the pumpkin I was carrying and then ruin my throw. Only feedback I really have is that the last few seconds of a round feel overwhelming with so many ghosts to the point where you cant do anything. If you wanted to take the game further maybe using your harvest money to be able to buy equipment and tools for your next run to help could be fun.  Well done! 

Developer

You're not the only one who had feedback on the last 10 or so seconds of a run -- it's clear that's a part of the game that still needs refinement so players can realistically get something done at the end of the game.

Having upgrades or equipment to buy between runs is also a wonderful idea -- it seems so obvious now with the score being dollars etc, and could be a good way to add more options and strategies.

Thanks for the great feedback, and glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

Wow pretty hard game, nice mechanic with grab, move throw, but the throw kinda limited with the car position on the bottom of the map so it will be somewhat impossible to get the top pumpkin with the spawning of the ghost. I also like that you can use pumpkin to hit the ghost, but the ghost can also use the pumpkin to multiply. Maybe if you can move the car to push the ghost and give you more space but can also destroyed your pumpkin as a drawback will be interesting.

Developer(+1)

Doing more with the car is a really cool idea. Candidly, it only became a truck instead of a placeholder icon in the last couple of days. Your suggestions definitely make me wish I'd settled on it being a car sooner to incorporate it in gameplay!

In any case, thanks for playing and for your great feedback!

Submitted(+1)

There are a lot of cool ideas in this game!  The ghosts caught me off guard at first!
I wish there was a system where you could use the money to buy some things for your next year. The seed system is pretty unexpected. I feel like it's a bit unnecessary.
Pretty cool game overall!

Developer

Thanks for playing!

The seed system was put in early in development when it seemed like the focus of the game would be getting high scores on particular seeds and competing against friends etc, but I ended up pivoting away from that direction. I agree with you that the feature is pretty vestigial now.

Also, having run-to-run progress would definitely be cool and fits well with the 'get better and better scores to unlock more achievements/ribbons' meta game that the project settled on.

Submitted(+1)

The backstory on your game is pretty amusing.  I thought the 'ripening: value/ghost hatch' mechanic was pretty interesting and a clever way to impose a time limit.  Once ghost stack up, they become the target until overwhelmed.


For feedback:

  •  Would have been nice to have the truck toward the middle of the field of play, or even have a couple trucks or boxes in each quadrant to store pumpkins.  Felt like I had a very limited time to fling nearby pumpkins into the truck; moving the same pumpkin twice was rarely worth it (though I did do this once).   
  • For movement, I thought it might feel more precise if you point-and-click to move to the the pumpkin and then left mouse to fling the pumpkin.  With WASD (or the move distance) I had trouble zeroing in on a position that I could grab the pumpkin.  Some case just danced around the pumpkin always ending up a little too far away.
  • The time to 'pull' your throw eats up time and made it even more challenging.  I frequently had my pumpkin stolen before reaching max pull to toss the pumpkin a far distance.  I think it may have been smoother to have a fixed toss strength (strong, I would say much stronger than current max.. just let them fly until they hit the truck, a ghost, a fence...would be fun); this would improve the focus mechanic to be 'aiming'.


I thought this was a great idea for the game jam.

Submitted(+1)

I second everything that OP said! 

Beside that, I really enjoyed my time with that! And the pixel art was great! 

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks both of you for playing, and for your thoughtful feedback!

If I come back to this game in the future, I'll definitely have to try cutting the 'pull' time for the throw. Besides the reasons you gave, I think that suggestion could also make it easier to disentangle from mobs of ghosts at the end of the game.

Submitted(+1)

Nice, original game. Niggles are (small) that it's a bit hard to know how close you have to get to pumpkins to throw them, and (medium) there's not much you can do by the time there are several ghosts on the screen. Only managed to score 'F' ... fun, though!

Developer

Thanks for playing!

I think both of your niggles are on point, I've gotten a couple of comments now about the end of the game when there are lots of ghosts. 

You can clear out some of the ghosts by throwing pumpkins at them, but it's clear we need to give the player more options or just more to do in the last 10 seconds or so of a run.

Submitted(+1)

Im like this game!! (yeah its all comment)

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

pros; nice game, well done, good mechanics, fine art , beautiful music.

cons: pixel text and buttons would have been better than default, and i didn't like getting overwhelmed with ghosts, personal opinion tho.

Developer

Ugh, you're so right about the buttons, I want to go back and replace them now @_@

Some of the other comments mentioned getting mobbed by ghosts or feeling like they didn't have enough they could do at the end of the game, so I think you're not alone there.

Thanks for playing and for the great feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Really good concept!

Developer

Thanks so much for playing!

Submitted(+1)

This was really nice. had a bit of trouble understanding when i was being attacked or not, so maybe some health indicator would help but otherwise a great 1min game.

Developer

Thanks playing and for the feedback! I agree with you, I think maybe animation for the ghosts to show they are attacking would help here -- the 'pumpkin stealing' mechanic doesn't always read clearly