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A jam submission

Under an Iron Sky: Aligioni's GardenView game page

Play as an elven girl as she reaches for a new dream
Submitted by Trinket Games (@ShoppeeTrinket) — 16 days, 10 hours before the deadline

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Under an Iron Sky: Aligioni's Garden's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fan Favorite#971.8262.000

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Lots of passability issues all over. One field can't be grown. You can break the game by going to the church right away and harvesting 99 herbs. 

The ally sprite in the train station is glitched and you can walk through it and can't interact? It also disappears if you leave, so the game stops there.

Needs better planting menu (at least make it so that the player can see how many seeds they have or use a plugin to have a better menu for planting).

Certain crops are broken, especially on certain tiles. Like bottom right Al something plant (last plant) is broken. The middle plot is broken if you plant Lily Weed since it stops at 99%.

The tavern area you can enter from the side and it looks odd because you move away from the tavern and still enter?

Your mom just teleports everywhere?

The ally joins you when it shouldn't.

The conversation about hating the ally then having him join you anyways seems odd.

You can just teleport to a higher level by walking through the tile?

Lots of other errors.

Lots of great ideas, but implementation is a bit questionable.

Developer

Thank you for playing my game. I'm glad that it was okay. I am working on making it better.

The farming system took the longest to make. I was aware of a lot of the issues, but the deadline was coming so I submitted the project.  I am working on the farming system to fine tune it and hopeful make it better. I am having some trouble with the plugin I choose to use, but I am slowly figuring it out.

As the tavern... I moved it about half way through making the project and forgot to move the exit to the right spot. I believe that I have fixed it now. So it should be better when the judging is over. The mom teleports because I was having trouble with path finding.

I am fully aware that there are a lot of errors. I will be working on them. But I have to ask... what was one thing that you liked about my game? I noticed that you had a lot of issues and that is all that you are telling me. Was there just one thing that you liked?

Thank you again for playing my little game.

Submitted (4 edits) (+1)

The tavern entrance issue shouldn't matter where the exit is. The solution is simple, add a turn up before the move forward. Or better yet, make it so that you need to be facing up to trigger the event (so that the player doesn't accidentally trigger it).

For your farming system, use a common event and variables/switches to call the common event in a way that allows you to manipulate each plot's variables individually. That way, you edit one common event and it affects all the plots at the same time.  This is easier with a script call as script calls are a bit more flexible.

You can do choices as a script call instead:

Example script call 1 (initialize the choices)

//Load Variable with choices (in-game variable)
 
$gameVariables.setValue(101,
[
"Lily Weed", "Rabbit Seed", "Star Bloom",
"Kingsglaive", "Meadow Flower", "Toadstool",
"Vine Grass", "Cinnamon Blade", "Tragic Hero",
"Queens Seat", "Pig Feed", "Glow Bell",
"Lotus Bloom", "Nightshade", 
"Spider Lily", "Cleric Bane",
"Cancel"
]);

Script Call 2

// Set Message Choices. (101 = array variable, 0 = default choice
 
//-1 = disallow cancel.
$gameMessage.setChoices($gameVariables.value(101), 0, -1);
$gameMessage.setChoiceBackground(0);
$gameMessage.setChoicePositionType(2);
// Record Outcome in Variable (102 in this case).
$gameMessage.setChoiceCallback(n => {
$gameVariables.setValue(102, n);
});

This way you get a choice menu you can scroll through like this (notice the arrows showing that there are more options to pick):

Once you've selected the option, you can then load that value from the choice variable into the plot's variable.  There are also potentially ways to show how many of a seed exist and to disable options if you don't have enough seeds or even potentially dynamically create entries based on your inventory seeds.

There are other ways to do this, such as changing the function so that it shows the options side by side when there are more than 8 options and having it scroll sideways instead of vertically, but that would require a bit of editing to do. (I've also showed another way to do it in my tips and tricks dev stream (August 17th's stream))

Path finding is honestly very easy if you know what you are trying to do. If player is facing up, you know the player is below. If you have members, you assume all possible member positions are taken and adjust the script accordingly. What you should do though is load the player's x,y values (easier than getting the event's x,y values in this case) and directional facing. Using that, you can figure out both the player's position and the event position. Then based on that, you can have several move paths that move the event to a set location and then it is a simple move path from there (or you can teleport once off-screen).

Or, if you have to teleport, do a fade out, teleport, then fade in. (A no wait flash can also work, just be careful with timing).

Like I said, I liked the ideas. A lot of potentially great features that you could use to make a farming sim or alchemy sim. You just need to be careful with your story so it doesn't feel out of place. I can't tell if you meant Dragon or Dragoon (two different things) and other problems with the story exist. 

One thing you could do is to actually set a pacing so that the player is going about their daily lives and then one day, you hear a crash on your way back to the house. This way, you've set up what is 'normal' (this is more of a horror/tragedy story technique, but it can work in other situations as well). You can also slowly feed your player information this way. For example, you might go and visit your father's grave (with or without your mother) one day a month to keep it clean and on the second day, it happens to be that day.

