amyk777 2015-12-14 05:10
Perhaps consider implementing some sort of concrete goal.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD34 → World Grower - Growth of the civilization
By rhebsgaard
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Audio | 571 | 2.43 | ||
| Overall | 585 | 3.12 | ||
| Theme | 591 | 3.59 | ||
| Mood | 607 | 2.79 | ||
| Fun | 633 | 2.95 | ||
| Humor | 641 | 1.99 | ||
| Innovation | 692 | 2.77 | ||
| Graphics | 743 | 2.58 |
Perhaps consider implementing some sort of concrete goal.
This is a game I could sit and play for a little while. I also appreciate the bit of depth added having buildings boost one another. The interface buttons and menus are a bit dull, but they do the job.
I appreciate the depth, and definitely think that this could be fun and engaging once fleshed out a little better. Sprites are a little on the small side, so I found it difficult to read / see everything. I'm always down for simulation games though, glad to see this in the compo! 'v'
I'm not sure if the game has an ending, if you grow the area enough. Consider keeping the game short enough for people to complete it and as amYk777 said, a concrete goal would have more people wanting to play. It also seems that destroying a building doesn't free up the multiplier in cost for the next building, and parks don't seem to improve living space.
nice economic strategy. the pleasure had built his small town. thank you! PS music sucks :(
Kind of cool. Reminds me of Settlers and Carcassonne mixed with SimCity.
Nice polish. I'd like to see some challenges.
Even without an objective, I see the appeal of a perpetually growing city like this. The mechanics you have for clumping buildings together are really solid. The game falls apart for me on one issue, though.
In my eyes, a world builder like this should be about exponential expansion, where the city starts out with 10 residents and a little cornerstore and by the end of the game you're plopping down giant skyscrapers with spare change. You, on the other hand, went down the cookie clicker approach, where you match growing income with growing prices, making any gains on the player's part a completely meaningless skinnerbox.
Instead of increasing the price of each building with each one placed, I think you should've just made the upgrades more potent and exponentially more expensive (though still at a static cost). At that point, the player still has to increase income to afford the upgrades (which are neccessary because of limited worldspace), but the city actually shows the progress the player's made.
(P.S. - in your dropbox links, if you replace 'dropbox.com' with 'dl.dropbox.com' you'll get a direct download instead of going through dropbox's page)
The game is unplayable for me. After it's been running for a few seconds, the screen goes gray and I can't click anything.
OSX version only runs once running 'chmod +x' on the executable in the .app/Contents/MacOS directory. Also, I would suggest allowing various screen sizes.
OSX version is not working
I liked this one. The music seemed disjointed at first but I thought after a while it was pleasant. I can see there's depth in the systems, but perhaps was a bit ambitious for 48 hours? With more time, I can see a strong game here.
A game this large in concept needs more than 48 hours to do it justice. Overall good attempt though. Made me think of simcity. music was a bit too much so I turned it off quickly :)
It lacks a goal, but what is there is pretty well done! City-builders are one of my favourite type of games and I think this has a lot of potential if developed further. :)
Hey man, Interesting game. Like amYk777 said, the game could use a goal/ challenge. You can make any decision you want in the game (that's available) and the only downfall is it might not be the most economically efficient choice. Nice game though anyway.
Where's the end??? Nice work!
I enjoy the game play and the graphics is lovely (I love that you have sprites for the upgraded buildings). However, the game involves quite a bit of waiting since the prices rises relatively quickly. Also it would be nice if I can actually see the range of the buildings (e.g. shop) so that I can plan my buildings optimally. Otherwise a very fun game!
Vera Nice game, congratulations...
I liked it, even though I generally don't like simulation games
Loved this game, a bit slow paced at time but very fun :) enjoyed building up my city!
It got old really fast. The theme is nice. It's quite cute and fun to play for a bit. I like that you can upgrade things and that it has a tutorial. I even like the music, however sound is a tad lacking. The art style is suitably minimalist and going for a style, but feels kinda lacking - maybe some 2-frame animation on the buildings mighta helped.
Not my kinda game as you can imagine. - Clicker heroes sounds like the worst thing ever to someone who grew up playing Sonic2 & Quake. :P
Cool game. It is like an arcade version of Sim City. Needing the have certain building within nearby tiles to make other buildings work is an good mechanic.
It would be useful to have a goal, or at least multiple defined objective to keep people interested.
With a few extra features and rewards and a little polish, this could make an excellent mobile game.
I spent all my money on expansions :(
I liked it, music feels a bit like it was just added for the sake of it but I completely understand that, I almost did the same for my entry.
