Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Escapist !
By number6406
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 181 | 3.71 | 23 | |
| Fun | 123 | 3.71 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 109 | 3.76 | 23 | |
| Theme | 23 | 4.33 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 497 | 3.19 | 23 | |
| Audio | 411 | 2.75 | 22 | |
| Mood | 184 | 3.65 | 22 |
Interesting entry!! I felt the tenseness of the water rising, especially later in the game, once I waited for the escape ship. Great idea to use a timer there & the flood sounds! The controls were a bit unusual, but once I got used to them, they were very quick to use. The ingame tutorial definitively helped there.
All in all a cool entry, with a tense gameplay!
Really loved the tense mood of the game as you tried to escape from erosion. A little hint that the main goal was to buy the escapist would have been nice, but overall I had a blast playing this!
This was a lot of fun. The art style and the menus both reminded me of simulation games from my childhood, so that was a fun aesthetic. Thankfully, your game controlled a bit more sanely, once I realized the red outlined box was a cursor.
The resource optimization mechanics were fun, but maybe a bit too simple. I was easily able to hit the Escapist's material requirements by almost haphazardly placing down buildings. I build 2 farms and had an extreme abundance of food. I almost feel like I could have built no farms and the starting food might have been sufficient, so I think that resource could have been tuned a bit tighter. If you revisit this, a shallow tech tree could add some interest and complexity to this part of the game.
The best part of the game for me, though wasn't the resource creation side, but the world. I found myself wanting to make a 'pretty' village, and keeping everything on one continent so I didn't strand any fictional workers. That's totally outside your mechanics, but I think it's a good sign that you're theme was good.
The rising water was pretty tense, and was what ended up making this a game for me, and not just a button clicker. I was almost done gathering resources, when a block a water appeared a couple times inland, right next to my village. I got really worried all of a sudden. Once I had my resources, I tore down all my supply buildings for the workers and began building the Escapist. I didn't think it would take as long as it did to build, so I was sweating a bit as the water rose up around me. I ended up scoring 827. Not sure if the score is good or bad, but the game sure was fun :grin:
Great game. I like games like that.
First I was thinking that its hard to deal with the incoming water, but all I did was build many houses (what is not necessary I think) and if there was enough worker I build a new woodcutter or mine to gather the needed ressources. My first escapist was destroyed by the water. After that I placed 2 more of them and then I finished the game. At the end it gave me the feeling that if I'm build pure chaos I can reach the goal. So, yeah. I think more balancing is what the game needed.
Anyway. The graphic is really minimalistic, but stylish. I like it. Soundeffects was funny and the short time of one session is perfect.
Overall, like I said: it was a lot of fun, I love games like this. Great Idea. 730 was my final score.
Very cool idea well implemented! You are very creative.
I like the vanishing of land under the water and the subtle sound effects when a building submerges. This is really a refreshing game idea. It is also a refreshing different game mechanic. Although it does not seem to be a real challenge, it was fun to place the buildings and watch the numbers grow.
Technically I would like a fullscreen mode. I like the controls. It makes it very easy to build without too much mouse moving.
Wow, this was unexpectedly cool! I was really thrilled to see if I'd manage to escape :) And I did with a score 823 and about 30 tiles left not yet submerged! The controls were right, I wasn't able to figure out how exactly the (usable) population increases, but it didn't matter as I progressed nicely eventually. In overall, a very good and polished game!
Ok, so this was actually a pretty cool game. It's impressive how you were able to make a floodable world in such a small amount of time! There is one issue though, and it's that when you try to build a thing and it says "not enough population" it should probably say "not enough workers" since you're expending workers, and not population to build things, but I guess that's a pretty minor thing. Plus, trying to escape a sinking world was kinda stressful haha, glad I was able to make it in time.
I used to make games in Slick2D! Glad to see it's still great at making this cool game ideas from scratch as your game has come out great.
Color me impressed!
First I was like :cold_sweat:, then I was like :confused:, then I was like :neutral_face:, and in the end I was like :grin:
This is probably the game I've played the longest in this LD. The game had a lot of information hitting me in the face on first start, which was maybe just a little intimidating. But I stuck with it and I'm certainly not sorry. This is why I love Ludum Dare, sometimes you just find something awesome that is made in a crazy amount of time.
I don't even know if this would be improved by a tutorial that holds your hand. Figuring out how it works is part of the charm for me. I think it's awesome the way it is, but the only improvement I could think of could maybe be that it would be clearer what is required and what is produced in what time.
Great work!
