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Earthling Exhibits

By lacaranian

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burnedkirby 2016-08-29 06:55

Entertaining, especially to see all the names of the artifacts.

If only I could read the contents of the "Artful Pillow". Then I could unravel the mystery of the "Weighted Scarf".

mooncalf 2016-08-31 02:21

Played a few times. I never quite understood the game enough to forge a strategy.

thauber 2016-08-31 03:09

I loved the comedy. Weighted Scarf was great. Cutesy art feel. Like the names of months. Lot of charming content here.

The only negative is I would have liked to get some more feedback as to what was causing what. I just kept getting new artifacts and then got new money. I could never draw a solid connection between the two.

Great work!

chelseat833 2016-08-31 03:49

Strange and funny game! I liked your art, and all the strange humorous touches with names of months and items. I could see this as a more full-fledged management game.

lacaranian 2016-08-31 04:03

@thauber Glad you liked it!

Agreed on the negative side of things - at risk of explaining too much (SPOILERS), I did provide an "on hover" summary of a player's income (which comes directly from artifacts) and expenses (which increase via a formula over time to ensure the length of the game falls within a certain range of months, about 25-30, for average play), but the normal path of mouse movement never touches it. So that's a small failure on my part, but something better post a post-jam version if I feel sufficienty motivated to make one.

Another feature I wanted to try that would've been good for player feedback was a screen where you could view your current artifacts and their respective values - not all artifacts are created equal! The only feedback to that respect that made it into the game was the rate at which visitors appear, but even that is a bit obscure, given that it doesn't increase at a linear rate.

So, anyways, those are some thoughts (and extra guidance for the kind of player who wants to dig deeper on this kind of game). Cheers!

quicklyer 2016-08-31 04:12

Yeah made me smile throughout. That slow plodding music put a nice satirical edge on the art and gameplay. I liked it.

Played it a few times trying to figure out the min/max strategy but I only made it about 20-30 months each try.

Fun and memorable, nice work.

tinykidtoo 2016-08-31 04:23

The humor was great. I liked the human doppelgangers.

william_edwards 2016-08-31 07:14

Lovely pictures, weird funny names!

Couldn't quite work out a strategy; every month I could only click on "seek donations", and eventually "auction" where I was "outbid", so it was all a bit predetermined to fail.

kapricornmedia 2016-08-31 07:47

Bold graphic style, its unique, and it adds so well to the music and the jarring tone of the game.

chris0903 2016-08-31 08:53

It seemed to me that it depended greatly on luck. But it ws funny tho

hammers 2016-08-31 11:26

Nice idea! I love the humor :)

The gameplay seems a bit random and there doesn't seem to be any room for strategy. Maybe if you knew the percentage change of each action working, that would help. Maybe also more ways to affect how much income you generate or visitors you attract, such as being able to sell of artifacts you don't want, or changing the layout of the museum.

As an initial idea it's great though :)

lonelyvertex 2016-08-31 11:39

I like the original art style.

It would be good to add more info about how the actions affect the income and expenses.

I also wonder whether it is possilble to win the auction or found something through archeology, I was always outbid and found nothing.

thomz12 2016-08-31 12:46

Very nice game, and intresting take on the theme!

hackingroelz 2016-08-31 13:09

Cool game! I liked all the art and music. I do think the gameplay could've used more depth, but it was still fun to play.

geruhn 2016-08-31 13:10

@Lacaranian:
A bit too random for me
Also another question is the art style deliberately chosen or does it stem from a lack of skill? (Hope that doesn't sound so negative as I fear it does. I was just wondering if it is because I saw you already made other games)

lacaranian 2016-09-02 14:12

@Geruhn The game was experimental in a lot of ways - we made it using the Linux version of Unity (to see how well that works these days, turns out pretty okay) though I had never used C# or Unity for a full project, drew any large background art outlines by hand with pen and paper before taking a picture of them (no scanner ;.;) and coloring them (thus the odd style), and played extensively with one function to almost always end the game at the same time, but with enough spread to keep it interesting. The randomness was probably too low for the upper tier artifact-getting-methods to feel fair, especially when it typically meant the player wouldn't be able to try again for a few turns, if at all.

So overall, experimentation breeds quirk, and this game has plenty of that!