Despot 3900

ninjascribble 2017-08-02 02:41

A really creative take on the theme, and great execution! I love the green and pink -- reminds me of old games like Oregon Trail, but it's definitely it's own thing. I got myself into a loop of taxing the nobles, imprisoning a noble, giving money to the peasants, imprisoning another noble, ad infinitum. I died with 100% popularity and 0% loyalty, but I never suffered a coup so that's nice :P

I could see you taking this further -- adding some random events that throw a bit of chaos into the mix, and a few more factions to make your decisions a bit more interesting. I'm glad I played this one!

cenullum 2017-08-04 17:24

Dude I love you and text based games and it is about Middle Ages. And your choosing of colors was good 5/5 !!!

death-is-cold 2017-08-04 17:38

Very cool! Gameplay is deep and enjoyable, well done.

omriysh 2017-08-04 17:48

Love the graphics and general style, but found the actual gameplay loop kind of boring. There's a very limited set of actions, each of them harms you in a different way... There is no way to progress, only to maybe slow the rate of destruction, and I found it to be quite annoying... Overall, though, this is a nice idea that can evolve to something great, and your execution is amazing - the game looks great and it's one of the most polished games I've seen here.

orcdraco 2017-08-04 18:07

The gameplay is fun, and I like the color palette. Great entry!

zdeno 2017-08-04 18:36

Hello there, I kind of like these simple "choose an option" games. Hovewer in this one it is relatively easy to develop simple strategy that is highly profitable. I would suggest adding random events to the gameplay. Those would on one side increased difficulty of the game and hopefully also prevented early feeling of repetition during playing.

To the bright side, I really enjoyed the graphics you made. It was simple and practical but still very pleasant to play with!

Thank you for sharing the game with us!

sokette 2017-08-04 18:54

I would love to invest more time on this game with more choices, I love that kind of text based game :D Plus graphics are gorgeous.

knatt 2017-08-04 19:04

This one's going in the "KeepThese" folder, well done! It's a unique spin on losing power, the graphics and color scheme are stylish, and it's fun.

One thing to point out tho is if war is always a coin toss, the first turn should always be war. If I lose, then whatever, I'll just quickly reset the game. If I win then I start the game with free money. If you didn't want that then you could have war be something the player has to buy into. Like they need to pay in 4000 to start the war and it has a 1.5x payout if won.

fmdkdd 2017-08-04 19:27

I really liked the art style, the UI and the medieval despot setting. Quite fresh and a very good fit for the theme. (Also, the fact that it's a 440Kb binary and made from scratch, but alas, there's no rating for that!)

However, I found myself executing a simple loop of taxing the peasants -> imprison peasants, with the odd Rest to stave off death for a while. I was surprised the game let me do this without any bad consequences; I was expecting the events to fail at some point, making at least this strategy a bit risky. Maybe some diminishing returns on the chance of success of repeated actions would have kept things interesting a little longer. I'm sure that more choices / more elements would make this game shine.

It still is a very impressive entry. Looking forward for more!

nick-blackwood 2017-08-04 19:42

Very retro and authentic looking, great level of polish! And awesome theme interpretation too! Gameplay though has some room for exploits and overall is heavily random. If you work more on the scale and depth of the game (to the level of, say, [Warsim](http://gamejolt.com/games/warsim/217136)), it can potentially become an amazing turn-based strategy.

gagapete 2017-08-04 21:06

I love the graphics and the audio in this game. It took me a couple of rounds to understand how the actions affect the values. May the changed values could flash shortly to be easier noticable? I tried some ways to play the game but from what I tried the most successful way is the one the other commenters wrote before.

kr4ft3r 2017-08-04 21:49

Very nice, love the graphics and feel. As for gameplay it kept me busy for a while, it looks like I can hold steady rule by completely favoring one class at the expense of another, by repeating one sequence until I lose all HP due to old age, which leads me into war gamble, just to have something else happen. Apart from that in overall the game is very well done, gj.

tolmera 2017-08-06 18:50

Hey @alxm - I was setting up to stream a few games when I spotted your game on Friday, now this is my kind of game :), and [I streamed the play-through on Friday](https://youtu.be/-DEvWdMWCKk?t=9547) (Sorry no sound :( I kinda messed up) but you can get to see how I played if you're interested, I really enjoyed it! It was a bit easy to find a balance by winning wars and paying nobles, but that being said, I didn't try actually being a despot and letting my people revolt! which maybe I will the next time I play it (And I think there will be a next time, I really enjoyed it)

shess 2017-08-11 03:09

A great game that teaches us one and only cold, hard truth: you can't be liked by everyone. And, maybe, that being a tyrant is a rewarding thing. And that wars can be highly profitable. Huh, that actually makes a lot of hard, cold truths...

Any case, I simply loved the humor and the management, and your take on "running out of power" is absolutely brilliant.

mianagames 2017-08-17 02:28

Very nice retro style game. Amazing work. Congrats.

sumgamstudio 2017-08-18 20:08

I love you graphics style. Good game. I like it.

gmfk07 2017-08-19 00:01

This is a really cool resource management game where you're always losing, just at varying speeds.

gamechoy 2017-08-19 01:31

Loved the retro feel and graphics. Very unique idea, it's already very fun to play. I would love to see a post jam version of this, perhaps with random events and some more resource management. never had the chance to declare war, the game wouldn't let me even when the conditions seemed right. Great start, would love to see more!

conk 2017-08-19 09:03

I love the use of the theme, I was originally going to go with a similar style of game but couldn't think of a decent way of it working, glad to see someone succeeded :grinning:

Everything is really solid too, love the simpler style of the graphics and sounds. Managed to get a few highscores too, so that's good!

huvaakoodia 2017-08-19 09:18

Great presentation. The interactivity suffers from the loop you can get into with one of the groups at 0% approval and the other over 50%.

Maybe taxation of a group shouldn't work that well once popularity/loyalty drops below 20% or so with a random chance of terrible things happening right away. More groups (zealots, merchants, immigrants, etc) might work at making the balancing act more difficult.

Good work nonetheless.