TumbleSeed

This game is like a zen garden on roller skates—it's simultaneously the slowest and one of the most intense experiences I've ever had! It tests your patience and hand coordination to the max, making you question if you’re playing a game or auditioning for a circus act. You’ll find yourself sweating bullets while trying to maneuver your little seed through challenging levels, all while wondering if you had something to drink today but just forgot. Every restart feels like a comedy of errors, but somehow, that makes it even more addictive. If you’re ready to embrace the chaos of slow-motion panic, this game is a hilarious ride you won’t want to miss!

I like the game a lot! Very creative idea for a game. It's a hard game that's for sure but easy to master with time. If you like a challenge i very much recommend it. I'm glad to be a part of the 3% of people to complete it. One last thing i should say is that this game was on my wishlist for 2.5 years waiting for a sale but the last sale was in 2020, so I bit the bullet and bought it. Don't regret it

Its a new take on a old marble game i played as a young kid. While my parents drank

First of all, the developer for this game doggedly insists on selling it as a roguelike. They seem to believe that because the maps can be randomly generated and (like most arcade games) you can get game overs, that makes it a roguelike, which, that is not how genre works. You don’t just say it’s part of the genre and then it magically is.

What this actually is is a very traditional precision arcade game. It’s literally that old game where you had a wood box with a maze and had to tilt it to roll a marble through it without falling into holes. And as an adaptation of that game, it’s quite good, and I had fun with it. Like many arcade games, though, its problem is that it only has one thing to offer, and at a certain point you just move on. I enjoyed the old wooden marble maze thing as a kid, but I wasn’t going to do it nonstop for 25 hours, and I’m not going to play this game for that long either. I’ll pick it up intermittently when I have time to kill and am in the mood, but I’m not going to buckle down and play it like an RPG, because that’s just not what arcade games are meant for.

The game itself doesn’t really seem to understand this. The first release apparently had no save point, requiring you the beat the entire game in one fell swoop as it threw increasingly more holes, traps, and enemies at you, which honestly seems like a specific kind of torture. The dev was shocked, just shocked, when people didn’t want to spend $15 to die over and over for an hour before getting bored and frustrated, and begrudgingly added in small maps with save points while insisting that everyone just didn’t understaaaaaand. Whininess about not making enough $$$ off the game aside,* this move made it actually playable.

(Games refusing to respect player’s time is one of my least favorite things. Yeah, it was probably technically possible to get good enough to beat it the way is was. No, people are not filthy casuals for having lives outside this one game and wanting to do something with themselves other than master the fucking marble maze for 100 hours, the most useful of all skills. In writing my mantra is “Assume your audience is smart”; in gaming it has become “Assume your audience has other things to do with their lives.” If you want to make a superhard game for a very niche audience, fine, but then don’t whine about how the game isn’t reaching a wide enough audience. This is not complex.)

Anyway, if you love arcade games, this one has very high production values, and it’s central mechanic is fun, and with the discrete level options it’s actually a playable game for a regular person. But $15 is still insane; it’s still just one thing, over and over. I paid $5 and that was honestly the absolute top end of what you should pay. I enjoyed my time with it, but after 2 hours I really don’t see myself going back to it in any meaningful way. I have other things to do.

*The dev apparently used Kickstarter funds to go on a $25,000 (TWEN TY FIVE THOU SAND DOLL AR) media blitz for this game, which is equal parts hilarious and sad.

A game built around a novel concept (its control scheme, of course). Has enough content and enough challenge and enough interesting mechanics to justify itself. The work that went into its visual design comes through clearly in the simplicity and consistency of its presentation.

Unfortunately, the game's novel control scheme never makes the leap from being a source of difficulty to being a source of enjoyment. Every enemy and hazard in the game, from the grubs in the first area to the jumble of enemies accompanying the final Adventure Mode boss, would be trivially avoidable with a conventional control scheme. This means that even at the very end, when you've finished every quest and learned everything the game has to teach you, the game's difficulty doesn't come from pushing the limits of the novel control scheme to maneuver and act in ways that would not be possible otherwise, as one normally expects from a game designed around a novel mechanic; rather, it comes from the fact that it never stops being slow and awkward to make the control scheme do the dead-simple maneuvers that you want it to do.

