Rise of the Termites

takusan 2017-04-28 15:03

Saw it on your stream last night and gave it a spin - it's very interesting (once again, those tiny bulldozers and beds melt my heart :D). I like the take on a faimiliar mechanic with base building, helps to pick up the game. Also, the controls are quite intuitive and not intrusive, which also helps a lot :)

I should only assume you're not strangers to strategic games :)

I'd like to see the game expanded, even if that would incline just polishing it up. It's easy to manage when you familiarize yourself with it, but not so easy it becomes boring, which as we all know it's all about.

I like this project, that's why I spent some time gathering what you could improve :D

Issues I'd report (checked on web build):

- I'd love to see termite spawn rate indicated somewhere - just a timer or a clock icon would suffice. Or maybe some indication on the queen to make it more immersive?

- changing the sfx/music volume slider also moves the map :)

- after taking more than 70% damage soldiers are indistinguishable from workers at a glance - and from the dark layer of soil - an outline would fix the soil problem, and adding a characteristic feature in shape of soldiers would help

- not sure how, but enemy entering a room that was in process of digging reset the progress on dig (that's a weird one...)

- tooltips can flicker when termites of different type overlap, showing different tooltip each frame

That said, It's a solid and well made project. It's great you managed to build it in such short time, also counting for the problems during the LD.

Cheers! and DeveloperArt4Life :D

king-kujito 2017-04-28 17:22

I loved it. Too bad I got stuck since I couldn't sell/destroy/delete rooms though :-(

xmatos 2017-04-29 06:26

Hi there, congrats on making this game. The ants look good, given the time limit, I think the background would look better if it was more simplistic. I feel like having to wait to excavate the rooms doesn't add much to the game, it's just another step I've to wait, I rather have the rooms already available and have to wait for the "buildings" to being built. This way would not only skip a step but also I'd know how many rooms I have to work with from the beginning. First time I've played the tutorial I failed because I've had no more rooms available to built, so I had to start all over again. The second time I've managed to almost complete it, but even though I had 5 warriors and 5 workers, the objective list didn't show that I'd reach 10 population. Also, the soil takes too much time to build up(is there a way to improve the rate that you get soil?). I think that this kind of game is hard to pull off, maybe it would be easier to make fewer levels, maybe even just 2 levels, one easy and one hard, so it would give you more time to tweak them and make them more enjoyable. If you keep on working on this game, I can see it being a cool pc/mobile game, good luck if you wish to do so, and good luck on the competition. Cheers!

togis 2017-04-29 11:08

thanks a lot for playing the game to all of you!

Here is some answer to your questions:

Selling / destroying / changing room was something we had in mind, then decided against, then discussed all together and decided to implement in the game, then... forgot hehe :D I guess we forgot to create a ticket for it on our project management board and at the end everyone was too tired to remember.

About the tutorial "10 population". It is working but badly explained in the game, this is probably because we are not native English speaker and extremely tired when we finished implementing it. You can win it but you need 10 workers and 5 soldiers. If we renamed "population" to "worker" in the goal text it would fix this directly. But this will be post LD.

Collecting soil faster is possible, you have to dig your way up to the "surface" and build "soil generator" room. You can even improve them 2 times and have worker working on it. Once again, we didn't explain that very good in the game :(

automatonvx 2017-04-29 12:45

Enjoyed playing, only made it to level 2 though. Feels like you have focused on the strategy mechanics a lot which is a good thing for the game play. Mainly my problem was just the waiting for soil to replenish, although now i read your comment that i needed to built a soil generator on the surface that would help, but if you gave the player a way to speed/slow down the time step that would be great too. I know you focused on other aspects instead of the art, but I'm going to comment anyway :P. * Some of the assets look sharp and some blurred, looks like you just need to be consistent with the point/bilinear filter for the assets. * I found the way the termites float around kind of unnerving, looks like they are in water, maybe some animation would help, maybe not. * the difference between the workers/soldiers/enemies and health of each could have been clearer.

Anyway good game, thanks also for playing mine and streaming it.

move127 2017-04-29 13:47

This was a great game.

