Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Exploitation
By jimbly
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 354 | 3.13 | 25 | |
| Fun | 419 | 2.73 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 307 | 3.04 | 25 | |
| Theme | 318 | 3.26 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 393 | 2.87 | 25 | |
| Audio | 1 | |||
| Humor | 421 | 1.90 | 22 | |
| Mood | 453 | 2.54 | 24 |
Great strategy game for 48h of work. I didn't stick around to win or lose because it takes a relatively long time to play, but I put in more time than I put into most games I review, so props there! I wish I had been able to mouse over all the islands to see their current stats.
This is a nice set of mechanics.
Decent try on a strategy/management game. Looks pretty. Would be nice with an overview screen and ship upgrades (carry more and move faster etc). The GUI was a bit confusing and daunting at first but I got used to it. Did not finish it but I enjoyed it!
Nice concept for a compo. The game is however quite hard: I got to the point where I depleted one island and everyone on the main land started to starve. It would be nice to add some upgrade, so that you can keep up. Also a more detailed UI would be helpful.
I enjoy a lot those kind of game. I can see that yours is on a good start.
Nice concept, could use a little more polish, but this is Ludum Dare after all!
I'd love to see this with a bit more work - being able to check on the status of colonies from elsewhere, for example, or upgrade your ship. But to me that's the essence of a good jam game - It's a starting point that leaves you wanting more. I hope you keep working on it and take it further now the event's over!
Great idea, but I would have wished for more clues what to do when. I would suggest structuring the interface on the right into a haven and ship part, where you can load/unload between the two instead of having it overall grouped by items, this was a bit confusing in the beginning. I like the tutorial-style information on your home position, this was very helpful!
Nice strategy game! I though the navigating back and forth was a little pointless though. It does not add to the game for me, unless there's enemies or other challenges at sea. Moving with just a single click would be more fun, with the ship moving a little faster.
Cool strategy/management game! I didn't play it till the end but what I played was fun. The graphics are nice, but the interface didn't immediately click with me. It's a bit too complicated on first glance, but after a while I got it.
I enjoyed my time with it, great job! :smile:
very good strategy game - my only complaint is the interface was hard to figure out at first - not suprising in short amount of time tho
Love this game! Our games are actually very similar. 6 "slots" to specialize production for one of two types of resource: one which is limited and quickly harvested, the other which must be amassed in order to "beat" the game. I ended at Month 66 with *just* short of the 44k. I had about 43k after moving all gold back to the main city, though I don't know if I could have one with no one alive even if I had 44k. I agree with others about perhaps upgrading your own ship speed and capacity.
@maysick Heh, yeah, they are *really* similar, glad you enjoyed mine too =)
The basics hang together very well. :smile: But beyond the intitial confiscation of ports, and putting a few pop. there building a harvester and a mine... there isn't really all that much to *do*?
Maybe the addition of some extra threat (besides starvation) would help; an additional loss condition I mean. The simpelest to add (maybe) would be (avoidable?) monsters. Make it a bit more frantic!
So, a solid framework, excelent for expanding on but with little meat on its bones. Kind of like my own game TBH, which you got to discover for yourself as well :sweat_smile:
Nice game. In my first play-through I didn't have enough people in my main city and was below 30k when my people started starving. Second time I tried a more intelligent approach and tried to keep the people count in the main city at 1.000 to optimize mining there and only shipped off people to other island if I got above 1.000. Also kept the population of every city at max 50 to minimize food consumption. Once the other islands started starving I moved excess people there and left them there to starve... My economy could have even remain stable till 50k. I had enough food stocked up.
I don't think there is a way to win without having people starve. But that fits the name of the game perfectly. Exploit nature and exploit your own people.
I like this game! The core mechanics are solid and trading is quite nice. At first it is a lot of information to process, and you could make it easier for the player with a full-scale tutorial and a slightly cleaner gui. Nevertheless, a fun game!
A pretty solid concept, but I felt I was fighting the UI quite a bit. It moved so that the Give button became a Take button, for example. Aside from that, it wasn't very clear. I kept forgetting from what perspective Give and Take worked. From the boat or the city? There's room for improvement in that regard. The ability to place colonies where you want, rather than on predestined locations, in order to make smart use of geography would've been a nice addition... but I realize that's an addition you probably would've needed another 48 hours for. :D
I like the super simple graphics, they're very cute. I wish there was some animation in there, to liven up the world a bit. Right now the world is very static. I also wish the UI was in the same scaled-up pixel style as the game world.
Moderately fun, nice trade mechanic.
I took a different strategy than others playing, I ended up populating all islands with 99 people (so they wouldn't continue to grow), consumed all the agriculture, and let the home island starve. Once the agriculture had been consumed, everyone switched to mines. I'm not sure if that was an optimal strategy, but was gaining 500 per month.
A total wealth stat on screen somewhere would have been nice. I'm assuming the game didn't require all the money on the main island to win...
Overall, good job.
@flaterectomy Yeah, I started with a plan to let you place colonies (actually could at one point), but then ran out of time to actually make it make use of the geography to only allow one colony per island, or decide values for the resources, etc, so it was easier to "balance" by just starting with the 5 fixed port locations. I only had 1 day to get this done, so was really limited as to what I actually was able to finish! I also wish the UI didn't suck, but in my attempts at making my Ludum Dare games more accessible I'm switching to web-based, and holy crap do I hate HTML UI... gotta get a better UI framework set up before one of the next competitions =).
@manax Huh, interesting strategy, I don't think I thought of that, it probably works just as optimally for total money generation. I'm not quite sure if the win condition requires that amount total, or back on the home island... but in theory you could take 400 trips and move it there, with the last remaining souls living on your ship (where, I guess, they don't need to eat ;).