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official thread of BLUEBERRY GARDEN

D

DevelopmentArrested

Banned
blueberry.jpg


Blueberry Garden! Winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for 'Best Independent Game' at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. Also a winner for 'Best Innovation' at the 2008 Swedish Game Awards.

Blueberry Garden is a short and experimental game about exploring a strange world. It is set in an ever-changing ecosystem and your goal is to find out what's going on among the softly swaying trees and mysterious creatures living there.

The game is a relaxing, yet intense experience for people who like soaring through the sky.

Key features:

Interactive fairytale — no film sequences or dialogues
Food — Try out the effects of various fruits and use their effects to navigate the landscape more easily
Story — Experience two different endings depending on your choices and your skill
Living world — Plants, fruits and animals living in symbiosis
Music — Fantastic piano tunes by Daduk

System Requirements
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP / Vista
Processor: 2.0 GHz Dual Core
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 40 MB
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ or better, DirectX® 9.0c compatible video card, Shader Model 3.0 required. Video card must have 256 MB
Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0c compatible sound card
Additional Requirements: NET 2.0 Framework, XNA 3.0 support
DirectX® Version: DirectX® 9.0c

Game Details
Title: Blueberry Garden
Genre: Indie, Adventure
Developer: Erik Svedäng
Publisher: Erik Svedäng
Release Date: 8 June 2009
Languages: English

blueberry-garden.jpg


video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOcSUDVsdu4

Please post impressions when you can.


5$ is the Price. Game is UP NOW.
 
The guy who made this game is actually a teacher (in game design) at my school, have yet to try the game out myself though.
 
Sinatar said:
Wow those system requirements are pretty damn steep for something so simple looking...

Odd.
Click to expand...
My guess is that it's something to do with the simulations and AI happening in the game.. apparently there's like a little ecosystem going on in there, the way the plants grow and animals interact based on your interferences.
 
This...is a really fucking odd game :lol Experimental is right. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, I've been playing for 10 minutes or so and have only really eaten a few things, gone near gigantic objects that shimmer for a bit and reappear, and wandered around. It's entertaining, sure, and the music is nice, but I have no idea what the fuck is going on :lol
 
Just bought this, will download when I get home.

Glad to hear it's as wacky as it sounds -- I've read several previews and I still have no idea what this game is about. :lol
 
Played an hour or so and felt I could confidently give some impressions. The game encourages you to explore the garden as the little fella with a big nose. The story is quite simple. Someone left the tap on and it is threatening to drown the garden and it's inhabitants. By constructing a tower out of things scattered around the garden you're able to fly over to the tap and turn it off.

The gameplay is simple, left right, jump and fly. With the ability to change flight path mid air. In addition to this you can eat stuff around the garden such as blueberries, onions and cherries. What they do I'll leave you to discover.

There's an element of puzzle solving to capture some of the puzzles. I'm running a PC with a bottom run Core Duo and a 4850 card and it crawls when I eat one of the fruits, the game has terrain deformation on the floor- this is why the PC specs are so high. Personally I feel he should patch this to improve the performance. The game runs on XNA (C# language) so that's probably why the performance is shit for a few second each time you eat the fruit in question. It's playable for me but I wouldn't suggest buying the game now unless you have a Core2Duo.

My only complaints are that when you fly about and hit a bird in mid air it takes you out of your flight path. A bit of a pain when you're trying to make a really tight jump.

The entire game features a time restriction.. if you don't build a big enough tower then you will drown. At which point you're presented with the question "but is it possible?" begging you to play again. If you're not into this type of gameplay then you might want to give it a miss. Even so I'm really enjoying it. Especially the piano music.
 
Teknopathetic said:
Port begging for PC games = not kosher.
Click to expand...
Normally I agree, seeing that it's a bannable offense here on GAF.
But these are the types of games that i've been looking to bring to console on my 2Bee project.

That said, i'm definitely going to buy it for $5. Didn't get to play it enough at GDC's IGF or E3's Indiecade.

Have you guys seen Snapshot? That game is awesome too. At GDC, they said it was just a test project and they may not take it further but at E3 I found out one team member dropped out of grad school and moved in with the other one to try and complete it.

But yeah, do you think these quirky Indie Games can do well on console?
I sold the idea to my parent company and have been looking to bring games over.
Don't want to derail this thread so PM me or post in my other threads on it.
 
Finished the game, really nice little easter egg if you keep playing after you finish it. It seems like the developer has a great deal if ideas- looking forward to them in the future.

The whole ecosystem was really nice, if you get stuck- try pressing home when you're holding a fruit and laying some seeds around your respawn point. It lets you grow new trees outside their natural habitat.

toneroni said:
Normally I agree, seeing that it's a bannable offense here on GAF.
But these are the types of games that i've been looking to bring to console on my 2Bee project.

But yeah, do you think these quirky Indie Games can do well on console?
Click to expand...
Shouldn't you be the one answering that question? Considering you have a vested interest in it? Best of luck to you, but in general I feel that if a game is going to be a success then Microsoft, Sony or equivalent will be courting the developer.
 
