Overall, really nice project! Great theme and visuals, and very satisfying to play!
I'm not a huge puzzle game player, but that being said, I made it ... I think pretty far into the game, so that's saying something!
My "nice to have" improvements would be:
- A slight UI change to indicate which flower is next on the list after you successfully get one. I know the check marks are at the top, and it's always the same, but for the after yellow I always had to double check which one was next by looking at the top of the screen.
- It was _slightly_ confusing that when a flower is only one move away that it gets larger, when you weren't actively going for that flower, if that makes sense. There was one level where 2 of the flowers (blue and green) were only 1 away from the start, and that was slightly confusing as to why they were larger (this is a SUPER nitpick, I recognize)
- Music was a good fit for the game, but did get repetitive toward the end of my session. Just need another track or two.
- Hint system worked well once I figured out what it was telling me. Might want to remind the player that the hint system exists if they make X amount of moves without progressing.
- Finally, It took me a really long time to realize that every puzzle/level required that every blank square be filled by a Wyrm/worm. Not sure why it took me so long, but it did shift my thinking once I realized it. Maybe there is a way to ... just tell the player that somehow (or maybe I'm just slow/a puzzle player would pick up on this right away).

Overall well done! I'll post my playtest in your project on the discord.

Hey Gamma!

I just recorded a long playtest video. I'll post it on the discord project when it's finished uploading. Here is my summary:

I played the game in a few sessions, and overall I enjoyed it. I loved the theme and the aesthetics! Cleaning up blood/mess was satisfying. I definitely struggled initially with the concepts of how everything fit together. I tried to figure it all out on my own, but ended up relying on the in game book (which was a very nice touch, by the way). 

Overall I feel like the onboarding is going to be very crucial for this game. The easy arena felt very big for my first real "level." I feel like a series of very small levels that illustrate each concept would be ideal. The easy arena felt a bit daunting knowing how much I had to clean, and when I would make a mistake (knock over a bucket/use the mop when dirty) it felt bad just knowing how little progress I was making (I'm definitely not advocating to remove those penalties since they make sense, just provide a smaller play space to make the mistakes is all).

I also didn't quite get the synergies with the plants. I feel like I just didn't quite thread the needle on that. The only time I felt like I really needed to do something with them was to grow the sponges when I ran out. Other than that, I didn't really feel like I needed to do anything with them (again, maybe I was just being dense here).

Finally, I felt like some of the interactions were a bit clunky/unforgiving (hitboxes, etc). It feels like having to juggle all the items was a bit much, especially in the beginning (not knowing what you'd need, when  you'd need, etc). Nothing that some tweaking won't smooth out.

Overall I like what you've made here, a fun concept that just needs some tightening up (The capsule art is great too) and a solid onboarding experience. Hopefully my playtest video ends up being helpful!

well done!

[DAY 2]

Not a whole lot of progress today thanks to finding a bug at work towards the end of the day. Also Star Wars Squadrons came out...

• Cards now react when hovered over
• Cards can now be selected from your hand

Boy is it ugly though!

[DAY 1]

• I wrote this post
•  I kinda cheated and had started a week or so ago so..
• I've set up some game scaffolding stuff
•  There are cards and the player has a deck
•  You can draw cards to your hand
  
  

Hellebore

Hellebore is a single-player sc-ifi rogue-like card game where you build your deck by recruiting and leveling up your crew mates.

Each crew member has their own mini-deck of cards that all combine during battle to create the player's deck. All cards can be played by any crew mate -- however each crew mate will have an affinity for a specific type of card.

Think Slay the Spire mixed with FTL.

Scope

The above description is awful ambitious, so for Devtover I'm only planning on making a small portion of it. My goal is to deploy a playable card game with a single battle by the end of the month. Most likely - this battle will only have a single crew member. I'll be chopping scope as the month progresses with the hope of having something playable by the end of it.

About Me/Goals

I'm a professional web and mobile developer primarily working in React and React Native. I work full time and just had a baby in the middle of August - so I don't suspect that I'll be able to commit too much time to this jam. The fact that it's a long running jam really appeals to me. My goal is to get back in the habit of working on games everyday and maybe meet some like-minded folks along the way.

Another goal of mine is to use some of these damn game dev assets that I keep buying from the Unity asset store. I'm a sucker for assets but I never seem to end up using them. For the prototype I'm going to make an effort to finally get some use outta 'em.

Closing Thoughts

The way I figure it - If I can work on this title almost every day this month I'm going to call the whole thing a success. If I get something playable by the end of the month I'll be thrilled!

I'm going to try to - I just had a baby a little over a month ago so... we'll see how much I can get done. 

Sounds pretty cool - you mentioned the player controls a ship, is this game set in space?

Good luck to you, this jam should be a fun one.

hey

Hard, but nicely done.

lol, nice! Loved that you'd fall over randomly. A little dark though - hard to see the bottles.

Loved the music - well done!

Hit a crash in level 3 when trying to select something that looked like it was under the ground. Other than that, pretty cool, nice work!