The art and music of course need polishing, but that is to be expected given the complexity of the game. I found the tutorial less than obvious. It was clear that I should click on the spots that had shovel icons, but it wasn't clear that I should click on the rooms already dug to change them into other things.

This would make a cool rts. Build up your colony and send your soldiers out to protect your own colony and attack other colonies.

spinaljack 2017-04-29 14:58

Nice game, could do with a speed up button though.

jushiip 2017-04-29 15:39

Good entry! Reminded me of Dungeon Keeper, which also has you building rooms for food and resting, and has you drag and dropping your minions.

Overall pretty nice little RTS, I played only the tutorial and the second level. Some of the ant sprites seem to be bugging - like, turning completely black?

samurai-spark 2017-04-29 18:49

I appreciate the easy gamedesign. The game itself has a lot more content than it looks on the first sight. The building part is great especially than you played fallout shelter :wink:

joyfired 2017-04-29 20:48

Really fun, but I really wish there was a undo/delete/salvage rooms feature and more of a definite endgame. Pressing esc really messes the game up for me

cosine 2017-04-29 21:33

This is much closer to what I wanted to make for my game, than what I did. I liked it! My main gripe would be a balance thing, and it differs depending on what you want to do.

It feels like an incremental game, but it's half-way. If it's supposed to be an incremental game, I would solidify that by: - Continuing simulation when focus is lost. Kinda a necessity. - Making *accumulation* of goods *slower* and accumulation of *caps / maximums* *faster*. This makes it feel more like I'm slowly accumulating goods, as is the ethos of incremental game. I can tab away and wait while I build enough food to upgrade that farm / etc. - Chance to make a bigger fort and harder levels - it feels like I don't get to realize my whole potential as of now.

If, instead, you're *not* trying to make it incremental, it feels a bit too slow to me, *especially the building of rooms*. I enjoyed it because I considered it an incremental game, but otherwise there could be more interaction.

You got the music stuck in my head :)

huvaakoodia 2017-04-29 21:42

An ambitious project. Plays really well, the music is surprisingly enjoyable and the graphics... Well, they are functional at least.

The main missions are a bit on the easy side and always end very abruptly. The user interface is ok, but missing some important features already outlined by @joyfired.

Good work. Have some nearly appropriate bugs :ant: :ant: :ant:

kroute 2017-04-29 21:58

Well I've just spent nearly one hour and a half playing your game and it was completely worth it ! I liked that you have to carefully think about your next move if you don't want to see you base destroyed by enemy termites. I noticed a little bug (hehe) that allowed me to cheat : enemy termites will follow your worker while it's being dragged. This allows to walk the enemy around while you wait for new soldiers to be spawned. Good game !

togis 2017-04-29 22:35

Wow so much review ^^ xD

Thanks everyone for all your comments, every criticism is really appreciated and we love when we see some of you enjoying the game!

We learned a lot as a team during this LD and will take all of your comments into account for the stable version of the game and the next game jams.

daniel-alhadeff 2017-04-29 23:42

Played this game a bit pretty fun and has great music. I think I may have found a bug on the sandbox level - you don't start with any queen so you can't build anywhere else

stoemason 2017-04-30 00:05

When I saw you play this on twitch, I was too tired to pay much attention (sorry, it was 4 in the morning :D), but now that I've actually tried it myself, I have to say, this is actually a really fun game. It's quite hard though (I managed to lose the tutorial), but other than that, the gameplay's fun, and I haven't encountered any bugs.

