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You Are Not A Weapon's itch.io pageJudge feedback
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- Interesting concept—while we are clearly a weapon meant for destruction; we are instead farming. And let’s be honest, the different weapons still have their use when it comes to scaring away crows! The art style is absolutely fantastic, with calming music and a nice conceptualization of the theme. However, aiming felt a bit clunky, and I wasn’t quite sure where my laser would till the field. Even fully charging it didn’t have the desired outcome. Perhaps a different approach to visualizing the affected area would be helpful. Additionally, clearer identification of fully grown crops could improve the experience. The GDD is absolutely fantastic and provided great insight into the development process. This was a really solid submission with a lot of potential, and I genuinely enjoyed it! Keep up the great work!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oa3j-msR0GFk8MKX4CWwhqduA4cO3f0De4ZnsdssNfQ/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes! 3 times!
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes!
Summarise your game!
Cultivate crops is a farming simulator as a giant destructive war machine.
In a world once ridden with war. You are left behind, as peace enriches the land. A war machine, whose only purpose was to destroy, now seeks redemption. A life worth living. You have found yourself in a quant rural town, adopting the role of a farmer. Are you determined enough to prove yourself no longer a weapon? Can a being built for destruction truly grow something beautiful? Cultivate the land you once fought on. Find peace with your new life. Don’t let the crows eat your crops.
Use your weapons of destruction to cultivate the land, and bring in a bountiful harvest.
CONTROLS:
WASD: Movement.
LMB: Fire your selected weapon.
1. Tilling Laser: tills the land.
2. Seed Shotgun: Plant your seeds in your tilled land
3. Hydro Pump: Time your blast of water to reach the distance you want to hydrate the land.
4. Harvest Blade: Cut down your fully grown crops to seek returns.
5. Flamethrower: When winter comes, keep your crops warm. Beware! If it isn't winter, your crops may be set ablaze.
Shift: Traverse the land with ease with your jetpack
F: Interact with key items.
<Q and E>: Cycle through your seeds, and the seed crate.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The player plays as a machine built only for weaponry and destruction and is placed in a context normally absurd for weapons and destructiveness.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Just have fun :) Also feed the duck with seeds.
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Comments
Really cool art!
Thank you!
Very clever idea and great artwork! My only critique is to maybe consider adding a visual indicator, sfx, timer, or all of the above to tell the player when the crops are done growing. I was cutting my wheat too early at the beginning haha
Thanks for playing! Yeah a lot of polish could go into our establish systems, just ran out of time. Glad you enjoyed it!
This is a very cool take on the theme. I’m here for it. Amazing aesthetic and concept!
I understand that it’s supposed to be a little loose with the controls (How could a giant robot be good at farming?) but they’re a bit too loose. The tilling laser, seed shotgun, and hydro canon would benefit from mouse targeting. Moving around to reposition to use tools was unfun.
Overall, very cool game! Would love to see some more iterative polish which a game jam doesn’t really allow for. Great job!
WE DID, IN FACT, CONSIDER THAT KIND OF “AIM AT MOUSE” SCHEME, BUT ONLY WHEN IT WAS TOO LATE TO RE-IMPLEMENT EVERYTHING! THANKS FOR PLAYING :)
Fantastic concept and design! We too went for a weapon-of-war-turned-farmer idea for our game too, but our players don't get to actually plant seeds!
I read in the comments below that the clunkiness in controls was intended. I get that from a character standpoint, but think refining the controls and making the robot's farming actions more precise would greatly increase playability. I felt unsatisfied every time my lasers fired, especially when I burnt the stuff that took me several tries to plant to a crisp.
I still think the idea is solid enough that you should continue with it post-jam!
Appreciate the kind words and criticisms! We did try and approach this with the idea of "Most farming simulators are about min maxing your how precise your crop cycles are" and to go in tandem with the idea of the story, making that a difficulty seemed like a fun point to jump off of for design to juxtapose the genre. Your own destructive nature is supposed to underscore the messaging of self growth and change.
Now, would this in its current form be successful in a larger scale game? Probably not, I think theres a ton of refinement needed in several areas for an increased scope to make it not insufferable to use for a longer play session. Probably something along the lines of "upgrading accuracy and weapons" so the longer you play, just like our war machine main character, youre are honing in on mastering farming, subsequently getting easier the more you play.
All that said, I'm very happy with where we landed, and glad to see the reception and critiques from others.
Good luck in the jam, and I'm looking forward to trying out your game!
I like the idea of honing your skills as time goes on. That would be a great marker of progress!
Cool idea, good Intro and Artwork.
Would have liked it more if it hadn`t "moved so clunky" or moved without a grid. Cool idea with the "weapons" beeing agriculture tools now.
Thank you for the kind words! We definitely wanted a clunky feel, but making it not "feel bad" was definitely a challenge. I think we found a decent middle ground, but its definitely the area we'd want to hone in and refine the most. Thanks for playing!
This is awesome. Very relatable giant robot guy. Farming with weapons is so well executed, they feel really like they’re not made for this. Reminds me of the Murderbot books.
Thank you very much! Finding that balance was a fun challenge. Definitely some polish we can push, but I think the ground work is there. Thanks for playing!
I can't believe you made all of this in such a short amount of time. There's a certain beauty on how heavy the robot feels while trying to do otherwise relaxing farmwork. I laughed when I burnt the land trying to till it equally.
You truly nailed the "not built for this but i'll try anyways" feeling. Well done!
Thank you very much! That balance was hard to find, but I think we did good for a 2 week prototype! Glad you found the humor in your own destruction, definitely was the intent :)
"But farming....Really? Man of you talents?"