Nice game and it must have taken you a lot of effort to finish in such a short amount of time. There is a lot of calculations in the game for the resources and build stuff and it is working very smoothly. I think you needed to spend a little more time on the polish though to make it more lively. A little better graphics and may be full-screen mode would have made a lot of difference but I know the time frame was not helping I myself had a lot to be done in my game so all in all great work :)
Thank you guys for all your comments ! I am sure this will help me for the post-mortem version of the game, and for the next game I hope making soon :)
I wanted to thank to all of you who rated my game. This last day of voting was like a chrono-race because I had only 8 rates this morning. So thank you all again for "making it possible" <3
First, I thought improving "Escapist!" with a lot more micro-management, but by reading your feedback, I think this will more kill the game than make it better... I will maybe just improve it with all the thing you told me to do (if I find them useful of course) and create a new one with the version I thought "better".
Now I will answer one by one (I know, I should have done it gradually, but... eh, you know, timing etc.)
@tinyworlds : Glad the controls where useful, a friend told me that only using the mouse wasn't great, that's why I added the keyboard, and that's true, it's way more smooth with it ! Concerning the timer when you build the ship, I just found this pity that you have to wait, doing nothing... I hoped to find something to make this phase more interesting, but nothing came to me :S
@pixelformedstudios : Yup ! Even if the aim is present in the "Info" menu, this is not clear the first time you launch the game. Adding a real tutorial could be great :)
@endlessplumber : Once again, a tutorial wouldn't be too much. Indicating every part of the gameplay should help a lot I guess. I agree thousands times with your opinion on the resources. That's one of the main reasons of why I wanted to make the game more micro-managed oriented. But as I said, it would kill the "small world" version of the game. Anyway, glad you liked the game, and you score was quiet good ! I personally scored up to 870, but as I played a lot it's meaningless ^^ I think that the average score is around 790 for the first games, with a "logical" start (like putting building on higher places).
@koemeterion : Balancing is noted down on my TODO list :D Nothing to add, otherwise thank to have played !
@zerbroesler : To be honest, I had the idea of this game in less than 1 hour, and new ideas came one by one, by making the game. I think that is the "Jam mood", it helps me a lot (ironically) to be stressed by the timing :D Concerning the full-screen, I got a lot of remarks, so I thing this would be better, yup ! Moreover, this will give me the opportunity to zoom-in on my high-quality graphics *Cough* *Cough*
@pcmaster : Nice score ! As you talk about this, I didn't take in account the tiles still present at the end of the game for the scoring system. Could be interesting to add it maybe. Or at least a ratio with the number of tiles available at the beginning of a game, because as the world change, a game is not really "fare" from player to player...
@programgamer : I don't know if you have taken a look at the code, but it's actually quiet simple to make the water rise ! :) As every tile had a high "level", water has one too, and each time the game passes in the update loop, I add a specific delta float to the water level and I can know what tile is now submerged ;) Good shot for this little typo error, I will edit this as soon as I'm motivated to work on an adjusting-patch :)
@madalaski : Thank you ! Without Slick I think I couldn't have been able to do such a "big" game, as it feels really easy-to-use for me !
@hunttis : Uhuh :blush: thanks for this funny (and helpful!) comment. I could say the same for your game, really ! (Not the difficult-to-understand part :P). I'm now talking to any people looking at this -fat- post : please, [PLAY HERE](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/jar-of-life), it's just a little jewelry. So, for you a tutorial is not needed... Hum, this is hard to make a choice now you said that :D For the other things you mentioned, I think I will improve the interface, with like, hovering things etc. !
@furiouswitch : (pfiuuu, last one. I had not enough place to answer you too in the previous message :'). But I'm grateful to a have such a lot of feedback anyway :D) Yep, there is a loooot of calculation, but not that much. It's a little game, and moreover on computing, it represents nearly nothing huge :) I thing better graphics, or at least bigger ones is what Escapist! needs, yep. Made the mistake to implement all as global values, and now I'm stuck with it... I'll know it for the next Jam :D
This looked like enough fun that I even went and downloaded Java (luckily found a portable version that doesn't take over my computer...) ;).
Nice game! I also won with a score of 823. Was fun building at first, then a little boring waiting for the escapist to build, as there was no requirement to keep my settlement going through that time (though for fun I gathered enough resources to start building a second escapist while waiting for the first).
@jimbly : Yeah, I don't think there is a way to make a Slick2D game playable on a browser (and that's sad :'( )... But I'm glad you tried the game, and pointed the main problem, and I have to find a way to make this part more interesting !
Thank you for your feedback :)