It reminds me a bit of Sim Ant, a game that's in dire need of a modern interpretation. If you decide to make it into a full game, keep me posted.

homineludens 2017-04-30 08:51

To be honest the graphics really scared me :grin: . But there's a solid and huge gameplay (even if not so original) for a LD. On web version volumes slider on the right-top move also the camera. Music sound good.

querk 2017-04-30 12:34

Great and refined game, good music and graphics, Very addictive gameplay, i had a great time. Great Game and Good Job :D (sorry for my bad english)

simonhutchinson 2017-04-30 20:36

Neat game! Great work getting this all put together over the course of the weekend. It's pretty fun, but I feel like there's a lot of waiting around. Perhaps a speed-up-time option?

slimabob 2017-05-01 02:21

Cool! Nice music (and actual audio sliders c:), and very ambitious for the time allotted. As @simonhutchinson mentioned, it would be nice to be able to speed up time. Aside from that, it's good! Nice work :)

notiiivan 2017-05-01 04:00

Really cool, lots of polish! I couldn't beat the first level though, because you can't demolish buildings and I didn't realize only workers counted as population. But all of that's already addressed here, and the game is really good!

amnonlevi 2017-05-01 04:04

The game seems really deep but the learning curve is just too steep, and a lot of critical mechanics are not explained in the tutorial so much as they are left there for you to find out, and making a mistake is critical! Really loved how the music slowly builds up.

wtoa 2017-05-01 06:22

Nice music and great work to be able to pull this off in such a short timespan! The look of the bugs creep me out a bit so the level of realism is definitely there!

burgee 2017-05-01 12:19

You have a lot of depth here, so congratulations on that! Accomplishing this much in 3 days is impressive as far as having all of the gameplay options and no bugs (lol) that I could find.

It was easy to pick up and understand - I didn't know what the enemies were at first but I figured it out pretty quick.

Music and graphics were both good, but I think the music was the stronger of the two. You did a nice job on this game for sure.

If I had one complaint, I wished I could have dug more than one room at a time when I had more workers. I understand why you didn't allow it (balance) but at first it was a lot of clicking and waiting.

takusan 2017-05-01 13:01

Since voting is up, I left you a rating in addition to earlier feedback. Cheers!

toonteamj 2017-05-01 13:33

Very fun, although sitting around waiting for rooms to finish could get to be a little tedious.

lilroo 2017-05-01 14:18

Really liked this game, but when the timer runs out, nothing happened to me

sachos345 2017-05-01 14:40

Hi @togis ! i finally played your game (you played mine on your stream). Man, this is so cool for a 72hs game, pretty complex and fun! It took me some time to learn how to play but when i finally did it was awesome! And i agree with Burgee i wish i could dig more than one room at time, thats why i have more ant-slaves! haha. You opted out of Music so i should not vote in that category correct?

togis 2017-05-01 14:50

@sachos345 thanks for playing the game, yes you should not even see the audio vote on the page, I can't confirm that as I don't see the vote on my own game but if you see it, please let me know as I will have to notify the dev of the website. Thanks.

**edit

nevermind, I had to edit the game and opt-out, it should be fixed now :)

sachos345 2017-05-01 15:44

@togis yup, fixed now!

mars 2017-05-01 16:06

I enjoyed this game!

I didn't take the time to play through all of the levels obviously, but that alone is quite telling. Given that you've only spend a weekend making this game, but still has something that could be played for a long time, I'd say that's pretty impressive in itself. Granted, the game can feel a little slow at times and could do with a way to be sped up.

Figuring out the strategies needed to make sure I could both defend against enemy termites and also have enough room to get enough workers and food and soil was pretty fun!

glitchy-pixel 2017-05-01 16:57

I liked the game, it has been long ago since I played something akin to an RTS. I like the concept and the world building, although slow at first, picks up fast at the end. I takes a while to understand, but once you read everything (and lose a couple times) its all good.

I did feel that there was a fixed way to win the game in every scenario, but then again its just a short time for a Ludumdare.

