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The Garden of Umbra's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Artistic Style | #328 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Playability | #719 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Very cute, fun puzzles. The movement takes while to get used to, I wish it was actually a little slower with a possible sprint.
- Kinda remind me of monster collection genre vibes! Also GDD looks good!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
You, Tene, are the proud owner of the cottage in the Garden of Umbra, situated between the waking world and the dominion of dreams. Your days are peaceful, pristine, and soon to be repeatedly interrupted.
When a dreamer is especially troubled, they may get lost on their way back to the waking world. Such lost dreamers often turn up in your garden, a state that would be rather concerning if not for your knack with umbral magic.
By capturing the shadows of the local creatures in your shadow jars, you are able to draw forth their characteristic aspects and combine them together into precise, potent, shadows of transformation.
A dreamer that is infused with such a shadow inherits this cocktail of traits, and with the right balance, can be bestowed with the guidance needed to find their way back home. Lingering shades of these dreamers will often share their tales with you, and you may learn a little more of their life, should you so wish.
Controls :
WASD for movement
E to interact with the world, dreamers, and capture shadows
Q and F to swap shadows around in your shadow jars
C to toggle crouch (useful for sneaking up on skittish creatures!)
Hover over shadow jars for information on what they hold
Left mouse (click) to interact with menus (notes tabs/gather list)
Left mouse (hold) to release a shadow when hovering over an occupied shadow jar
Creatures:
? - Friendly creatures will come investigate you if you hang out loosely nearby.
! - Skittish creatures are likely to flee from you (or worse) unless you're sneaking.
Extra Notes
We really enjoyed entering the jam, our warmest thanks to Thor and the judges/moderators for making it happen!
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Comments
What a gorgeous game! The world has so much soul, mixing 3d and 2d adds so much character and charm. The style is beautiful, puzzles are satisfying. This was a wonderful experience!
You're getting dangerously close to becoming a spiritual parental figure with all these wonderful words of encouragement, little egg ☀️ Thank you for giving our lil' game a crack and sharing your feedback sunny side up, it made the whole team feel warm and gooey inside 💚
This game is so cute and charming! I feel like there is so much potential in this game, I loved mixing the different parts to find the correct combination. Such a fun game and the art was amazing!
Thank you so much, I'm really happy to hear you enjoyed experimenting with the shadowcrafting system - I was worried that it was a bit unintuitive, but you've put my fears to rest! We appreciate you checking out our game and sharing your lovely feedback, have yourself a wonderful jam 💚
I love the style of this game! Simple, yet effective, and cute AF.
I did have a bit of clunkiness with collecting/talking in certain spots. Sometimes it seemed like I needed to be in just the right place to trigger the hotkey to work. Possibly user error though.
Great job!
We didn't intend for the game to require super precise positioning on the player's part, so definitely not on you! I'll bring up going over the level geometry and we'll get any knobbly roots tucked away. Thanks for your feedback, and the really sweet compliments besides; I'll pass them on to the whole team 💚
Really beautiful feel. Love the characters, how hey are designed. Feels cozy. With some polishing, this game has a lot of potential. I hope you won't abandon this. Such a lovely game !!!
It's been inspiring to hear whenever someone digs the vibes of the garden, we're definitely keen to put some more time into getting it buffed and shiny, and we've got oodles of ideas that were out of scope for the jam which we may revisit; we're just as excited about possible future development! Thank you for checking it out and letting us know you're keen to see more, it really means a lot 💚
I was unfortunately not able to get very far, I could't quite figure out what to do. However, the game looks very nice, it seems pretty fleshed out, and clearly a lot of thought and heart has been put into it. So great work!
Thanks for stepping into the garden, we appreciate hearing how folks got on!
It's definitely important to us to make sure the love and care we put in gets a chance to shine, so it's lovely to hear that you could see glimmers of that. We'll be sure to start any future development by bringing some clarity to the unintentional chaos! Thanks again for the nice words 💚
Really beautiful game. I love the characters and the environment. Gameplay isn't totally clear. It seems like there is only one shadow that I can collect from and I'm not able to leave the small fenced in area. I restarted the game a few times, but I'm never able to collect enough parts for one recipe/quest. Would love a guide or tutorial! This is totally looks like a game I would buy!
Thank you so much for your really lovely feedback, it's wonderful to hear that you got a good feel for the game!
The tutorial absolutely needs some more pointers - did you find the two additional tabs on the right-hand side of the left half of the notes page? A lil' easy to overlook, but you can click on them to open 'em up, and they give pointers on how to interact with some of the creatures, among other tips!
I've just booted it up myself to check, and noticed that something that isn't covered is that as well as skittish creatures that'll flee from you unless you're sneaking, there are some friendly creatures that will come investigate you if you hang out loosely nearby (a '?' tells you when you're stood in the perfect spot to get them curious about you).
In hindsight, not being more explicit with the workings of the first creature you need to collect was an oversight on our part, but we've learned a lot from the feedback and are excited to make some updates post-jam!
A guide/walkthrough is a wonderful idea, will have a think! Thank you again for your kind words and for checking out our game 💚
The characters are so cute omg
I genuinely enjoy the environment and the design of this game. I hope to see more in the future!