There, the player could learn at least a little of what happened with your father. Once you assist the ally and discover the truth about them, you might not help them right away, but instead have the ally leave. You might then later see the ally collapsed on the road again and out of compassion, maybe hide them in the alchemy area (to avoid discovery by the mother) and care for them in secret, sneaking food off and such. Just until they recover. 

Then, while taking care of them, maybe discover some information that makes your character want to help them beyond recovery. This would then give your character a solid reason for wanting to help. Maybe the mother could notice and observe in secret (could show a shadow moving in a window one day to show the player if desired) and possibly even soften her heart when she learns that not all of the group are bad. This would drive character development for the mother.

Now, this would be a lot of work, setting it up so that the characters act differently each day (I mean the NPCs) or at least having a reasonable explanation of why they might always be the same. As an example, you might have a 5 day week and 4 week months (20 days). Each week, you might have 1 day where one of the shopkeepers will be home resting instead.  (Since this would take time though, you might skip it and just have a routine that makes sense to repeat).

Instead of having a long main questline where you leave into the open world, you can have little side quests from various NPCs, some might even repeat every x days (for example, maybe a shopkeeper tasks you with making supplies to sell because they are running low just before their restock day. They might not sell that item until they restock and ask you to provide you with a few to sell to others (not back to you)). This would make it have a more sim feel.

Speaking of quests, you have a lot of default/plugin tutorial quests that you don't want in the actual game.

Jam Host(+1)

Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:

(1 edit)

The items to start with are a lot, it's better to start with less and the useful ones. Also, give them different icons to find them more easily. At the field, navigating through the page is hard, I didn't know if I had the seed and how many of them in inventory, did I plant them or not

Developer(+1)

I am planning on making the planting easier. I will also work on the icons. Thank you so much for your feedback.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Okay, I've played for a little while now and I think I've done everything that's present in the project? There doesn't seem to be anything after taking Alls to the train station, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

  • There are a fair few passability and tile errors: you can walk onto the higher ground outside Ali's house, and there's a blank tile in the way at the T junction in the map to the south just before the vendors.
  • The maps are *very* busy, to the point where important things are difficult to see. I completely missed the well because it didn't look any different from its surroundings, and there's an identical tile just above it which doesn't do anything so I never thought to try interacting with it.
  • There's at least one quest error: when it says to plant Lily Weed, it says [61] instead.
  • The dialogue with Alls feels really stilted, and Ali's mum just throwing out a big long (German?) phrase with no explanation or context was a bit jarring.
  • A lot of spelling and grammar mistakes, but you've already said you'll be working on those. I highly recommend trying to get a dedicated proofreader for your script if you continue working on this.
  • The menu for selecting seeds is incredibly tedious, especially because it shows a plant whether you have the seed for it or not. I would take advantage of conditional choices to only show a plant if you possess the seed.
  • After taking Alls to the train station, I assume he's no longer with me but he's still in the party. I made a Star Potion like he said, but there doesn't seem to be anyone to bring it to.
  • Minor "logic" nitpick: if Magic Water is freely available from the well outside Ali's house, why on earth would anyone spend 300 Ebony to buy it from the vendor?

It's a solid start to a project overall, if not a little rough around the edges. But you've done a good job of demonstrating what MZ is capable of.

Developer

Thank you for your feedback. I will be using your bullet list as a check list to fix these issues. Thank you for pointing out the logic error.  I didn't notice it.

If you take the Star Potion back to the train station Alls' friends should be there. Ali will then give the potion to Raga if everything is working correctly. I'm looking forward to working on this project again.

Submitted

I did go back to the train station but I couldn't see anyone.

Developer

Something to fix when the judging is over. Thank you for letting know.

Submitted(+1)

There are some nice ideas here, but I've gotten a bit stuck I think. I need Magic Water, and I found where I can buy it from, but I have no Ebony and there doesn't appear to be any way to acquire more. I tried selling my Lily Weed and planting something else to see if I could make a profit that way, but the Asianna I bought just keeps growing past 100% and can't be harvested. XD Any suggestions?

Developer

You can get Magic Water from the well in front of Ali's house by clicking on the bucket of water or the well. (I can't remember which.) I am aware that there are a lot of issues that need to be fixed and I am planning on fixing them and posting an update when the judging is over. I will have to check to make sure that everything can grow.

I am glad that you like it despite the problems.

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

It's like Stardew Valley, I love the gardening system and all. Minor things to patch would be spelling and sound design. For example "gradening" when I had to plant the Lily Seeds, and drawing water doesn't have a splash or water sound. I love what you did with the map design and default assets as it looks and transitions nicely. The main feedback would be to work on creating a more planned out start with more in-depth cutscenes as I felt lost at nearly the start of the game so I was forced to look at the bookshelf.

Keep on improving and you'll get there!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your feedback. I will be fixing sound and spelling.