Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Bureaucratic Deity Simulator 2018
By mmason, douglass, musluk and nrowcat
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 223 | 3.64 | 30 | |
| Fun | 192 | 3.53 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 77 | 3.85 | 30 | |
| Theme | 475 | 3.25 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 414 | 3.42 | 30 | |
| Audio | 264 | 3.25 | 29 | |
| Humor | 589 | 2.00 | 25 | |
| Mood | 283 | 3.42 | 28 |
This game is so cool! I can't believe nobody has commented here yet!
My only real complaint is that I thought it was a little weird having to move the tile from an existing spot and move it back again when trying to add together tiles multiple times.
This is an awesome LD entry and with a little polish and some more world tiles. I could see myself playing this on my phone regularly.
Thanks! I haven't been very good about getting it out there.
@douglass put a bunch of time into getting the levels to flow just right and admittedly we probably could have added double the levels to make the learning curve more manageable.
Nice game! I love the concept and the art is awesome.
Must admit I was skeptical about the game play, but the graphics appealed to me. I tried it out, and it's intriguing! Very nice game indeed! The mood is just right, and the gameplay is interesting!
Came here due to the shout out by @sheep42 and got to the level of "A bit more filing, don't mix these up either", til I broke the game. I guess I was too hasty on the restart button, as I've now found a bug which let's me only place one tile.
I think the boardgame formular is great and the difficulty curve is adequate.
cheers~
Yeah there are a few bugs related to placing tiles, there's one related to adding one too quickly. We've all been a little bit busy with other real world issues but if I find some time this weekend I may take a crack at cleaning those up.
Shoutout back to @sheep42, check out their awesome game where you play as a cat doing what cats do best. [Wood Womb](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/wood-womb)
I really liked your game, those mini artworks really speaks to me, and the concept puzzle is nicely constructed. Well done !
Really liked this entry! Went into it without reading the spoiler board above - enjoyed figuring out the combinations myself. Music and visuals were exactly what they needed to be. A good amount of levels to enjoy the game play mechanic. I would love to see some more stages, especially with increased difficulty. A "par" or "best" number of moves for each level would be a nice challenge and could add some replay-ability. I ran into the same bug that only allowed one tile, but if I backed out of the stage and then went back in, it seemed to resolve itself. Great entry!
I like this game alot! It's challenging, fun, relax and makes you think. The game mixes the 'breed stuff to get new stuff to breed' genre in a puzzle game which makes it much more interesting. Good job!
I quite enjoyed this entry. The puzzle construction and design is well-integrated with the theme of the game, and the rules all make sense in that context, too, to the point where they're intuitive. Overall, quite clever.
rated <3
It was an awesome experience figuring out the combinations. I liked everything from this game: music, theme interpretation, art style, duration... Congratulations for the team!
Really cool puzzle game, watched it on stream so had it spoiled for me, but gj nonetheless.
A great little puzzle game! It starts out being a bit more about experimentation as you find out how the tiles interact, and but it slowly becomes more and more of a logic puzzle as it goes. A very fun sort of transition to have in a puzzle game I think! Cant think of anything to criticize here, this is a really strong one. Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 3:50:40)
Haha, I got stuck on that two cities level for a while. Good puzzle games are hard to make, so well done!
Interesting mechanic. Reminds me of "Element" (or Chemistry, dunno the name). Also loved your style and the little pieces sound effects. ^^
A very neat puzzle game!
The pixel art is amazing! And combined with the music, it gave the game a very nice mood. The volume of the sound effects was rather loud compared to the music (especially the "cannot place here" effect), which was a bit jarring, but otherwise the presentation elements fitted well together. The town had an interesting "high tech" vibe to it, making it an interesting contrast compared to the otherwise serene nature tiles.
The tile-interactions themselves were quite fun to discover. The pacing of the puzzles sometimes seemed a bit abrupt; sometimes they skipped a few concepts, or had very different solutions from puzzle to puzzle, which made them seem less cohesive. As you stated above, some more levels could have gotten even more mileage out of the mechanics, which are certainly complex enough to last for additional puzzles.
The discovery process was enjoyable, as was the spatial element of having to perform the moves in the correct order, and using the "buffer spaces" to the best possible effect. Sometimes it was frustrating not to be able to experiment freely within the constraint of the levels - perhaps the sandbox could have been unlocked after the first few tutorial levels, for fun and practice. But the puzzles themselves had a great difficulty - great brain teasers, without becoming frustrating. And the fast reset-mechanism combined with a small playing field really encouraged experimentation!
It was a very enjoyable game to play!
>A pristine new world, >molded by bureaucracy. >Behold! Perfection!
This was a neat concept. It almost felt like a type of card game that would allow you to craft worlds to order for other Deities. All the logic felt like it has some type of parallel with the real world so it wasn't too difficult to figure things out as I went.