So contrary to the developers' apparent understanding, TumbleSeed doesn't suffer from being difficult, per se. Rather, it suffers from the fact that the source of its difficulty makes it slow and tedious rather than challenging and energizing. In the modern gaming landscape, difficulty is clearly no impediment to a game's success, especially within the 'roguelike' genre that TumbleSeed's developers have declared it to belong to; the completion-rates that the developers shared for TumbleSeed's final challenges are not even uncommon among successful games. But what great roguelites have that TumbleSeed does not is the ability to give the player a fun experience whether they are winning or losing, and to accompany a loss with feelings like "Well, that was fair, I can see what I did wrong" or "Maybe that will go better next time" rather than "I see this clumsy and awkward control scheme is still clumsy and awkward".

It's clear that a lot of work went into TumbleSeed, but the end result is still a tedious experience that offers little to come back to.

This is a lovely little game about rolly things, hungry bug-things and holes in the foor.

The cute, clean aeshetic hides a great deal of challenge, with the control scheme giving you limited ability to manipulate your little circular character. Instead, you control a beam which spans the level, changing the angle to roll from side to side, trying to avoid various hazards. Your goal is to ascend a mountain. Little patches of dirt let you plant seeds, and the various seeds you plant each enable different powers, including the ability to heal yourself, place checkpoints and access weapons to fight off your foes.

It's a lot of fun trying to control your character as they roll haphazardly across the level and you can really feel the improvement as you become more familiar with manipulating its movements. All I can say is you should pick this up and start clumsily launching yourself into the wall. I'll meet you at the summit!

🌿🌿🌿🗻🌿🌿🌿
🕳🌷🕳🕳🌷☘️🕳
🕳🌸🕳🌱🕳🍃🕳
🍃🕳🕳👁🕳🌿🌷
🕳🌿🕳🕳🌸🕳🕳
🌸🕳🌿☘️🕳☘️🕳

Found this game after searching for information on the mechanical arcade game on which it's based. I probably wouldn't have bothered trying Tumbleseed if it weren't for such a solid musical presence in the trailer, I thought wow if the soundtrack is this good who cares if the game is terrible? Fortunately the game is awesome.
Plenty of abilities and moving enemies make this game a satisfying and challenging departure from the arcade game, and the soft and brooding score keeps my mind focused on the tasks at hand. It's a slow burn kind of game, I suppose you COULD try and speed run it, but that's not where I get my enjoyment. Patience is key, and if dexterity games give you anxiety you should probably skip this one but I for one am very glad I took the chance and bought Tumbleseed because this will go down and one of my favorites.

TumbleSeed isn't actually that hard of a game. Sure, I didn't start playing until the Four Peaks update which has reportedly made the game remarkably easier to learn and play, but still, I want to make this point about my experience: 20+ hours into Spelunky, I still haven't even beaten Olmec; I have, however, taken down the boss at the peak within 10 hours of playing TumbleSeed. I kind of want to say TumbleSeed might actually be an easy game because of that, because it is. The boss at the peak isn't all too difficult to take down once you get the hang of the movement. That doesn't mean it isn't fun, though. Similar to Spelunky's hell run, TumbleSeed has something quite similar that I still haven't really come close to beating. It's really difficult. Besides, the base game is strong on its own.

Mastering TumbleSeed's movement is a blast. It's unlike anything I've ever done in any other game I've played. The usual style of movement in a vast majority of the games I've played is either your FPS-style WASD movement, or the left/right/jump combo in almost every platformer out there. TumbleSeed's movement is something completely new, so it presents you with a learning experience that typical first person and platforming games can't offer, and once you get the hang of it and find yourself able to navigate paths you originally found impossible and dance circles around enemies, it feels pretty awesome.

