Growlight

About & Credits

Growlight is our entry into the Global Game Jam 2023 from February 3rd - February 5th 2023. The game was made in full on the Global Game Jam site at TU/e university in Eindhoven, Netherlands; from the theme reveal in the evening of February 3rd 2023 to final delivery on Sunday, February 5th 2023.

Game development by Roman Dotsenko
Game design, story, 2D & 3D art by Aleksandar Djordjevic
SFX & Audio by Igor Djordjevic

Description

A tree root grows underground. You are the hard working Growlight, from a race of ancient beings known as Will-o'-the-wisp, sent from mother Earth to help guide each particular tree's roots to a healthy growth.

Unbeknownst to all - this is how trees actually grow, with magic, not just water. Each tree on Earth gets a Growlight assigned to it to help it and guide it through the dark soil to it's infancy as it's caretaker.

You have the power to convert the soil nutrients to growth, and help the tree grow it's initial network of roots, and bring it through it's infancy.

Game mechanics

You grow the tree by floating to the end of the branch and "pulling" the branch out to its end, guiding it to full size. You hold LMB constantly for the tree to grow. If you don't hold the button and radiate your energy it won't grow. 

As you do this, the dark buddies, themselves a part of the natural order, come out of the darkness and stick to your branches and try to stop all your new growth. When a few of them land on a root branch - it stops growing, withers and eventually goes back to the darkness. Each dark buddy landing makes the color of the root branch a shade darker, and the last one finishes the job.

You can send them back to darkness by flying up to them which will initiate your special skill, the pulse wave of light. The pulse wave has a limited range of effect, and a little cooldown.

Once you pulse the dark buddies out of existence, the root will recover and continue to grow.

Remember to grow your tree little Growlight! Hold that LMB!

Game rules

• You have a limited amount of time to grow the roots that always grow downward, your goal is to reach full growth which is displayed on screen in the bottom-right corner
• You have a maximum number of branches that you can let the dark buddies wither before the tree does not have enough energy to feed itself. That number is five, and if you're not careful the cunning dark buddies can finish you in one move by taking out a branch that has others that grew out of it.
• As dark buddies wither the branches, the tree has to regrow that branch before growing new ones, so temporarily all other growth will stop
• As time passes, more and more of the dark buddies come out, it's a constant effort for the Growlight to grow those roots! Do your best!

Game ending

Game ends one of three ways:

1. Victory of light - You fend off the dark buddies and grow your tree
2. Victory of darkness - The dark buddies send your tree  back to primordial night