In any case I loved it and I got through all levels!

togis 2017-05-01 18:59

@glitchy-pixel wow congratz, even I didn't manage that yet. My teammate making the balancing an evil pro gamer :p hehe

spav 2017-05-01 21:28

I like the idea, it's quite complex, kudos to making it in such short time. Graphics and audio are not strong part, also game may be a little bit faster, especially in the beginning, but overall GOOD JOB!

pickler 2017-05-02 02:18

Very nice game. I agree in general that a speed setting would be great. With some work on graphics and sound this could be a compelling game, and would work quite nicely on mobile device I think.. Congratulations!

askania-m 2017-05-02 19:00

It was so exciting! thank you for this great job! Building the chambers for the insects makes fun. I didn´t get it though, how to build a venom room instead of the other room. I just didn´t have this option in the tutorial after making the first flour without venom growing room. Besides, I had so much fun :D

fakefrogsonly 2017-05-02 22:56

This had a surprising amount of depth. Nice going!

iseeicy 2017-05-03 00:09

I had about an hour of fun with this. I'm kind of terrified of ants, so I wasn't quite sure how I was going to handle it, but it went pretty well. I found the first actual level much more entertaining than the tutorial (which I guess makes sense).

The music was really interesting. It's cool that it was computer generated. It sometimes had this strange melody to it, but it was oddly fitting with the termites. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was really cool none the less.

The only bug I ran into (other than termites) was when I moused over the queen in the tutorial, the tooltip for the queen and the tooltip for the nest would flash back and forth.

One thing I would change is how much the workers affect digging. I feel like they don't speed up the digging of a tile as much as they should.

Glad I played this. Thanks for the game!

wheffle 2017-05-03 01:02

I played this game for a long time completing all the levels. I am a sucker for strategy games and this game definitely scratched that itch! The music was really awesome too, it strangely fit the mood really well. My only complaints were that some of the room near the bottom tended to clip through, and for a long time I didn't realize you could make surface rooms (and therefore didn't know how to make extra soil). Great work, one of the best games I've played so far!

2017-05-03 01:40

This game was a lot of fun! The only recommendations I would make are to clarify some things. For instance, I don't understand what the white dots are at the corner of the rooms. I also don't understand if there's a way to control how you fight enemies or if it's all automated. It's also not clear if there's some significance to which room you put your workers/soldiers in. But it feels like a very complete game!

turnwolf 2017-05-03 11:14

I had a lot of fun playing this game and did so for quite some time. I really liked how it had different levels with objectives that helped to teach the player the game mechanics through play. Music and sound were all there and added to the feel of the game and helped to inform me of what was going on. Visuals could use a little work overall but they are serviceable and didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of this game. I'm not sure if there is meant to be constant waves of enemies in the tutorial but I only had enemies for the first 1/4 of the level. Also, the rubble rooms instantly built where I had to dig out the normal rooms which felt a little inconsistent and I wasn’t sure why this is. Overall though a really fun game which is surprisingly deep great work!

ava-skoog 2017-05-03 14:06

Hey! Finally found some time to play a bit more and get around to rating and so on! c:

Nice game! Balanced difficulty and neat theming with the termites. Social insects are cool!

Like I said before, while management games are generally not my cup of tea, this turned out to be just about the right level for me. Was a bit confused at first, but soon got the hang of it, and started feeling good about myself for figuring out how to reach the objectives in each level!

I see that the fact that you can't remove rooms if you realise you've made the wrong decision has been mentioned before. My initial thought was that would've been nice too, but on the other hand that does give the levels a lose condition, so maybe it's for the better! c:

Couldn't find an explanation for why you opted out of the sound categories (music not original, maybe?) but music was good and so were the sound effects.

The only real issue I had was a bit of trouble clicking stuff sometimes, with what seemed to be clicks being picked up by all buttons in the same position on the same frame, but it was easy to work around and didn't break the game. c:

The differences between the various levels and their objectives were nice too, so that there wasn't an overhaul of mechanics from the start.

