Fern

[This game is not meant to be played in a browser. The embed is provided for those who feel uncomfortable downloading files, and may have minor audio problems. If possible please use downloads below]

Arrow keys to move; C/Space to jump & accept dialogue; Z to plant yourself

(updated due to minor export issues with permission)

Play as a fern with legs!

 Dig your roots into the soil!

...what the fuck        

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List of tools used during the jam:

• Godot (duh)
• FL studio
• Audacity
• Garageband
• Aesprite (also check out libresprite!)
• Tilesetter Lite
• jsfxr

Plugins:

• Godot State Charts (unused in final product, but helped a lot with sketching out the initial structure of the state machine in dev process)

Images:

• White Prototyping Tileset (Adapted)

Shaders:

• https://godotshaders.com/shader/god-rays/
• https://john-wigg.dev/2DMetaballs/ (Adapted the concept, but cool article so i'm putting it here)

Sound effects:

• https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/gravel-road-6747/ 
• https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/gravel-93504/ (Both heavily modified)
• some clips from a past game jam
  

Soundfonts:

•  Shane's SGM soundfount (yeah it's that soundfont, i love that soundfont)

Drinks spilled on notebook:

• yerba mate cranberry pomegranate (ffs it's not a game jam without a drink spilled)

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Credits: 
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Glycol: programming, art, level design
Zkao: programming, music, level design
Pepper: programming, art, music, level design
Mystery 4th person: ghosting us
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Made in 72 hours as part of the 2025 Fiat Ludum Gamejam @ UCLA

Meta mumblings (Pepper): Oh boy we learnt so much this time ;-; 

Known bugs (click to expand)

- The character controller is held together by spaghetti and sometimes planted fern does not stop animating the walk cycle, or keep emitting particles.

- If you press "L" to reset while you're rooted you respawn as the uncontrollable sprite

- Initial spawn jump height of the spore can sometimes be unpredictable. (Hotfix1 Pepper note: turns out jump_cut can still be called via releasing the space bar while the initial jump is playing. I'm leaving it in for now.)

- Audio transitions are a mess, and gets uncomfortably loud at times. I wanted to use adaptive volume but didn't have enough time to thoroughly test it.  The ending music has not been mixed nor master as well.

- There is a hole in the collision for the ending area, and you could maneuver your roots into mid air.  

- Missing camera panning triggers prevents the camera from going back in certain areas.  (Fixed in Hotfix1)

- Missing kill box on right tip of map allows player to jump into void into the sky (Fixed in Hotfix1)

- Planted sprites have a tilt to them BUT IT LOOKS CUTE SO IT'S A FEATURE- The supposedly fourth person of our team is still MIA

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Music composed for this jam:

- https://soundcloud.com/peppersalt07/fern-game-jam-background-music-jam-version

- https://soundcloud.com/zkao-305281374/fern/s-lri9vM3Oz01?si=c0b632283c2e4ee99538...