It would be cool if houses generated tax income, also it would be good if the game detected if you'd got yourself into a situation with no income and not enough money to buy anything new and gave you a bit of extra cash - especially the first time it happens.
Kudos for doing a sim/management game as an LD compo entry, I did one last time and know all about how time consuming the UI requirements alone are!
A goal would have made it better. Well done for 48 hours however!
Tut is a bit long. Maybe find a way to make it more concise. Otherwise very good job!
Pretty cool
Nice game, and enjoyed my few minutes with it. But, as others have commented, having an achievable goal would be nice.
Really fun to play. Could probably sit for hours and grind money :P
Nice game.Tile graphics were good. I built parks all around.
Music was too intense :)
Loved it.
Growing a city is always fun. like the fact that buildings boost each other.
Quit in the menu is called button, and yes does not work. So alt + f4 it is. :)
Nice game, really reminds me of Sims City, great game
Great concept, no adversities or goals
Nice game.. but I couldn't play for more than 1 minute.. The objective was not too clear. The tutorial helps but it is too extense.
I love that you have implemented a tutorial :-)
Very cool game idea. I wish I'd done something like that. I love these kinda games.
I also really like the music! But please, next time use anything but .rar for distribution :-P
It's a cool concept, but the lack of a goal and the relatively slow pace made me grow tired of it after a few minutes. Good start, but I think it would benefit some sort of progression system where you gain access to more units as your civilization grows, as well as some fast forward button that lets you speed up the simulation.
I dig that you managed to give your game some depth.
Maybe a compo doesn't accomodate for this kind of games. It would probably need some sort of goal to reach to make it more entertaining. However, I must say that it made me feel like I was sitting in front of my old Atari 1040ST again, which is definitely cool! The music worked that feeling a lot.
A little repetitive music, a mute button would be appreciated.
This game is a nice economic game but it could be made better.
I like the whole idea behind it, but especially in the beginning it's very slow (meaning there is very little to do). Maybe achievements could fix that as small, intermediate goals? Could also get rid of the "no goal"-issue. Or just speed it up :)
Nice work Hedegaard;)
Great use of the theme. I found myself playing this much longer than I had intended. Personally, I would have liked to see some failure conditions. You make mention of an office "breaking" in the tutorial, but since workers never seem to leave, that isn't really a problem.
Nice little sim/city builder. Only issue for me is that it moves pretty slow and it's not really difficult at all.
Pretty fun would like to see more buildings tho.
It's important to separate what might be an "Easy fix" vs harder stuff. I'd think stuff like the rising prices of everything is a snap to change, and I'm with amras0000 when you build cities, (except maybe small "yearly" increases), the units stay the same, so you start with little houses then build bigger stuff. With the price of everything increasing *every purchase* and the "time to wait for a sane time to buy land" is in realtime, he's right that maybe a good concept got crunched into the "clicker" category that's an imitation of the fun like cotton candy, but then you sour on it REAL fast.
I know this is LD, but even something as simple as "build enough money to build Hotels and become a millionaire" is a goal. 1 more bldg type, but it's closer to the city build genre not the clicker "increase forever until a house costs 400,000 and you wait half an hour to buy land".
Fun to play! Nice music!
I liked the game for first minutes, then lack of a concrete goal let me think that could be a game, but right now is just a demo. You should add some problems: keep growing is okay, but what about too much houses together? May player lose some buildings? And so on
Could be pretty neat! With a bit more direction to it and some more variety (obviously a fault of this being a game jam) it could be something really nice that I could easily get addicted to.
That said, the music has already driven me to insanity and I only played for a few minutes. Could do with some variety on that end, or at least a mute button!
Just noticed there is actually a mute button. Woops.
Fits the theme well, but as others have mentioned the economic model means you seem to spend quite a bit of time just waiting.
The lack of a goal and/or some other influence that affects the world limits the appeal for me. But it is a great effort and has potential.
Great game, but it could use some more depth. As it is right now, it's really just a clicker game without the clicking. Nothing wrong with that though! I appreciate not having to click so much.
Obviously can't expect a ton of depth for a compo game though. It's impressive enough as is!
Interesting concept, though an actual goal would do wonders for a game like this.
Great game! I fairly enjoyed it, it could've used some sounds though. Overall 4/5
this was pretty interesting. the music got annoying after a little while though, and i think that it could be improved a lot. one issue i found was that if you destroy your office buildings and dont have enough money saved up, you cant continue the game. it was fun though! :)
Works on mac
I love the music. It fits the game's style nicely and reminds me a bit of SimCity.
