Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Mr Mayor's Energy Crisis
By huvaakoodia
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 477 | 3.28 | 104 | |
| Fun | 541 | 2.96 | 104 | |
| Innovation | 366 | 3.14 | 104 | |
| Theme | 124 | 3.98 | 104 | |
| Graphics | 450 | 3.45 | 105 | |
| Humor | 102 | 3.52 | 103 | |
| Mood | 356 | 3.34 | 102 |
You hit the theme perfectly, graphically reminding of mix between older Sim Cities and Civilization (no idea why tho!).
The game play itself is interesting, yet a lot to read (at this hour!). But I managed to get through and survive few days.
Music fits perfectly (even though you withdrew from ratings on it), I really like it. It really feels like finished game (which is rare on Jam or Compo).
Keep up the good work.
@zgragselus
Thanks for the words (and reading the words)!
I concur the music is amazing, but I didn't make it so receiving ratings for it would be against the spirit of the jam. I added a link to the artist's page in the description for those interested.
Cool ducks!
I'm a big fan of the graphics, and the challenge of balancing maintenance and power output!
Yay! a duck pirate! Love the simplicity of the game. Overall I completely agree with @zgragselus.
This game really made me understand why we need infrastructure funding. Bigly.
Loved it, at the beginning it was confusing to get what exactly I was supposed to do but once I got it it was smooth sailing from there until the reactor started leaking which was totally not my fault.
I got fired :( The game was very innovative tho! The first strategy game I played in this JAM. Graphics were simple but fit their purpose. Next time I'm going make an article on the newspaper about energy saving to see if it helps the population in reducing it's power consumption!!
I like that graphic (it`s like in my game), but that power usage raise too fast. Idea with newspaper was brilliant.
I enjoyed managing my little city and its power needs. I guess the moral of this game is you can't please everyone, tough choices have to be made :P
I like the graphism, the newspaper ; this is hard to understand at first, but then great overall :D (I have also updated my answer)
Nice dynamics. The idea od newspaper remember me simcity2000. At some point all my plants were workin at 100% but the power was not enough, so it is impossible to win (isnt it?). I loved the detail of the ducks in the lake :P
Good resource management game. Few variables but functional and challeging. I liked the art and the ducks. In my opinion the music wasn't all that inmersive, but every person is a world. A good overall experience, nice work!
A bit confusing in the start but very fun to play with an upbeat music in teh background. I liked the style of the art and the mood it set
Awesome! The newspaper is very humorous. No matter what, the population doesn't like it... One of my favorite games so far!
Engaging resource management game. I like how you get idea what's going on thanks to the newspaper and that is also a great way to create some immersion. You put a lot of effort to write whole articles which is quite impressive. Graphics are simple and minimalistic but are consistent and also make game feel more lighthearted. Decent game in general.
One more thing, when i downloaded windows version i got error 'Unable To Load Mono' maybe it's because of build version. Luckily there is web version of the game. PS: i enjoyed clicking on the ducks
That was pretty difficult, took me a good few tries to beat it! I think everything about this is awesome. The visuals, the gameplay and the music all work great together. The humour is great and complements the gameplay. And it totally fits the theme. It took me a few tries to figure out how the game was supposed to work. So my only suggestion for improvement would be to make it a bit clearer, if possible. But other than that I can't fault it, awesome work!
It took me a few tries to figure out what to do, but it was very fun after it clicked with me. In the end i failed a few times because of power shortage and twice to nuclear meltdown^^
Fun little game but has a few issues
**Positive stuff :** - The funky music that fit the 70's mood - The bits of humor
**Negative stuff :** - The fact that you can't slide the power bar to get a more precise management
Other than that it was a nice experience, i didnt last that long and got fired, but hey, at least when there were no news i got a kitten, and i avoided a total nuclear apocalypse XD
I enjoyed playing your game and managed to win at my second try. I like how the game reacts to everything you do and keeps you challenged. It also fit the theme really well!
I liked the newspaper as feedback mechanism but the font seemed kind of blurry to me.
The news papers are really funny. The gameplay is simple but works well. The graphics are nice. Cool game! Congrats!
The newspapers are fun to read. I played kinda randomly but managed to get through the game until the end of the energy crisis.
