Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → A Dying City
By minimurgle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 560 | 2.92 | 37 | |
| Fun | 595 | 2.67 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 188 | 3.48 | 36 | |
| Theme | 418 | 3.28 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 612 | 2.37 | 37 | |
| Audio | 487 | 2.03 | 30 | |
| Humor | 511 | 1.97 | 26 | |
| Mood | 559 | 2.50 | 30 |
I'd love to see some hotkeys for bringing up the overlay and stuff like that. My first ludum dare too :D
Love the take you have on the theme, it's different to what i've seen so far and you've done some cool stuff with risk and reward.
Gameplay's very strategic, i'm very bad at these games.
I would love to see this fleshed out and polished, maybe you could keep working on it after the jam.
Good one for adding a volume slider too.
@tezza48 Oh I'm definitely gonna be working on this further. I'm gonna completely restart though. I'd never attempted this type of game before and my code shows it. Finishing up a game that you just put a bunch of effort into only to realize that you're gonna start over is one rollercoaster of emotions.
It's a great concept that I hope you build on in the future! One thing, it is a bit time-consuming to have to go through each sector and select an action for every turn.
Its a good concept alright. And im pretty sure if you make the graphics better, put in some nice sound effects and polish the hell out of it, it will be very impressive.
Good concept! Clicking through every bit of city part is a little tedious though. Would like to see this in polished mode. Btw those great charity events for UnityEngine.GameObject, would donate...
@baknik When I go and remake it I'll probably have less sectors, and the ability to have it do the same thing every turn.
@darylsteak Graphics wise I had wanted to keep it simple but decent looking. I think I managed simple, but not quite as nice to look at. When I remake it I think I'll be going for 3d, as I personally think that'd look better.
@prostone Yeah still not sure what exactly was causing that. Unfortunately I didn't have time to figure out.
I loved this concept. their could be music so your not just sitting there in silence, but other than that its a really fun game
Nice approach for the theme, good job :) I liked the game
@asellio There is music, but it turns out that I accidentally set the default volume as 0. You can change it in the settings.
The default volume was set to 0 I'd personally suggest to make people lower it if they want to instead of letting the assume there is no sound or music. Good take on the theme and definately congrats on your first ludum dare. Good job!
@gris Yeah that was an accident on my end. I'd meant to have it a .1 because for me at least it was a good volume. I'm just glad I accidentally set it to 0 and not 1 though. Rather have people think there's no music than to burst someone's eardrum.
Cool idea different take on the theme which I enjoyed
Really liked the way you handled the theme, but the lack of visual cues on each sector is really tiring. Maybe just a spreading red (that grows as corruption grows) starting at each circle and painting the streets, like veins.
I like the concept, but it's just too much to do in one turn. Also, it's hard to tell how my actions are affecting each sector. My suggestion is to make the game start slower, like maybe you only have control of 2 or 3 sectors and you have to unlock the rest.
This concept has a lot of potential. I hope you keep at it. I'd love to see what it could be.
Kind of hard to get into it. It would maybe be better to give the instructions ingame where you choose your options. Like, maybe add a (?) button.
This game wrecks me, I'm still trying to find a good balance in resource management xD. Nice work! Only suggestion I have is maybe also giving it a visual representation of the different properties of the areas (like maybe a bar that increases in length according to crime level or a colour representation of how much crime there is etc.). Lazy people like me love visuals ;)
Great concept and take on the theme!
That was different than all the other games I played till now. Nice theme that you came up with. Like a few other users, its kind of 'work' to get through all the sectors. Need a bit more work to make it more usable, but still: great idea and a great game. Nice work!
nice concept you have here, here's some feedback from me:
1. is it really intentional for making it blue or what but that really trigger me for....idk, it feels like it's not full i guess, i'm a perfectionist and when i see blue behind it without any reason it just blow me away lol
2. too much "you need to do each of this" in each turn, why not make a simple log that tell "this
3. the charity pop-up thing, referencing to some kinda GameObject, maybe you need to fix that news.png
maybe that's about it.....i just feel "heavy" only from 2 turn, check and re-check every sector if they're really doing something, best of luck to you mate, sorry English is not my first language XD
@esper000 I would have loved to get some more visual clues going. A red streak of doom would've been pretty cool. Unfortunately I ran out of time. I'll keep it in mind for when I go and remake it though!
@belowparallel-ian When I remake the game I plan on going 3D and proceduraly generating the cities. That way the amount of sectors can be chosen for each session
@darkgrisen Yeah I had planned on doing a lot more for instructions, but I ran out of time.