The roguelite elements are done very well, too. You're just as powerful on your first run as you are on your thousandth, which I like in a roguelite. Nothing is required to be unlocked; you could theoretically beat the full game on your first run after purchasing the game. Instead of adding on passive abilities or items through your run like in The Binding of Isaac or Spelunky, you collect different powers you can use throughout your run, giving variance to each time you play. There aren't really that many, I think the number is around 20-30 aside from the starting abilities, but I feel that, too, is a good thing as it makes it easier to master each power and to find the ones you like. Success in TS isn't as reliant as TBoI on level generation as well, which makes TS more arcadey (Ice Cold Beer, anyone?), like Nuclear Throne.

The most conflicting thing to me about TumbleSeed is actually the sound. Most of the sound design is fantastic. The sounds made by using abilities, scrolling through menus, taking damage, falling... really everything just sounds nice. But then you get to the later levels which have a spooky sort of ambience that just isn't fun to listen to. It's not like, nails on chalkboard or anything, but it isn't exactly pleasant or really even fitting with the whole aesthetic of the game. That and the sound the magnet aura makes (an item that allows you to pick up currency at range) kind of ruin the sound design entirely for me and I don't understand why they would include such unpleasant sounds. The music is fine though, but I'm one to usually turn the music off quickly in these kinds of games to listen to my own tunes. Not that that matters for this review though.

But yeah I like this game a lot and I really wish more people would play it. It's deserving of much more attention than it has now and thank god it isn't a multiplayer game so you're free to enjoy it whenever you want without fear of a dead community. Of course, the daily leaderboards are kind of just dead on Steam, but that doesn't really matter does it?

Buy this game though. It's a solid roguelite with interesting movement that's worth checking out.

Although my playtime is misleading, I've put 50+ hours into this game on other platforms.



Very challenging game, but very rewarding. The control scheme takes some getting used to, but is ultimately very tight and fun

Highly suggest picking this up if you enjoy difficult yet rewarding games and/or a risk/reward system. If you're concerned about the difficulty of it, the developers have listened and adjusted the enemies and levels. As a bonus, the soundtrack is amazing as well. You will enjoy this game for $15, no doubt.

TumbleSeed is honestly one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played. I would recommend this game for anybody to try, but it also might not be a game everyone will like.

At first glance the game looks simple. It had a cute aesthetic, there is a clear gimic to character movement, and the overall objective isn't anything novel. For me it wasn't until I started watching some gameplay and had some of the nuances explained to me that I really took an interest.

First off: the game is extremely challenging. It will take hours of play just to become comfortable with the control scheme (which is the same for any game with a new control scheme). You will die a lot and this might be frustrating. You may feel the game is being unfair. However, once you gain mastery of the controls, learn to stay composed, and understand how the various powers, enemies, and interacting game mechanics work, everything feels just right. At that point it's entirely about being up to the challenge, planning ahead, and executing well on those plans.

If you enjoy the satisfaction of finally overcoming a difficult challenge, this game will provide that feeling. If you enjoy being able to continually improve your performance and see the result of practice, this game will let you glow in that sensation when you look at the leaderboards.

However, if you have little patience, or want the game to feel like it's giving you constant rewards outside your own personal skill improving, you may be disappointed. There are a few unlockables, but that's not what the game is all about. It's more about overcoming the difficulties presented.

One can expect to spend at least 15-20 hours before they 'beat' the game for the first time. If they pursue further knowledge, it may take another 10-20 hours before they truly beat the game.

I've fallen in love with this game and don't see myself quiting anytime soon. Even though I've made extreme progress at lowering my run times, there's still so much room for improvement.

I think this game is a joy and sincerely hope that other people come to love it as much as I have.

I thought the first release was fun, but I definitely needed to practice a lot if I had any hope of beating the game. Then the devs updated to adjust the way the progression works and now my hard-won skills get me even further :) Each quest now has a dual purpose in not only teaching you strategies to survive, but unlocking auras (powerups) to help you on your climb.