I did not really get the purpose on this one, maybe because I'm not into management games.
I hate being a manager, but i still had fun making people mad and hospitalizing eagles.
Took me a few tries to figure it out, but I was glad to find out I do have what it takes to be a mayor after all!
Nice work. Great concept, well done graphics and sound and good simplified strategy elements.
I really loved the overall mood, buts most importantly : DUCKS!
This was addicting! it took me a while to got it right and finish it. Well executed idea, congrats!
Nice. I like the music and the overall vibe (and the ducks). It took me a bit to figure out what I could click on (maybe some simple in-game instructions would be nice), but very nice entry!
Good game. it just took me some time to figure it out..and OMG, those ducks!!!
-m
Nice game with good gameplay and graphics. Music isn't half bad as well. Nice job.
Very nice BGM. Not sure exactly how to play the game though, as it seems like you have to generate power more than the population, but bad stuff will happen eventually if you push power output too high? Ducks are cute!
Awesome game! Clear and interesting. All fits together really nice! Ducks are good)
:metal: **Overall: 5**
Quack
Great fun to play. It's a bit daunting that eventually you won't be able to produce enough energy no matter what you do, which helps transmit the desperation of governmental workers taking decisions. The way the game informs you about things going on with news was a great idea, and helped in keeping the game feeling alive.
Awesome concept, well executed with nice graphics and... kittens!
I really enjoyed this game, if I'm digging my mind to find improvement, I would allow the mouse wheel to control the % of use of different power plant. Clicking on the progress bars feel hard to me.
Congratulation!
Very solid entry that I had a lot of fun with. The theme is very clear in this game and certainly a good implementation of the theme in this game. This is not the first game I have seen where there is a meta intepretation of theme that is no matter what you do eventually you will run out of power and there is nothing you can do about it.
It really is frustrating that no matter how you try to compensate with different sources of power in this case, popularity will always decline and people will never be happy. It is just an impossible task!
These kinds of games that reflects reality in such an accurate way really gets me. This game certainly got my attention and I'm very impressed by the amount of content.
Just having some tips on how to play the game in the beginning could have helped though because a lot of people including me don't read the description of games because we are so eager to play the actual game. Having a short text that tells the player to adjust the sliders to change power output and how it affects the popularity would have been really helpful!
Excellent job!
@linus Thanks for the review! (Thanks to everyone else too!)
In my projects I tend to emphasise exploring a believable/consistent world over mastering skills and beating challenges. I'm not big into developing games or puzzles as *winning* and *losing* really aren't that important. What happens is important; seeing your actions change the world however small those changes might be.
Failing creates changes too, simply not the kind you might want right now. In this case it is possible to power through the energy crisis, but you always take a bit of flak from something in the end. It is failures in the beginning which mess things up in the long run and cause massive calamities.
I didn't put in a tutorial as I wanted to see how people fare with gradually increasing complexity one mechanic (and one input) at a time. There are only three concepts in all (power output, maintenance, public outcry) and it seems most people get them at some point on the first play-through. In a longer project I would put in some subtle hints though.
Very neat game. It took quite a few tries before I succeeded.
I found the music a bit annoying at first (maybe it's a bit much at first?), but it eventually grew on me. XD I would say overall it fits really well.
I don't think there's too much to write regarding graphics - they work well. I loved seeing the eagle, the rubber ducks, and the graphical effects for using more of certain power types.
Sometimes the negative events (like nuclear plant or lake polution troubles) don't have a clear trigger. Is it random? Is it intentional?
I saw in the changelog that you have a few effect tweaks. Caution might be warranted there, because as far as I know only bugfixes are allowed. In the interests of full transparency you might want to clarify what exactly was tweaked (perhaps graphical effects?). :-)
Overall great game, was a lot of fun figuring out. :-)
@pixel-game-wizard Thanks!
The Nuclear events are indeed random. The chance for a nuclear meltdown, for instance, starts at 0% and once the condition of the plant falls below 40% the chance starts to rise rapidly, hitting 100% when the condition becomes 0.
The lake condition simply gets worse and worse as long as you are running the coal plant at a high output level.
I made the camera post effects (for the nuclear events) in the WebGL version stronger as they were not showing up as well as in the Win version. I also fixed an effect trigger for one of the disasters which didn't trigger at all. *Nothing illegal*, as Mr Mayor would have said.
