Original Description:
WARNING for anyone with visual sensitivities - this game has a lot of spinning patterns, and occasional flashing lights. If you start getting motion sickness, you can try disabling rotation from the pause menu (esc or P).
NOTICE: The game is supposed to autosave - though someone had an issue in Newgrounds player where it wouldn't save their progress, and I have had similar issues with certain privacy settings in Firefox. If you want to check to make sure progress is saving, refresh the page after getting the first pink seed (this creates a save file) and see if you start from the very beginning (bad), or if you get the main menu (good). If you lose your progress somehow, you can send me a pm and I'll see what I can do for you!
If the game is running slow for you, I've had better results in Chrome than Firefox. You can also disable backgrounds from the pause menu (esc or P) and sometimes that makes a big difference. (Update: that may be because I have more extensions installed in firefox. Maybe use whichever browser you have fewer extensions/add-ons for. Also, closing any other tabs with videos/gpu-heavy stuff helps.)
If it's unplayably slow and you really want to check out the game, you can download the swf file and play it in a desktop version of ruffle (Scroll down to "desktop application"). This runs waaay better than in browser, for me at least. I don't recommend running it in flash player, because I do some funny audio stuff in here that is more than flash can really handle. But if you intend to play on mute, then that will probably also run a little better.
I will be adding medals shortly (update: added), and fixing bugs where I can. Hopefully people see the whole walking-around-on-arbitrary-terrain thing and expect it to be a little buggy. (Honestly, the collision stuff could be a lot worse!) If you see anything very obviously wrong, let me know. I didn't have much time to test the finished thing, sadly! In fact, I have yet to beat the whole game end-to-end, because it's kind of long and pretty difficult. To throw out a wild guess, I'd say it's a 5 hour game, maybe like 3 if you're really good, and maybe like 8 if you're trying to 100% it.
CONTROLS (Remappable from the pause menu)
Walk: Left, right arrows
Jump: up arrow
Plant seed: down arrow
Use tool: space
Drop tool/place flag: Z
Seed Inventory Left/Right: < >
Pause: Esc or P
Something else, when you unlock it: Hold shift and press a letter.
Update 4/22: Fixed some bugs, added medals
Update 4/23: Okay I actually sat down to play the game start to finish and in about three hours I got maybe 60% of the way through - so the 5-hour estimate might be a little conservative considering I made the game. I didn't want to say this before, but I actually haven't beaten everything in the game - (didn't have time and three levels were designed the night before deadline), which is fun because I get to experience the whole thing where you look at a puzzle and wonder if it's even possible with the tools you have, or with any tools at all, because the last week is a blur and I can't remember if I actually solved the puzzle or if I just sorta did it in my mind and said "yeah that'll work" without manually verifying that the solution won't fall apart for some unforeseen reason. (This has happened twice so far, but nothing that couldn't be solved anyway.) Anyway, I will be busy catching up on work for the next week, so if you want the distinction of being the first to beat this game - before the creator - that title is up for grabs!
Anyhow, instead of estimating the length in hours, I'm gonna call this a "three session game" - one to flounder around and wonder what the deal is, teased with the promise of a cool game, one to sort of get your bearings and develop a more fluent understanding of the systems, and one to "go on the tour of the chocolate factory," so to speak.
In my original description I forgot to thank everyone who helped make this possible! (Remember, the blur thing.) My friend Reid did the bulk of the sound for the game - his is the stuff that sounds really bitcrushed and bleep bloopy - the generative music in the background and that the enemies generate, and most of the player sounds, including some "player hurt" noises that were oddly fitting for something that sounded insane when it was just some .wavs on google drive. He put out an album once. We also have made lots of music together.
Various friends who playtested and gave feedback - Bob, Ian, Reid, Mike, Lucas, Nima, probably someone else I am forgetting
Thanks Bolor, Shara/Brandi/Josh, and Sarah (oh, and my parents!) for letting me stay at their respective houses while I worked on this game, and Ray for accompanying me on the trip and being a friend and inspiration.
Thanks to Tom and all the sponsors and general encouragers of the Flash-Forward event! It's cool to still have a little audience on standby who is hungry for something shortform and spontaneous on a niche, dying platform (I meant flash!), because that's where the real art is made.
Lastly, thank you to the people who I stole my ideas from! If you want to see what games birthed this game, play Starseed Pilgrim by Droqen, Fancy Pants Adventures by Brad Borne, and Aether by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel (hey, I wonder what those two are up to?)
Another Update, 4/23: I added one more planet to the start area to see if that affects how many people bounce off the game before it really gets going. My level design spidey-sense tells me the placement of this planet is very ugly and arbitrary, but I will try not listening to him for the sake of the people
Update 4/28: Fixed some saving/loading stuff, I think? I'm still having weird problems with firefox, so maybe just stick to chrome for now, if you're worried about keeping your saved game. Maybe medals are fixed too now? Please let me know if you have trouble with either!
ALSO now you can reset to the home planet at any time from the pause menu. You can even do this during the intro, which means you can skip it if you've done it already and know how to pause!
Another update, 4/28: Medals are possibly working now - if they were broken for you, and you don't hear the "medal sound" play when you load your game, try closing the browser, logging out and logging back in, and refreshing the page. Some combination of those made it work for me in chrome, which was the browser that was giving me issues.