Bravo to the devs on the update! Recommended if you're looking for a chill roguelike experience.

So let's get this out of the way. It's rock solid hard and there's no denying it. This means there's a lot of people that will just bounce off it. If you think that might be you then sorry I guess it's not for you, I'm sure you'll find another great game to play :)

But that's OK! For those who do enjoy it, I think there's something special here. There's a whole bunch of interesting an unique mechanics that all work together to create a game that's unlike any I've played before. From its prominent and unusual control scheme, which calls for patience and precision, to the strange and varied weapons/seed planting system, which provides a constant reassesment of your current priorities, this is a game that demands you sit down and really disect how every bit of it works and fits together in order to master it.

Plus it looks lovely.

Bought this game on release and it had a few issues with game balance/difficulty. HOWEVER! the newest update fixed every one of my issues with the game, and added reasons to use different play styles and strategies though new Auras that give a passive bonus (you get to choose one at the beginning of each run). Also there are now new peaks or runs which are built to teach you how to better deal with certain areas and enemies in the game allowing the learning of the game to go at a much more reasonable pace. I would have recommended before the new update but with the new update the game is a MUST play with a unique art style and exciting movement system.

I started playing this game after the very recent update that adds 4 pre-generated levels that gradually teach you the complex mechanics. I've completed those in a couple of days and I've taken a few stabs at the procedurally generated adventure mode.
While it's still a hard game I'm really enjoying it, and I don't feel anything close to the extreme frustration that reviewers of the earlier version of the game mention.
If you haven't played the game because you heard that it's "too hard", that's a solved problem (As long as you enjoy perma-death rogue-likes). Props to the team for recognizing that and fixing it.
So far I'm really pleased with it, and it is already worth the $11.99 I payed during the sale. I'll update the review in the future to mention if it caught my attention in the long term like other rogue-likes like Spelunky

I want this to be the most 'glowing' negative review I can possibly write. TumbleSeed is really awesome. I *love* the mechanic and how, like Spelunky, you will hit difficulty spikes that can really only be overcome by gitting gud. The 'quests' do a great job of encouraging you to get better. Succeeding feels great. The artwork and music are superb. It puts a smile on my face when I play. Seriously, TumbleSeed is great fun all around.

Essentially, there are 'levels' that you traverse with an item reward (seed variant) mid-way (think gold chest room), and a town with shops and goodies at the end. Great, items/powers add complexity and strategy. I was totally on the road to addiction, until I came to grips with the items/seeds. The problem with the items is that they nearly always have a 'detriment' associated with them. In an already very difficult game, this makes them more-or-less something you find yourself avoiding. Ok, so what, who cares? Well, if you change the items/seeds to something just to add challenge instead of only really helping you - you are left with only the tilt mechanic which makes the whole game feel more 'shallow'.

Before I had really gotten into the items/seeds, I kept thinking this onion would keep peeling off layers of complexity, but it mostly stopped with the tilt mechanic. I kind of hung up the towel at that point. I wanted item synergies like Spelunky and Isaac, and what I got was mostly optional stuff that was more of a lateral change instead of a buff proper.

I'm not alone. This gripe has come up quite frequently. I've chatted with other players and most people are like 'yeah, I agree, but what are you gonna do?'. Well, I guess I'm out. The tilt mechanic isn't enough for me to dump dozens of hours into, unfortunately.

Pros:
+Fantastic mechanic that is sooooo fun once you invest enough time to get better
+Artwork and music are remarkable
+It feels good to play
+I love the 'money' system and the strategy it offers

Cons:
-The item system is an illusion that gets you thinking of cool synergies that are helpful, but they end up being more of a lateral change in gameplay often with serious detriments; some items are purely 'challenge mode' in my opinion
-The different levels look different enough, but sometimes it feels like its mostly pallete swapping

I am probably suffering from the problem of projecting my hopes onto someone elses creation. I wanted a bit more depth than TumbleSeed offers, and that's mostly my problem. Unfortunately, I think alot of people that would be the core market for this game would feel the same way. Why invest serious hours into getting good with the tilt mechanic only to be greeted with a fairly shallow system, otherwise?