Arts are very nice and music stimulate perfectly the player. It seems very hard to reach few weeks has the population keep growing and problems keep happening. Anyway, that's very cool, well done :thumbsup:
Really cool, it was difficult for me to reach far in this game, as I didn't understood when some of the bad news arrived, but had fun reading the news and feeling sorry for the first two deaths of the eagle. Cool graphics, I loved how the music starts and funny writing!
That was very good! The graphics and music are excellent, and the writing was entertaining. I lost the first time because of the bird, but as long as I allowed a few power outages the second run was fairly straightforward. Still, I did have to make some interesting decisions. I don't know how much potential this has for expansion, but at the very least for this short controlled session it worked well.
Do I detect A Radiohead line in that music? I'm pretty sure I heard a few more things I recognized but I can't quite put my finger on them.
Nice game, but reading so much newspaper was a bit tedious. Would be great for some more obvious indicator that immediately displays whats going on in your energy park. The graphics style I really loved. Low poly, fine shaders, beautiful!
Fun game! I would have appreciated some additional instructions on this site or in-game, though.
That was quite a bit of fun! The music was awesome, the incorporation of the theme was good, and the different news stories made for a fun sense of humor. Keep up the great work! :)
@huvaakoodia
Ah okay! That makes sense. I was getting a bit confused at how the nuclear plant was not consistently reliable/unreliable.
I didn't mean to suggest that there were *illegal* activities of the sort. I figured it was probably along the lines of what you said, though my wording could probably have been a bit better. I just thought the text description should probably be more clear to ease any such worries.
@pixel-game-wizard And I should have added a :wink: somewhere in there. All is good under the sun.
Very enjoyable game! The graphics looks nice, the music was great, the story and events were all both funny and troubling, further adding to the overall challenge of the game, there were multiple endings which I enjoyed (I got the low popularity one and the nuclear catastophy one!)
I can't find any negatives, the idea was brilliant making you choose between popularity and crowd, and balance these two things together, the music was enjoyable and fitting, the details were nice (like the eagle showing up and the duck actually having a sound when clicked!) and I really enjoyed playing it! Well done! :smile:
Nice to see a sim city/resource management style game! Balancing energy was interesting, but it all seemed a bit flat, as if there was an invisible clock ticking down to my failure regardless of the choices I made. I wonder if more ability to balance population and energy could help? That said, the game has a nice feeling of completeness to it, which is hard under such short time restraints.
The writing for the newspapers is great. It is funny and relevant. Super well made as well, graphics are nice and the sound is good. Nice work :)
This is one of the most depressing things I have experienced in a while. Good music, art style was cohesive, the need for balance and a thick skin was great. A little positivity would have been nice. Very nice entry.
Deceptively simple game, with a lot of hidden depth. I like how all necessary information was conveyed through news articles. Took me a few tries to finally beat it. Really polished experienced. (And I had to laugh when I clicked on the ducks.)
It's sometimes good to have unknowns in the game, like not knowing how many % of the wind turbines needs to be applied to save or kill the eagle, but it could sometimes feel like slightly too much. For instance, the last day when even with all power at 100% I didn't make enough to satisfy the population, but it turned out to be the last day, I tought I was a gonner! :smile:
Overall I quite like it... like you said, I think I recognize those ducks from somewhere...
The humorous newspaper adds a lot to the game, not just as throwaway jokes, but as something that makes the town feel slightly more alive.
Very nice game. Good work.
I thought that your game was very unique and creative. My only wish was that I had more tasks than to manage electrical output and repair the factories. I liked the ducks. :)
Really cool game love the graphics i'm a fan of low poly.
YEAH ! I've made it :D It took me several days to find the adequate strategy to beat this small little gem :) Very humorous and well executed, quite hard ! I don't really know if i've done it right but my main strategy was to hurt the eagle at the right time, because the reaction that follows seems to cover everything that could happen >< Nice low poly visuals, the music sounds like I'm playing a sim-city-like game. Very challenging and interesting take on the theme. Great !
