Hello,

Since the last devlog I have had a number of people play test the game. It was super helpful, and made me realize I need to take a step back from just continually making forward progress. I need to really lean into what is fun at this stage, and cut out what isn’t. I thought at first fun was making choices, so I should limit what the player has access to from the beginning so they could build up to it. Feel the progression. Also I thought it would be fun to figure out different song combinations. 

I do think meaningful choices are fun, however not exactly how I implemented them. Specifically on the meaningful part. In order to progress in the last update you needed to figure out different songs or plant combinations to play. However in practice that really wasn’t compelling, and just felt like needing to guess a 6 character password with no tips. You also had to constantly go back and forth to the shop and the top of the stump, checking what songs you had unlocked for an idea of what was left, and ensuring you had the correct plants to test any combination. This back and forth really just got in the way of enjoying the experience.

What was fun though was knocking the gnome hats off, and playing whatever song you wanted. 

So in following the fun, I did a complete overhaul. There isn’t a shop, or a gnome hat that bothers you. There aren't things that take you out of immersion. You have access to all of the plants and all of the gnomes and you can choose what to build, and what songs to play. Certain songs will still give you more resources, however they aren’t tied directly to tree progression. Now that is just your resource count. 

I stripped so much out to really narrow in on the feedback I got and see what level of polish I can get before adding anything more. If you have any thoughts or suggestions please let me know in the comments!