Can't see a civ kind of game that I'm already addicted!
Fun, but headache inducing. I muted the volume and then just kept playing. Building, expanding, upgrading. Need something like this for the mobile! Great submission!
Nice concept. I tried something much similar, on a hex grid, with more different buildings, but I was too ambitious. Keep up the good work!
The tutorial was a bit too much for one go, I forgot what each thing did by the time it was over.
Looks like a lot was done in a short time, I enjoyed this game and really liked how in-depth some of the systems are.
I can see this being a lot of fun. Hope you keep at it after the jam!
Very nice compo there !
The game pacing is a little slow though, because the upgrades costs are growing fast.
Fits the theme really well, and nice realisation in 48h !
Nice game :) slow gameplay but city building is always fun huge fan :D
maybe it needs a sound effect or something when you click on a building, to notify you you now have to click on the grid to build it.
I'm also not a fan of how the upgrading cost increases globally rather than by building to building basis.
Apart from that is a nifty little prototype with a really cool idea in the "expanding world"
I think a goal of the game would be good. The music is pretty annoying after a short time. Maybe you could make a button to toggle the music :)
City growing simulator, whats the point of offices?
It seems my citizens earn more money by having shops next to them. I wonder where I need the offices o.o
Well thought gameplay mechanics and game idea however :)
Cool city builder, cost for buildings gets crazy after a while.
There is a lot of depth in this game but we need challenges and a solid goal.
You might wanna improve the graphics.
OSX is not working for me.
Ok concept, but lacks a goal and is in need of polish. Because prices go up, growing feels meaningless. Kudos for including a tutorial.
Expanding a house costs the same amount as buying one, however both amounts keep going up. There is appeal here, don't get me wrong, it's just not done as well as I'd have liked.
Fun little toy. Would like it if it didn't pause in the background, I'd probably leave it running for a while... definitely slows way down and needs to keep going - would be fun to be getting more money and space than I can keep up with building expansions with for a while =).
Well done!
I echo the sentiments of the others, its really a cool game and I hope you work on it more after the compo. I also agree with @amras0000 comments. I felt the cost of upgrading and of the buildings themselves grew too big too quickly. While I really enjoyed the game, waiting for enough money to do something and then only being able to do one thing before needing to wait some more got old quickly.
Great game! A minimal design of sim city.
Suggestions:
1 Game ends to quickly? As the price of stuff go up really fast.
2 Game came to a tie when price is too high. How can it to a game player tries to play longer yet fail due to increasing difficulty.
I like the concept. I agree that you do need some sort of win/lose condition or maybe natural disasters that wipe out your buildings.
Love these types of expansion growth games! Reminds me of sim city.
I mostly agree with what the other comments have stated. That being said, it's a fun little game and very similar to what we did this LD! Although I think your game is a lot more complete. Good job.
I mostly agree with what the other comments have stated. That being said, it's a fun little game and very similar to what we did this LD! Although I think your game is a lot more complete. Good job. Audio gets a little repetitive after a while.
I enjoyed it. There is something pleasant about watching numbers go up. The music, while annoying at first, grew on me. It felt like a very relaxed city builder.
Well made game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 34 compilation video series, if you’d like to check it out :) https://youtu.be/7EMaRu1rC0U
Pretty nice little sim game. There's not much challenge to it, but as a sandbox it works well.
I think that the game was fun, and the primary mechanics of the game were good. One critique that I had was that all of the buildings became expensive too quickly. I ended up having to wait to place buildings which was a little tedious.
Overall great job!
I felt like there should've been more to do, like more buildings to create. After upgrading everything it got pretty boring especially since the prices of buildings rose quickly.
Kinda cool management game but there was no danger or goal, so it was a little pointless. Anyhow, the music and graphics went together nicely and the management itself was interesting for a while.
nice little game, would be good to have more of a goal, had some issues with quitting the game, but fun game :)
A nice solid start for a builder game!
The added dimension of exploration is cool, but would be more interesting if there were more fields available, so you could make more tactical decisions.
A goal, or special reward when you reach money/citizen/size nr X would be essential too. :)
Interesting concept, we went for something similar. I like the city builder thing, and it was nice being able to upgrade existing structures. Not a lot of conflict or challenge in the game though, it was pretty much just sitting and waiting for money for the next upgrade or building.
I think there's a bit of game design issue here. The idea is somewhat similar to those clicking games, but the game's slow pace doesn't make it feel like you're making a good progress. The inflation rate is so high that you have to wait a lot to earn money to buy the next upgrade. But with a little tweak this game could be very fun and addicting. Also a nice cheerful music!