Visualante said:
Shouldn't you be the one answering that question? Considering you have a vested interest in it? Best of luck to you, but in general I feel that if a game is going to be a success then Microsoft, Sony or equivalent will be courting the developer.
Click to expand...
lol yes I should be answering the question but I still value the opinions of GAFfers (however skewed they may be).
We're starting out small but there are already a few games on the site that we are looking to convert and publish.
 
toneroni said:
lol yes I should be answering the question but I still value the opinions of GAFfers (however skewed they may be).
We're starting out small but there are already a few games on the site that we are looking to convert and publish.
Click to expand...
I think more arty games will do better on PSN, Sony is keen to present itself as a boutique service and I think people will take more risks with their purchases there, plus there is an element of Sony being choosey what they allow on the store if developers like Jonathon Blow are to be believed. I think XBLA can take most games, it's very price dependent. Wiiware is sort of like unproven ground. We're veering off topic but I feel this game would do okay on PSN at $5.. on XBLA I'm not so sure.
 
Gonna pick this up eventually in a lump purchase. Not being able to buy shit on Steam while in the US when my CC is from Canada blows chunks.

outunderthestars said:
Why is that not kosher, but pc gamers trolling almost every console thread is just fine?
Click to expand...

Because about a year back (maybe a bit more), console fanboys would just come into every PC thread, and start talking about how PC gaming is dead, and big comfy couch and 60" LCD TV. Shit always got out of hand, and you couldn't have a decent PC discussion at all, which meant that people didn't really want to talk about PC stuff, driving away PC only gamers.

And I think you might be exaggerating how much of a problem these pc gamers trolling in almost every console thread are.
 
Doytch said:
Gonna pick this up eventually in a lump purchase. Not being able to buy shit on Steam while in the US when my CC is from Canada blows chunks.



Because about a year back (maybe a bit more), console fanboys would just come into every PC thread, and start talking about how PC gaming is dead, and big comfy couch and 60" LCD TV. Shit always got out of hand, and you couldn't have a decent PC discussion at all, which meant that people didn't really want to talk about PC stuff, driving away PC only gamers.

And I think you might be exaggerating how much of a problem these pc gamers trolling in almost every console thread are.
Click to expand...

Port begging of any sort is just really bad form, believe me when I say I have seen way too much of it happening in the console downloadable sector.
 
Though it was a bit maddening at times, once I figured out what all of the berries it all fit together. Awesome little game, with a pretty interesting ending :D I'm not sure how comfortable I would have been paying more than $5 for it; the platforming mechanics are pretty rusty, and it's hard to accurately direct yourself anywhere, but that price fits it perfectly. The music is no small improvement either.
 
Peronthious said:
Though it was a bit maddening at times, once I figured out what all of the berries did it all fit together. Awesome little game, with a pretty interesting ending :D I'm not sure how comfortable I would have been paying more than $5 for it; the platforming mechanics are pretty rusty, and it's hard to accurately direct yourself anywhere, but that price fits it perfectly. The music is no small improvement either.
Click to expand...

The steam page says that his game has multiple endings, what happened in yours?

After turning off the water, i built the stack higher so i could reach the moon where I just proceeded to a new screen to just fall until I got a screen saying that I beat the game.
 
TouchMyBox said:
The steam page says that his game has multiple endings, what happened in yours?

After turning off the water, i built the stack higher so i could reach the moon where I just proceeded to a new screen to just fall until I got a screen saying that I beat the game.
Click to expand...

Same here.
 
Peronthious said:
Same here.
Click to expand...

Same.

It seemed like you could move while falling so maybe theres something to land on?

Anyway, I liked it. I love the music and art style and it was cool to figure out the mechanics of all the fruits. $5 was a perfect price.
 
I'm not sure but if you
build the tower high enough and fly to the right with a blueberry you might be able to go above something. One time when I flew over there it looked like I might be able to land there.

Also there's a possibility of
staying on one of the rafters while the water rises.. maybe it takes you higher?
 
What an odd little game. Looks and sounds gorgeous though. really glad that they were able to get onto Steam. Would have been nice to see all the IGF finalists on here.
 
so i was playing and i got to a point where the water was getting too high, so i went home, and jumped to the top of my stack, and then fly to the right until i got to the log that's floating. then you can sort of surf that whereever, and i went all the way to the far right, and just kept floating on it as the water rose higher and higher. then eventually the wall stopped and i was able to fly over it and then i disappeared and the screen is completely blue now. interesting!
 
Game charted at 8, better than Crayon Physics. Hopefully it will have good word of mouth.
pilonv1 said:
i have a high tower of stuff but the berries confuse me
Click to expand...
If you want a hint or hints.

  • Blueberries:
    let you float
  • Onions:
    shift the ground to the left
  • Red berries
    raise the ground
  • Nuts:
    show you to the nearest piece to stack on the tower
  • Stars:
    let you go underwater for a short period of time
  • Rocks:
    Nothing much
 
Just beat it! It was a lot of fun. I really dug the general feel of the thing.

Afterwards it gave me a password for a post in his blog--pretty neat stuff in there.
Well worth the 5 bucks.
 
Visualante said:
Game charted at 8, better than Crayon Physics. Hopefully it will have good word of mouth.

If you want a hint or hints.

  • Blueberries:
    let you float
  • Onions:
    shift the ground to the left
  • Red berries
    raise the ground
  • Nuts:
    show you to the nearest piece to stack on the tower
  • Stars:
    let you go underwater for a short period of time
  • Rocks:
    Nothing much
Click to expand...

Makes sense, I'd worked out what the stars do. Fuck those rocks though.
 
this game is awesome.

i have only been playing for 10 min and there is already
====================
= Flight
====================
29c0sw9.png


====================
= Terrain Deformation
====================
wsqvzo.png

5b8mkm.png



====================
= Blueberries!!!
====================
2eecz2w.png
 
just about to grab it, does it support decent resolutions or is it another 800x600 max situation?
 
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