Pretty cool concept with nice artwork!
There’s no honor in war, but there’s great honor in growing the perfect tomato.
Awesome idea and way to think outside of the box for the jam theme! Reminds me a lot of the Iron Giant
One of my favorite movies growing up, and definitely a source of inspiration!
The humor in this game was upper tier. What a unique play on the theme. I always prefer "tongue in cheek" humor. Played again this morning. I was enjoying planting all the different crops so I missed my timer to get my wheat in. Bummer. The music was very peaceful in the midst of the chaos! I successfully kept that pesky crow from eating my crops this time! Success!
Glad you had fun with it! We were hoping to get voice lines in that he would say goofy one liners like "I used to sow destruction, now I sow wheat" but ultimately needed to prioritize on everything else. Thanks again!
The idea is really good and the twist on the theme of the jam is great.
Gameplay wise it was hard to control and precise what to do and I ended up lasering twice or burning what I didnt want.
Thank you! Yeah trying to find that balance of intentional destruction and living in the chaos to juxtapose the often methodical and precise nature of farming sims was a challenge. If it was to be made into a large project, its the area we'd iterate and hone in on the most. Thanks for playing!
I love the twist on the concept - what a great submission
Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing art. I'm very impressed with what you were able to accomplish in the scope of the game jam, especially in terms of the main character's art. I think it's also THE best interpretation of the "you are the weapon" theme I've seen so far. Turning it on it's head "you are not the weapon", where you're this big war machine trying to just get by. I also thought it was neat how you can't make nice neat little farming patches, you're this big destructive guy with his tilling laser so of course it's gonna be super chaotic and like a wake of destruction except a wake of farming. (So it makes sense the tilling laser was hard to aim. If people complain about it, maybe make it even more clear that your war-bot farming is supposed to be chaotic.) How slow and clunky the main character was was almost unbearably at first, but once I figured out you could just jetboost to get around long distances, it made a lot of sense for the theming for him to be big and clunky when trying to do precise aiming and movement.
I really wanted to so more of this world and its charm, and have characters to talk to. I wish you could talk to that robot scarecrow as an npc, even if it didn't talk back. Or maybe it talks to you and your war robot mc is the big silent type. At a certain point I didn't engage the game loop anymore, and just jet-boosted around admiring what you'd built. I just want to see more of the world. I feel like it could be a love death robots episode.
thank you for your very kind words. The first thing we thought of was how to subvert the theme in a novel way, and I think we did that very well. If we were to expand this project, what youve mentioned is definitely the goal. Show to good and bad of the post war world and have our character introspectively adapt to what he was, and what he wants to be. Also, from a purely gameplay stand point, having places to move, spend your gathered money on, and other daily tasks al la Stardew Valley would really bolster the day to day tasks.
Thanks for playing and good luck in the jam!
Amazing visuals and a brilliant take on the 'you are the weapon' theme! Love the story of a giant robot turned farmer rebuilding the world. Congrats on finishing Game Jam—this is a gеm!
Thank you very much for the kind words! When we heard the theme, we immediately went to how to subvert the themes expectations, and I think we landed on something fun and unique. Hope your submission does well too, I'll be checking it out later!
Let me just say, CONGRATS ON THE WIN!
This. is. great. beautiful animation and music, the laser was tad hard to aim. But it's so welldone overall
Haha I hope youre right! Thank you very much for the kind words
This is such a cool concept and you all executed it with so much style; the little hat, the incredible character and gorgeous animations, the gentle soundtrack, it was truly delightful to explore.
I loved that the decisions behind the gameplay felt so deliberate, too, the slow, weighted footsteps, how easy it was to trample your own crops, how ill-suited your weapons were for farming (yet all the ways in which they had been adapted for their new purpose were so thought-through and intuitive).
The artwork reminded me of the board game Scythe, which I mean as one of the highest compliments I can give.
Truly a unique and soulful game, good job to everyone who worked on it!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the lil experience we were able to get together. Scythe was definitely an inspiration for us! Great game that :)
Love the music, the ambient, the little footprints are cute.
Gamplay felt clunky at first but as I played it actually felt really good if you look at it from a story perspective. Robot getting used to farming and not war.
Love the weapons
Love destroyable shit (Was actually my favorite)
I am at war with all birbs. Im tired of them touchin me crops
I've watched a lot of Moonmoon's game jams and I'd say this game would be in my tops.
Appreciate the kind words! The balance of "clunky in a good way" was definitely a tough one to figure out. Something we'd want to polish more given more time. Glad you had fun :)
The "clunky in a good way" is a great way to put it. I could totally see you guys refining that even more given more time with it
I really like when games try to incorporate immersive sim elements, the same tools being used to farm the land also being capable to destroying the crops easily if misused is a great way to implement immersive style mechanics which is really cool, the animation and art all looks great too, just wish it wasn't quite so clunky to move
Thanks for checking out our project! Its definitely clunky, and only about half in the way we wanted it be clunky. Honing in aiming, and cleaner animations I think would be core to expand on this idea beyond the scope we were able to deliver on. Very proud of our idea and think we put our all into its execution!
Fantastic interpretation of the theme, loved the artwork and intro. Gameplay is unique, was pleasantly surprised to accidentally fry my own crops with the laser beam. So much packed into this submission, really great job!
We really tried to find a nice balance between destruction and growth. Was quite challenging, but I think for a 2 week prototype, we found a good feel for what we were aiming for. Precision and timing is everything in traditional farming simulators, and making it intrinsically difficult to do that and not feel bad was a fun challenge. Thanks for playing :)
absolutely love this concept!
Thank you very much! Hope you enjoyed our little slice of destruction