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Those Dirty Colonists

By mactinite

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Audio4012.87
Innovation5482.87
Mood6742.65
Graphics7122.57
Overall7382.80
Humor7871.40
Theme8112.68
Fun8682.30
Coolness184233

Comments

terracottafrog 2015-08-24 04:50

To me, this feels like it was too ambitious for the Compo. A lot of bugs remained and made it confusing and difficult to understand. I think this would really shine if it were entered into the jam.

lorcanwsmith 2015-08-24 04:54

Could maybe do with a tutorial but other than that it's good.

9-ar7k 2015-08-24 05:07

wasn't sure what i was doing. :\

foxor 2015-08-24 05:13

I think the game would be fun if it just let me play. As soon as the resources start coming in, the game ends for some reason.

digiman572 2015-08-24 05:16

This game was pretty interesting. I couldn't play for more than five minutes because of a game over bug or I just didn't know what the heck I was doing. (I'm leaning towards the latter) The direction you took for this game guided under this theme was very interesting. It kind of makes you think. Also, the graphics were just stunning. I clicked on this game for that reason alone and did not disappoint.

uvwar 2015-08-24 05:16

Couldn't figure out how to place things (or they wouldn't place) and I would quickly die over and over again. Seems interesting, but I couldn't figure out how to get anything going before the game ended no matter how many variations I tried.

mactinite 2015-08-24 05:20

@TerraCottaFrog I realized that by the second day I would have to do a lot of work to get this into something really fun, so I just pushed to get it functioning.

@foxor
It might be because your residents started dying before you had the resources to sustain them. What works for me in the beginning is to place down two housing units, a power station, a water extractor and then another house and a farm. then at that point I am making enough resources to keep my residents alive enough to put down more housing and a mine. Then it's just a game of balance after that. Definitely can't expect a player to know that though.

halleflux 2015-08-24 05:22

I agree with the statement that this was a bit too ambitious. Games like these require long periods of careful testing, which just isn't possible in a 48 hours period of time.
The game is probably possible, but without knowing exactly how to do it, one can't win. This is a common issue: the developer is really good at the game, but other people will be unable to do pretty much anything unless they dedicate a huge amount of time to it.
Basically, if you think something is fairly easy, it probably isn't to anyone else.

However, all in all, I liked the concept. I also liked the take on the theme. You aren't intentionally being a monster, it's just a byproduct of development.
Well done!

mactinite 2015-08-24 05:43

@Halleflux Thanks for the input and I definitely agree. It was a problem that I knew I was going to have, but sometimes you just have to go for it. ;)

markoburzan27 2015-08-24 05:49

it was fun.

demy 2015-08-24 05:56

Didn't manage to set all 3 - farm, power plant and the mine. Not enough people or all are already dead. Btw, it's now very obvious what resources does it take to build something at first.
But overall the game looks interesting in its potential and I liked randomly generated landscape, looks cool.

dosmaen 2015-08-24 06:07

Interesting concept, I love planet management games and I hope you continue to work on these ideas after the game jam.

gafblizzard 2015-08-24 06:08

This is really tough. I tried doing a really simple city simulator game a few jams back and it's hard to balance.

Some of the things I have the biggest problems with are the tiny game size and font size (I have a ton of screen room unused -- a fullscreen option might fix this...I was playing the web version). I have to lean way in to read certain labels. Maybe changing the font color could help too. I didn't even realize there were more buildings available at the start because they're scrolled off the screen by default.

I also had a lot of trouble figuring out why some buildings wouldn't build. The power plant would build sometimes, but not others. In both cases I apparently had population and ore, and I tried different landscape types. Eventually it might appear, but by then probably too late for the house I wanted it to go with.

Very ambitious though!

gaius-baltar 2015-08-24 06:16

Sort of confusing, and pretty difficult to not go extinct in a few seconds. Needs some balancing or a proper tutorial. Other than that, this could be an awesome game.

candlesan 2015-08-24 06:23

Some great ideas in here! Very ambitious!

insality 2015-08-24 07:13

Look rly sweety, but a complex game mechanics. Hard to understanding what i have to do
Im lose two times ;{

wevel 2015-08-24 16:08

Could do with a bit more info about what is going on as it is very difficult, but its a cool idea

enrymion 2015-08-24 18:28

My best colony so far http://i.imgur.com/Pv7HF9T.png?1
I'm not sure why I died(maybe power plant too far from water extractors?)
Took me a while to figure stuff out. Showing a number in population bar probably would have helped a lot with learning. Also took me a while to realize that there are more than 4 buildings.

mactinite 2015-08-24 19:22

@Enrymion Awesome job! it looks like the water extractors were too far away from the power plant. They usually have to be within two blocks to get power. There are a lot of UI/UX cues I didn't get a chance to implement that would help. Thanks for the input!

hashtaghashtag 2015-08-25 02:29

Like many others have said, maybe a bit too ambitious. The idea itself, and the approach to the theme, are good, I think. The art and music are nice, and do what they need to do. But I think it suffered from a lack of clarity. The UI layout made it hard to figure out what buildings were available, what they cost, and why I sometimes couldn't build them.

jezz0r 2015-09-07 08:39

Great take on the theme. Execution was ok.