Took me a while to work out what to do. No indication of that in game so I had to go back to your LD page to find that out. Once I did, it was a funny little sim. I liked the humour of the newspaper articles and the sense you got of being in a small town where not much happens so people have time to get themselves worked up about various energy sources. It felt a bit random at times so I was just firefighting issues that came up rather than being punished for putting all my eggs in one basket. I know there's a certain element of that in a lot of sims but I think ideally you have a bit of a mixture of events triggered by your actions and deus ex machina events. Oh and I loved the eagle graphics! Overall, nice work.
Very fun game. I don't usually like management games but this one was OK.
I had nuclear meltdown on April 31st.
I like the idea of balancing power and popularity in this game but I wish it maybe had some sound effects to slightly complement it. Using the newspaper to explain and guide the player is not only great but also funny! Nice job.
This fits the theme so much and graphically reminding of mix between older Sim Cities and Civilization. The idea of balancing power and popularity is good but I wish it had some sound effects and music. The help bar (cleanly and funnily disguised as a newspaper) is great and easy to understand. Keep it up!
A fun and very polished resource management game!
The game had a nice amount of simultaneous elements to juggle. The trade-off between closing down the various generators repairs vs. balancing the risk of negative events happening, and still having sufficient power, created a lot of interesting decisions. It was not entirely clear from the UI that repairs could sometimes take several turns, and that you could actually suspend repairs before they were done. I discovered that last fact by accident (which probably saved me from being fired). The decision making was tense.
The newspaper was an elegant way to present the introduction, the progress between the turns, and to introduce new game elements as they appeared. Especially with the entertaining writing style!
All in all, it was a great game!
I propose that future measurement of approval rating, is done using a new **kitten-news per month** metric.
On an unrelated note, it was nice to see that Ducky MacDuck came back okay from the tour. As a newly minted celebrity, perhaps he can replace Mr. Mayor when the approval rating hits the floor ;-)
>Skilled mayor wanted, >to manage our power grid! >Not an easy task...
@somnium Thanks for the entertaining review!
Ducks live in a state of uncertain flux. Did Ducky get on the tour? Did Gonan survive the lake pollution? Nonetheless they are bound by fate to reappear and affect our tri-monthly lives in mysterious ways. This is the prophecy of the Blackout cult.
@galaxstudios An awfully familiar comment.
You might save time by smushing together comments, but it sure won't make you a better developer. Get your priorities straight.
Mr Mayor fired! Charming game with lots of nice little touches. I like small simulation games where you have the whole world on the screen and there are only a few choices to make. The newspaper is an entertaining way to end each day and a smart way to give the player clues on what to do next. It only took me one play to get a grasp on things, now I'm on my 4th attempt at keeping everyone happy :-)
I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said-- It was hard, and I would not want to be that mayor, ha. I think you accomplished the goal of prioritizing the "journey", rather than the destination/endgame. I enjoyed the gameplay after getting the hang of it, and the graphical touches were a very nice way to give actions some feeling of impact, rather than just managing sliders and numbers. Nice work.
Great time I had playing your game ! Well done, polished ( for a LD that's impressive !) The newspaper is a nice touch. Simple yet beautiful aesthetic, nice camera effect. A quite interesting management game !
It was very hard figuring out your UI and the game play is kind of boring. This is one of those games where I have to figure out what to do and I feel left along by the game for not giving me enough instructions. Some games give you no instructions whatsoever but then you learn it by yourself and feel proud, like [The Music Box](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-music-box) where everything is intuitive. This game is not intuitive at all I feel.
The graphics are fine, simple 3D art but with a love for detail.
The music is really cool, nice tune to listen to. Also a nice detail that the ducks quack when you click them :-)
Overall a good looking (and sounding) game but the game play is not really for me. Anyway, I know how hard it is to create a game in 72 hours so big up for that, keep up the good work!
I did like managing the power outputs of the different power plants and see that there were different outcomes for the use of each one, in the news and also popularity.
Really did like the mostly flat polygon look and the simplicity of things in the game. Despite the simplicity, properly managing the power resources was quite challenging and it's nice to think about the consequences too!
Goos job! ;)
Took me a couple of goes to get the balance and be rewarded with a ton of kittens. Pretty fun if stripped down management. The newspaper narrative was entertaining and carried things along. Felt like some more management/decision making options or other parameters would have been nice.