My only real feedback aside from it would be interesting to see this game fleshed out, was that there feels like something is missing. Just one little thing that really makes the concept pop. It might be a nemesis, an overarching system of powers/magic that fit the universe together, or maybe just some story tossed in between the levels.
Otherwise I thought it was nice. Decent concept for A Small World, Good graphics if a bit hard to decypher at times, and the beginning Menu music was nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-Jd01zDgs
This game was very enjoyable. Got stumped toward the end. Liked the graphics, and the audio was top notch. Good job! Text was hard to see, might look better if I could put it in full screen mode.
Works great on macOS running 10.10.5 Yosemite, BTW.
A very relaxing and very challenging puzzle game. Figuring out the combinations and chain reactions was very engaging, though I felt it started off a little too slow. It had me hooked once it picked up though. Good job! :thumbsup:
Wow! Very cool game! A great puzzle entry! How did you planned this so good? I've a lot of problems planning puzzles, this is why I've admired your entry a lot! And you make a good learning curve, Making the own game a tutorial, progressing when we learn. That's good design! :D I can say that you've done a good and polished project! Very well planned.
Good job!
Polished, solid game. The graphics, music and effects are fitting the game nicely. The gameplay is confusing at first but once I got into it it was awesome. I got stuck at level 8c but I keep it on my phone and I will play it again to solve the remaining puzzles.
Neat puzzle game. Decent graphics and audio, plenty of levels, seems very complete.
I was confused at first. I did not understand that the dropped tile is immune to change, but eventually I figured it out.
What I would like is for the current objective to be always displayed. Sometimes I'm to hasty and click away the level introduction before I read it. Or sometimes I simply forget what it was I was supposed to do. I did find the ?-symbol in the end but still.
A bit confusing at first, but after that it's a surprisingly decent (and hard) puzzle game.
Nice puzzle game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSWOUTubUBM
What a cool idea! I really hope you guys find a way to expand on this mechanic in the future. I was also really impressed with the level of tutorialization, I did basically no reading going in to this one and just about everything was intuitive. Great work!
Flat-panel world building! Here’s the quick rundown of my thoughts:
PROS - Unique game mechanic - Discovery is fun
CONS - Perhaps opening up the bench area for tiles to be dragged back could make things easier?
For full criticism and breakdown of ranking, as well as candid reactions to gameplay, do check out the video~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6IKB0A9jM8
Thank you everyone who rated and/or reviewed in a video. It's awesome to see someone else work through the puzzles while talking about their thoughts on the game.
@anarbitrarymustache, I like your idea for a 'par', it could possibly be implemented with the ability to put tiles back into the scroll of power and count placing or removing a tile as a move, something to keep in mind for next time
@somnium, the sandbox should be unlocked right away, though we should have put it on top maybe to make that more obvious, and thanks for the haiku.
@larrychupacabra, thanks for the video. I mentioned this in the comments of your video, I agree with you that to make it a complete game we would need something more, that extra bit of flair to cover why you're doing this, or as you said a nemesis to "compete" against in filling out the galaxy, a driving factor I think. The only flavour added was really the text when I was submitting :)
@tacomabert, good to know, I assume the Unity folks know what they're doing but it's good to have assurance it plays everywhere. Fullscreen should be possible at startup, but agreed a button in game would be good for the standalone versions, noted for next time.
@unidaystudio, one of our team members spent most of the last day building puzzles and putting them in a cohesive order, without that we probably would have only had like 4 levels and a sandbox.
@gagapete, glad we got someone hooked :)
@headmade, we should probably have added a basic UI tutorial in with the first level to make sure people knew what the top buttons did, I'll not that for next time too.
@jupiter-hadley, thanks for the gameplay video, you played our submission last jam too :)
@inventroom, also thank you for the video, we actually had a long discussion about allowing the players to put the tiles back on the bench and we decided in the end that it would make the game too easy. Players would always be able to place only the tiles that they want to mix and then pick them back up so they're safe, repeat until they have the set they want. Something we did consider is adding a limited use ability to swap a tile with a bench tile and have the swapped tile go back to your scroll of power. Your answer and @anarbitrarymustache's made me think that picking them back up could work pretty well with some gameplay changes.
Thanks again to everyone who's played
This is a really cool concept, but I found it pretty confusing. It could have used an in-game guidebook or something. The graphics were very good but it fell short in the audio department. Good job!
I never quite got a grasp of the mechanics on my own, but I have to give some huge props to the UI and snappyness of the controls. It felt good and satisfying to place a tile down, and I never felt like it misplaced it when moving them around. Good job!
If you like, please take a look at the game my team made for Ludum Dare, you can find a link to it on my profile
Love the look and the concept. The controls are slick and overall this is a fantastic game. I love how I mindlessly yearn for the next problem to solve! (one part Zen one part Dystopia) Just enough self-reflexivity in the hints. Can't wait to see the next version! Bravo!
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