Strawberries and More

Since my last update, I changed the win condition of the game from being based on growing mature plants to being based on growing mature plants and then harvesting their delicious fruit! The strawberries will spawn near the mature plants periodically as long as they remain well watered. More like this than the above GIF:

There are still effects to be added and a few problems to be sorted out (like strawberries spawning inside walls and stuff).

This should result in a longer game, and I also changed how the enemies spawn so that they come in waves with lulls in between, rather than a constant onslaught.

One nice cosmetic change I made was an improvement to the enemy death animation. In the jam version, a lot of people seemed to think the dead enemies were collectible, probably because they still had a relatively bright outline. Now the outline is gone, and the enemy is a smoking husk. Much clearer.

I have also completed the art for a second type of drone enemy - this one will fire on the player and sometimes attack plants. However, I haven't had a chance to add it to the game yet.

Controller Support

The final important change is that XBox controllers are now fully supported! This type of game is well suited to playing with a controller, and I was a bit disappointed with myself that the controller support in the jam version was lacking. Other controller types may work, but I only have an XBox one to test with.

Leaderboard System

I had originally hoped to add a scoring system and leaderboard to the next release, but I'm having second thoughts now. On the one hand, it would lengthen the game and probably make it more replayable. But on the other, it might it up a good chunk of time that could go towards adding new enemies and mechanics, and improving the art, and it would require rethinking the win & lose states of the game. I'm still thinking about it though.