Roguelike Deckbuilder, But You Are a Tree!! | Let's Try Grow the Seed

Play the Demo / Wishlist Grow the Seed: store.steampowered.com/app/23...
Grow The Seed is a survival card deck builder where you play as... a plant? Spread your roots, shape your stems, gather resources, repel threatening animals, and survive in a harsh environment as long as you can!
The Let's Try series is a way to preview / review games in order to get my first impressions through the first moments of gameplay.
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#GrowTheSeed

[@arthurpprado]

I think this game could benefit from changing the plant to a non-specific one and make the builds the kind of plant you can grow into, like a cactus being a build focused on defense as well as low water consumption, or a carnivorous build, where you nerf your roots in exchange for being able to drain food from pests

[@HiddenOcelot]

I agree, it looks very promising.

[@ShireishiProduction]

Thanks a bunch for trying out Grow the Seed, Retromation! We're loving the puns in the comments - they really grow on us!

[@sunnylee5446]

So when is it that you plan to full release grow the seed

[@motivatedposter3980]

I'm rooting for this game to leaf positive impressions. Wood be a great genre to branch into

[@mew-ms6mo]

your underated bro

[@nikoladanek542]

True

[@MovingTargetOne]

Would certainly spruce up my steam collection

[@meander281]

Cool idea! Fighting phase is a bit silly though

[@kooskoos12345]

It looked like more of a placeholder than anything to me, but also would be pretty funny if it made it to the full game

[@chefdeadpool8481]

The fighting should be replaced with cards that make roots or branches stronger. Then have the bugs/birds/what have you attack for x amount of time and your goal is just to be strong enough to not break.

[@thebigcheese1905]

Cool idea for a deck builder. The fighting phase seems very detached and probably needs to be better integrated with the other mechanics, or just removed completely. Otherwise, it would be cool to see some more build variety, allowing your plant to specialize more. Needs a lot of work, but definitely something to keep my eye on.

[@gothic_ace2037]

pest control is an important part of keeping any plant healthy so it should definitely stay as part of the game

[@crusatyr1452]

@@gothic_ace2037 As is, though, it just feels like a mini-game, completely separate from the rest of it. If pest control stays, it'll have to get seriously overhauled to be worthwhile on a gameplay front.

[@acctsys]

Cost of roots and branches should increase the farther they are from the core. This will make the plant look more natural. Possibly what is considered core could increase as plant size increases.

[@Retromation]

A good solution

[@newgoog9423]

Incidentally, I just recently started reding a novel wherein the the main character is at tree. What an interesting coincidence this is.

[@ForbiddenApplePotato]

Is the book any good?

[@ryaz4704]

Drop the title

[@afimcr28]

My man's branch building is unhinged.

[@wexaztor9394]

This is a very interesting idea, but i feel like there's a lot of things to work on. The combat part felt weird to me. When i first saw the houses i thought the idea would be that you're a tree just building yourself up and there's a world around you that happens to interract with you in various ways.

[@LugborG]

This reminds me of an old flash game. It was similar in that you had to grow a tree piece by piece like this, but it’s not a deck builder.

[@bnetforce10]

Made me think of Heliotropism, another roguelike tree growing game, not a deckbuilder but more about collecting upgrades throughout the run, has some pretty interesting builds in it.

[@sunshowers3838]

Hey, thanks for mentioning this-tried the demos for both and preferred Heliotropism. I like finding random games through KZbin comments.

[@donaldsnyder1543]

I shall leaf a random comment.

[@claytonharting9899]

I’ll root around for another

[@matthewjohnson2488]

I like how you branched out into puns.

[@MysteryMann2040]

I'll Poke You.

[@juanmateoaraoz4399]

I already wishlisted the game in stem

[@kellyhone2612]

I laughed so hard I logged off!

[@All_Natural_Soda]

I can’t wait to see you play the full game.

[@corvuscorax8064]

The combat phase made me think of insaniquarium

[@butwhytho4858]

Carpenters daughter here … I thought this was possibly the most twisted cute game ever… you’re a tree … building a deck? Wasn’t until a few min in, I realized it was a card deck. Not a wooden backyard deck hahah

[@kylesimone6140]

guess what cards are made of paper

[@peterwysoczanski9391]

another dynamic could be fog of war on the ground and each root shows a % of blocks around it.

[@neolithiumproduction]

I like it. I feel the apple tree seed would be easy, while more different types of seeds could have more complex cards and stuff.

[@saelack]

I dunno.. something about this game is growing on me...