Nice job!

jaenis 2017-05-03 20:11

Impressive to see such a strategy/management game here! Amazing work!

togis 2017-05-03 22:48

Thanks everyone for all your reviews! It's awesome to have so many people playing our game :D

@Ava-Skoog we opted out of the music and audio category as we didn't make them ourself. The music is auto generated by a web site and the sound effect are just taken from a free to use sound library. We didn't want to be unfair to the people and teams that actually created music and sound from nothing.

chunkybrewster 2017-05-04 02:10

Fun! Wish there was a way to destroy rooms so I could build other things and also I couldn't drag workers to other rooms. Nice job with this.

peachtreeoath 2017-05-05 08:35

I was intimidated at first because usually LD sim games are overwhelming and only the devs know how to play, but you did a really good job easing the player into the game and mechanics. Even little things like the tooltips went a long way for me. Lot of cool ideas here and I'm curious where you would've went if you had more time.

robotsoulsgames 2017-05-05 21:43

I was honestly really disappointed with this game. For a team so large, you have pretty weak graphics and sound. It isn't explained very well, but I did figure it out. The bigger problem is how dull it is. Because you can only dig one room at a time, you're forced to wait a lot at the beginning. If you could dig multiple, or started with some already dug, that would help ease the monotony a little.

It seems like you've got some good ideas. You just need to make it actually fun.

mortus 2017-05-06 12:43

I'm not into such games much to be honest, but it was a nice experience. A bit hard to figure out things at first, but then it becomes more fluid, and challenging too! Graphics are a little hard to get used to too. :D

togis 2017-05-06 15:07

Hey @RobotSoulsGames, thanks for trying our game. I'm sad it didn't give you fun but I'm very happy you took the time to test it and give us your review.

To answer about team size vs game polish-ness, the team was large at first, but we lost one member on the first day due to sickness. Also only one of us had experience with unity and none of us ever made art before. This doesn't excuse everything of course, but I hope it can shine some light on the subject.

Thanks a lot!

hegemege 2017-05-07 20:26

Overall quite amusing, at one point I really feared for the colony when all my soldiers died. Unfortunately I couldn't complete the level because the objective said 10 population and I had 5 workers and 6 soldiers :(

I found that I wasn't looking at the top right corner stats at all during the first half of gameplay. In the end no enemies spawned any more, and that's when I saw that oh, I need more storage space.

The mouse dragging was annoying (I didn't try to test keyboard controls), because the world didn't move pixel-per-pixel. I found it sometimes hard to control. Selecting units by clicking was also sometimes very difficult, and sometimes by unpressing the mouse button I opened a room menu accidentally.

Perhaps you could add a room destruction option, so players could re-allocate some rooms for better use? The music didn't really fit the game, but it's an autotracker :D Good work!

david-cookie 2017-05-09 23:33

An ambitious project right there. Strategy games are a pain to make and balance, especially in this such short amount of time.. so congrats for that! It was hard to get into it at first, graphics are not really engaging and a bit confusing (to your defense, without graphist and with this much work, I understand). Also musics don't fit the mood imo, they are more distracting than relaxing. And without tutorial, I was a little lost.

Fortunately, the UI does explain well the role of each building, and the objectives are pretty clear (though there's a difference between collecting 300 food and max out the food to 300). I managed to build every buildings and level them to the max without loosing life, pretty proud of it! Once I discovered how to accelerate the recolt of food and soil, it felt a bit too easy though :p

Otherwise, the termites are a bit hard to distinguish (this overloaded background doesn't help). I don't know what is the role of workers either as we're collecting resources via buildings. Could be better if the collecting speed was linked to the number of workers imo. But maybe I missed an info somewhere I don't know. Battles are a bit confusing too, I don't really know what is happening and just hope that my soldiers will handle it one way or another. It needs some feedbacks, and more control on it.

Well.. although some points can definitely be improved, I did enjoy my game once I understand the core mechanics. The base is there and just needs some polish now. Good job everyone!

doomshmuck 2017-05-12 04:11

I like the concept of this, and the amount of content is really impressive for this time frame. I couldn't really get into the game though. The time it takes to build the rooms was WAY too long, especially for the amount of time that I had to look into games. It also didn't feel like much was going on while playing the actual game. One other note... on the UI, the "cancel" option was not very intuitive... having a close button or something would make more sense than a "replace with the same room" option. This was very ambitious, and I don't think it benefited much from it as a result :(

bloodyaugust 2017-05-19 02:53

I really enjoyed where this is headed! The programmer art is adorable, and with some more content, and polish on the player interactions, this could be a great idler game.