Thanks for reading.

Tumbleseed is a.. balancing platformer? If you saw the video or screenshots you'll already know that you have to balance a ball (seed) on top of a screen-wide platform(Vine). What you might be confused about is how it actually works, which I was before playing it.
Basically, you move each end of the Vine separately up or down. So if you're on a controller, left stick moves the left end and right the right end. You go up by moving both sides up, etc.
What makes this interesting is the lack of direct control of the seed. Moving around is based on momentum and your ability to approximate how far the seed will roll based on how much you tilt the Vine. It will feel confusing as hell at first and you might have to play a bit to really grasp how much your movements affect it.

In TumbleSeed you climb up a procedurally generated mountain that has 5 different levels that each require you to master a new skill. It starts relatively easy with simple enemies and some holes and gets progressively more difficult with more enemy types and increased amounts of holes. After a brief tutorial introducing you to moving, seeds and stuff you’re thrown into the game itself. In the first level you get used to moving around, planting stuff and avoiding enemies or killing them, then you'll have to start learning how to be offensive, then defensive and then combine all of your skills together to conquer the final parts of the game.
Each level is separated by a town area where you can take a breather, talk to NPC seeds, purchase items or play minigames.

You use different seed powers by planting them on plots. These powers are found in seed shrines found in the middle point of every level or bought from a shop in town. Seeds can be offensive or defensive and whats great about them is that they all rely on movement. With a bomb you have to be able to get far away enough to not get caught in the blast radius, which can be tricky when the terrain has a lot of holes, mines require you to be able to lead enemies to them while keeping out of danger yourself (watch out for your own mines too..), and many more. Every tool is built around utilizing movement.
You start off with four default seeds: Flagseed, Crystal, Heartseed and Thornvine. The flagseed is the most interesting out of these. It allows you to create flags that act as checkpoints, when you fall down a hole, you tumble down back to the latest checkpoint, taking more damage the longer the fall. If you don't have any planted, you will fall down to the bottom of the level.
There are also power-ups called Auras, which I sadly find useless for the most part. There are auras that make projectiles bigger, make enemies drop health instead of crystals, make planting free if you're on one health and many more. All of the auras have a downside to them that make them mostly an annoyance.

The game has a couple ways of help you with moving around and letting you concentrate on it. A small bar will always be below the seed with a dot indicating how in balance you are relative to your position on the Vine.
The camera will always adjust to your position to allow you to see properly in the direction you're going. This combined with most enemies being inactive when off-screen I found very neat.
Enemies have unique sounds to let you know that a certain enemy type is nearby. Enemies also let different death screams depending on their type, letting you know what kind of enemies have died in some situations where you can't actually see them. This is nice to know because harder enemies yield more money.

Talking of enemies, they are all really simple. A slug-thing will rotate around and charge in a direction for a bit, a tube thing rotates and shoots in four directions, spiders chase you by jumping, etc. The enemies don't need to be complex because the way you move suddenly turns even the simplest enemies into real threats. Killing enemies yields crystals and the more health an enemy has, the more it will drop.

Large part of the game is also managing your crystals, which are both used to purchase items, participate in minigames and planting seeds.
Yeah, the seeds cost crystals to use, most of them, anyway. Spent all of your money on a new seed? You gotta collect more to be able to use it.

Almost all the invividual elements of the game are simplistic and based around utilizing the fact that you don't have direct control over the seed. Even the graphics have this clean, flat look. The music is kind of minimalistic as well and has this wonderful rolling feel in it's composition and instruments.

It's a damn wonderful and tight game, highly recommend it.

