grow or burn

this game was created for the 34. Ludum Dare: Growth & Two Buttons

[How to play]

You beat levels by reaching the right side of the screen with your plant. Add leafs to your plant to increase the energy gain per gameround. The plant must be hydrated to grow so add xylem to transport water. The bigger the plant the higher the energy cost for further growth.

When your plant gets bigger, it attracts some weird mage that will try to burn it. Adding fruits to your plant will distract him so he will only destroy the fruit instead of half your plant. In the later levels the path to the right is blocked by a mysterious violet plant. Grown flowers will randomly remove one section on the map. If you manage to grow that the tip of your plant is in a dead end, just let the fire hit you. you will lose a bit of your plant and keep growing in the right direction.

Since only two buttons are used, you have to wait a few seconds, whenever you want to go back in the menus. Pressing a button will reset this timer.

this timer makes reading the in game description of the buildings so here:

Xylem:

is placed onto the stem of the plant and moves water from the origin/root of the plant to the end. from the color of you plant you can tell if water is needed. you cannot grow or place buildings on dry parts of the plant.

Xylem is actually the part of real plants that do that. I didn't come up with this weird name.

All following buildings are attachable to all parts of the plant that:

do not bend (corner parts)

or are the first or last part

Fruit:

grows in a few gamerounds and then protects from one fire attack which destroys the fruit. they last forever

Flowers:

grow slower than fruits but when fully blossom they remove one of the enemy plant parts on the map and then dissapear. In the first levels you might only used them for the look of your plant.

Leaf:

stay for several gamerounds and increase you energy gain per round. then they fall off and make room for other plant-parts

[Issues]

The web version of the game might not respond at first but I found a way it works. click the dark part around game and then click into the game. It will lose focus if you click somewhere other than the game. its some weird html5/libgdx thing that is beyond my skills. If anyone is familiar with libgdx and html on itch.io, please tell me, if you know how to prevent this.

I haven't checked this but it may be that fruits don't protect you in the first round after they fully grew.

[Misc]

for the game I used

Game: Libgdx

Graphics: Aseprite

Soundeffects: sfxr