For improvement, same feedback as others. Text disappears before I could read, I wish the text stayed before player input
Keep it up!
Thank you so much, that's so sweet! Great feedback to have, we came to the same conclusion after playtesting it ourselves but had to prioritise squashing some bugs, but hopefully will have some time to return to it and get the game flow feeling buttery smooth. We're so glad you enjoyed your time in the garden, thank for you sharing with us! 💚
Cute Characters, Fun environment and a top notch artistic vision.
Mighty pleased to get such praise from the king of the sloths, our long-eared, tree-dwelling friend shall be honoured. Thanks for checking our lil' game out! 💚
Mad cute, played well, notes explained the crafting idea pretty well. Also cute.
DropslothTree is peak!!
Glad to hear the notes were useful, big props to PiersSK for wrangling them together on top of everything else! We're jolly pleased to hear everything was smooth for you, thank you checking it out and for the sweet words 💚
lovely art style and interesting ideas for the puzzles. Gameplay could be a bit more clear at the beginning and I also missed reading some speech bubbles because they vanished too quickly. But a great concept over all!
Thanks for the lovely feedback, we're always pleased to hear how people found our game; tutorialisation and readability are such important aspects of games, it's good to know where a little extra polish is needed! 💚
I loooove it, so cute!!!
The art is excellent, the characters and dialogue are amazing and the 2D/3D blend is so fun.
The level of detail for two weeks of work is mad, the house has a hat hehe
Very nice work 💖
Thaaaank you on behalf of all of us, so many wonderful things to hear! Once I saw Jen's art for Tene I just couldn't help myself from hatting the cottage, delighted to hear you liked that silly lil' choice 💚
Extremely cute. This game is threatening to give me diabetes.
+ Visual polish on top. Great designs, and mechanics that reinforce the theme.
+ Very reliable breadcrumbs/hints for players who get lost (As I did, once or twice)
+ The combinatorial puzzle can be a decent challenge
- UI for the Notes could be stronger. I originally missed the instructions on how the combinatorial puzzle worked, because the tabs didn't stand out much. (The hints in the corner saved me)
- Shadow combination is compelling, but having to remember which aspects belong to which creature got a bit burdensome, especially when those aspect symbols are hard to see without capturing the creature first.
Being unable to see aspects until you're able to capture is particularly unhelpful here.
- The music and gameplay loops got a bit repetitive by the end; having more elaborate steps to capture a creature would help break things up, but I'd want to be sure that the creature has the aspects I need, first.
Thank you for the super detailed feedback, it's really useful to have! We completely agree with many of your points, rejigging the tutorial/UI and adding a bestiary for creatures you'd already captured to make it easier and add some cute descriptions was high on our priority list.
In an extended version, we'd have loved to have added rare creatures that had to be lured to the garden via completing hidden puzzles - we'll see how we get on!
Thanks again for the feedback and telling us about the parts you enjoyed, it's wonderful to hear 💚
Happy to be of service! And no worries about the UX, everyone's got that one or two features they wish could've made it in (Ours was shooing unwanted customers away with a broom.)
Cute characters, I would love the environment in the same style
Aren't they adorable!! 💚
Love the arts and a huge fan of 2.5D games. The second puzzle I'm a little stuck on... does the base of the potion matter that much cause I am to the point of brute forcing my options lol.
The puzzles do have fairly set solutions - basically, the final concoction will fill each of the three slots (head, body, feet) using the aspects from the jar of the smallest size that contains an aspect of that slot type eg. the small jar will overwrite any slots it has in common with the medium and large jar, and the medium will do the same for the large.
If you hover over the final concoction in the bottom left (the sparkly potion bottle), it should bring up the contents of all the occupied jars and show which aspects are being overwritten by greying them out - from there you can shuffle the individual shadows left and right to see how that affects the final shadow!
Regardless, it wasn't our intention for understanding how the puzzle works to be complicated/block people from enjoying the game, and we may try and tweak the tutorial post-jam to better communicate how it works! Thank you for trying it out and letting us know how you found it, feedback is super important to us! Thanks for the kind words 💚
Ahhh the characters are so cute!!
Thank you for your so cute comment, I've passed your compliments onto the ch(i)ef (artist Jen, who designed all the characters and creatures) 💚
The art style is so well put together! I love the sprite work. I couldn't figure out how to open the gate, and unfortunately I think I was only able to collect the wings. The gameplay could be a little more clear at the start I think, but overall still a very visually pretty game :)
Couldn't agree more; Jen's an absolute star! Thank you for the helpful feedback - we're considering picking up dev again after a break, and honing the tutorial is near the top of our list. Thank you for the kind words 💚
Hello! I tried your game. I love the art style, brings me back to paper mario. Also, really liked the interactive objects in the environment, especially the sloth falling from the tree was really cute. Great job!
Paper Mario was definitely an inspiration when working out how to combine Jen and I's styles, so glad to hear we landed in the right area! We were collectively distraught at the idea of dropping the sloth after Jen presented their adorable sprite, but thankfully the animation leaned into cute rather than devastating! Thanks for the kind words 💚
I crave the beans potion. The dreamer might not need it but I do. Very charming art style with creature collecting vibes, I love it!
Beans :3
Lovely to hear such kind words, we're glad you enjoyed the vibes 💚