Some things I found annoying or something:
The balance bar can get in the way if you have a lot of hearts piled up.
Large objects and structures can hide enemies and crystals. This could be solved by making enemies visible through obstacles the same way TS is.
YOU CAN’T REBIND CONTROLS!
Not annoying to me, but some players might find the lack of unlocks these roguelite games usually have off-putting. To me the reward of getting better and being able to progress and learn how different powers work was enough.
Some enemies can be tough to see in certain areas (crystal flies in desert/snow, I’m looking at you. Also sometimes projectiles are tough to spot)
The seed selection menu becomes a bit of a slog to scroll through if you collect a lot of seed powers.

I'm absolutely addicted to this game. It has the most interesting game mechanics i've seen in a long time. It's definitely worth a shot.

Here are some highlights from a stream I did not too long ago. (As of posting this review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1kv1hVRIgg&ab_channel=NickShock

I have been waiting for this game for over 4 months. So now that I finally played it here is what I think (added some since I played it more)…

Negatives:
-I was looking forward to using a keyboard, but you cannot rebind keys, and controller feels so much better.
-The game is very slow, so if you can’t sit still then I would recommend against buying it.

Positives:
-Very pretty.
-Soundtrack is amazing.
-It is a unique gameplay style.
-Plenty of seeds.
-You can play aggressive, passive, or a nice mix.

TumbleSeed is a much slower roguelite than the ones that have hit the mainstream recently: Nuclear Throne, Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, etc. We're talking several orders of magnitude slower: killing a single enemy early on requires thoughtful planning and careful, patient execution, and even with the seed powers you might get later, you have to exercise great patience to ensure the kill happens. In a single run, it has taken me as long as 10 minutes to clear the first area of the mountain.

The beauty of TumbleSeed, in my opinion, is this emphasis on planning and thought. Execution, while still extremely important, takes a backseat. Enemy patterns are simple and easy to learn, but movement is very difficult, so TumbleSeed asks you to find the SAFEST routes and solutions, rather than the quickest. Enemies can relentlessly chase you down. If they hit you you face possibly losing a lot of resources, but worse, they can put you into a position you didn't plan around.

All in all, TumbleSeed delivers a game unlike anything I have played before, and manages to execute a good roguelite structure, from its items and powers along with its level generation and enemy design.

TumbleSeed is a pretty great modern arcade game and a nice variant of the '83 arcade machine, Ice Cold Beer (Zekes Peek). It's a challenging game of rolling a ball by controlling the two ends of the rail the ball rests on, while avoiding hazards, such as holes and spikes, and avoiding the various enemies the encounter within each level. Great artwork, Great sound and gameplay that maybe unique to most. Strangely enough, if you play a lot of helicopter simulation, those skills translate well into this game.

The developers did a smart job with keeping the artwork simple, but unfortunatly they squander is by making enemies that blend into the backgrounds (bombs in holes, tiny insects). While playing the game you will mostly focus on the lower half of your screen so it would be better if all enemies/hazards stood out within your peripheral vision. I've also run into cases where there were holes hidden behind forground objects.

The game features an adventure mode, which is basically you trying to get to the top of the mountain. You slowly accumulate new items to help you on your way. Within this mode the game also features quests to keep things interesting, though this feature is a bit awkward as, after completing the quest, you confirm the quest with the quest giver and you basically have to die before he'll give you your next quest.

Also featured is a Daily Challenge, which i assume is the same level for everyone competing in it. As the game is designed to be challenging this mode can be pretty tense as your daily shot at making it somewhere on the leaderboards.

TumbleSeed is a unique game that is hard to categorize, but i would call it a, "modern arcade game" more than anything else. I recommend the game if the idea of modern arcade games appeal to you, though it does have a handful of flaws that turns a challenging game into a frustrating one.

I've played steam games for a long time with hundreds of games in my library. This is probably one of my most favorite game I've played on steam. Also I am horrible at it but I keep playing it to try and improve and get better. The procedural generation is done well and makes the game feel fresh giving the player a new challenge every time he starts a new game. The music is simply relaxing and beautiful and fits very well with the theme And the aesthetics of the game is simply pleasant to watch. the unique gameplay mechanics adds a layer of depth and skill. I am very much surprised at how much I enjoy this game. A definite 2 thumbs up for me.