[@sarad2487]

When I logged on, I decided to branch out and stem into a video of a youtuber I've never had seed before, turns out the youtuber is berry great, and the video was vine, exellent really , and know before I'm knotted up exploring his other vids, I'm gonna leaf a comment right here, and I'm rooting that all the other videos are good too ;)

[@kyrab7914]

I guess like every farming roguelike has a defend phase? I could see it working as is in a mobile game, but even then expanded. I do think you could come up with some cool stuff like "this kind of tree gains shield" "this tree has some magic affinity". But if you go without the pest fight, you need a new goal. Honestly tho it's got some cute and calming beginnings AND is fairly unique

[@rustyknight1572]

It does seem rather neat.

[@TheBruhMessenger]

This game is truly a game of all time, might try it out later! Thanks for the playthrough!

[@ollieness1]

Fantastic watch for me. Good stuff

[@MegaKyle36]

I feel like the pests parts should be like different difficulties where you have defense cards like thorns or poisonous roots ect and have to balance out using those cards to survive while gaining enough foot, water, ect. I feel like that would be more fun. The still looks fun though

[@rashidisw]

Cards & Combat aside, the tree growing mechanic does feels like Heliotropism.

[@simdimdim]

15:08 you shall not branch out, you'll root your way in :D

[@jaksongraham9516]

Love to see more

[@rialvita7141]

Sunlight: 0 Meanwhile your leaves: WE AIN'T LEAVING FOR YOU

[@Gnomable]

This is such a cool idea! The pests are a great idea but feel out of step with the rest of the gameplay.

[@CmdrCorn]

"Combat" phase lol

[@ThurstonLewis-yv9fo]

Reto, I’m not sure what I wood do without your videos. I think we wood all grow sad and our happiness wood be uprooted without you.

[@tazmingetgood280]

It looks so cute :)

[@giornog2393]

The base game is good but I think the combat needs some work to integrate it more into the building phase of the game. Making the nighttime a combat phase every time could also let the player get used to the combat would be good. And I think the different fruits could also serve a defense purpose as projectile weapons while the roots could give passive bonuses to them. I could see this becoming a really zen tower defense with different specializations like other comments mentioned where you could become a thorny tree with limited roots like a cactus or a tree with deeper more variable roots as like an all-rounder type build.

[@TT55_STS525]

I think combat should be more natural like you improve your defense systems and defeat fungi, or something like that...

[@colecook834]

This reminds me of an old game that had the same idea on kongregate

[@andersen240]

somehow, this is cool if we're growing from seeds and then become YGGRASIL, and settings in magic words like tower defense game

[@APG93]

I am Groot?

[@SleepyLazyPanda]

cute and fun

[@frakis2771]

I'm gunna make like a tree and get the hell outta here.

[@blazingfire8977]

It would be cool if they incentivized making a normal root pattern, it looks kinda jank with 1 root going in a loopty loop.

[@ujubin]

leafed random comment. cake by kard is so addicted to listen to

[@Dinomimeify]

How is this game not called Skill Tree.

[@Kas_Styles]

Cute game

[@mattkay7915]

tried to play the demo and it crashes every 5 mins, such a shame

[@dehli7616]

same here

[@Alex-wh3zw]

Idea looks great. Except for pests; that part is just stupid.

[@bruhbruh.-.]

Ood

[@omegadragon01]

You better make like a tree and get the eff outta here

[@edlerlucasbarcellosdasilva3622]

sfunkn

[@Contreth1313]

This game would be better if they spruced it up a bit

[@SuperLukeKirby]

I’m ROOTING for this game!

[@lucasenraraujo]

Hmm, game seems to be straddling a bit too much in my opinion, both thematic and mechanically. Having to grow up and down, managing resources and manually doing photosynthesis AND dealing with pests? Oof. I feel like the design space of having to use the roots to mine for resources is the most innovative/compelling part and growing the tree itself could be made into an almost automatic/semi-automatic way (once you reach certain thresholds the tree would grow and you'd have input between options each time like grow taller, grow wider, grow branches, grow flowers, etc), with each option/decision changing the strategy along the way. The goal of "surviving" could be somewhat scrapped to just make a healthy tree and cultivating a garden (maybe you could even let the tree keep living in a legacy where you keep a picture of it and it could give you a special card for that kind of seed).

[@nidungr3496]

Very cool idea, but the combat phase is nonsensical.

[@hpm-go8jg]

first

[@truekingcalix3968]

How original

[@divinedragon17]

@@truekingcalix3968 lol