@netherlab I had been planning on doing little bars since the beginning, I'm still not sure why I didn't. Though you should be glad to know that when I remake it I plan on having a lot of visual representation, both obvious and subtle.
@wskilljoy Thanks!
@koemeterion I'm glad you like it! I would love to keep working on it, but instead I'm gonna completely remake it. There are some issues in the code structure and so many things I want to change, it'll be easier than fixing it.
@keilazu I had planned on doing a wooden background, as if it were a map sitting on a desk, I just never got around to it. I would have loved it if I'd had time to get a log or some way to lesson the amount of needed work each turn. Yeah I'm not really sure what causes that. I would have liked to fix it but time constraints (again)
You asked for criticism, so here goes with all of my thoughts as I play your game.
...Yay, volume settings and good music!
...It would be nice to have some indication from the map what I am doing in each district, there are a lot of them to keep track of. Also, maybe some indication of what each of the numbers mean.
...Is the crime rate how much the crime level increases by? What happens when it increases? The breaking news just told me that a factory has gone bankrupt in (unityengine.gameobject). Interesting, I don’t know where that is. Also, what does a factory closing mean for the game? More crime is my guess.
...I have no public opinion, and have not for three turns, but I haven’t lost? It just keeps warning me that I will be replaced…. Now the game ends when I ran out of money. Does the low opinion just drain my money?
Overall I really like the concept that you are going for. It makes sense with regards to the theme, and seems like it would be quite the interesting challenge with a little more polish on the interface. However the interface has no good indicators of what effect different actions will have on the state of the world, and my random guessing (more police in places with high crime rates, fight in places with high crime levels) ended up with me having a lot of money and no public opinion. That is really the only problem that I had with this game, it wasn’t able to tell me what I needed to do to succeed at it. I think that it is a great game, especially as a first entry into LD, and all that it would have needed to grab my attention for a lot longer is more feedback and interface polish. Great job!
This is a cool idea, but I'm finding it hard to see at a glance where the problems are and how I should respond to them. I'd love if it was easier to see which sectors were okay and which were in trouble. Also, sixteen districts is a lot to take on at once! I'd really like to start off with just a few districts to learn how they work first. Congrats on finishing your first LD!
btw the rules say it's OK to make simple bugfixes after the compo. If you wanna upload a new build with a higher default volume (no other changes), you can do that - just edit your post to explain what's different.
@smilewood Indeed I did ask for criticism. Your thoughts are much appreciated. I think the fact that people actually like the music is pretty surprsing. It's not something I'd consider myself good at. Yep crimerate is how much the crimelevel increases everyturn. Definitely could do better explaining what things do what. Not really sure what causes the (unityengine.gameobject) thing but I have an idea what it might be, and if it is that then I'm absolutely blind. Public opinion was working in the build before this, not sure how I broke it.
@randomnine When I remake the game getting more visual indications is gonna be top priority. I also plan on having the maps being proceduraly generated so that players can choose how many sectors to play with. I can make bugfixes? Thank god, I must missed that when I went through them
Hey! First of all, congratulations on finishing your first Ludum Dare game! Some points to take notice: - After choosing an action in each district it would be nice to have a feedback that I already selected an action there. This could be made as simple as changing the district color from red to blue, for example. - There are lots of numbers in the game and I found a little hard to get a grasp of it all. Maybe using bars to help display info can make it more simple to people understand what's going on.
Overall I enjoyed the game! I think working on the aforementioned aspects would make it even better
I ran out of funds and popularity on turn 10 ^_^.
I had problems feeling any sense of agency - I would choose things, but got absolutely no feedback on what their results would be, and were. Usually I could watch the numbers change on just one district when I ended my turn, and get some feedback ("yep, cutting a deal increased crime"), but not enough to make any interesting decisions, or answer the obvious questions of how much things cost and how much they helped.
I like little sim/strategy games like this, it's a nice change from most entries. I did enjoy playing it, even if I was confused =).
@almost-panda-studio I had originally planned on having a little exclamation point in sectors that didn't have a selected action. Unfortunately it slipped my mind until the last minutes. Little bars would be nice and was my original plan. Still not sure why I went for numbers I don't plan on developing this version any further as it has a lot of underlying issues. Instead I'll be completely remaking it.
@jimbly I wish I had gone and added a chart to each sector showing how all the variables have changed over each turn. Glad you enjoyed it!
Nice game!(UnityEngine.GameObject)
the idea is not bad but as you self said you gonna remake it :) ill check it out on itch.io
feel free to visit me here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/team-or-greed
This seems interesting, with more feedback of action, and more stats (Like what an action costs, etc) this would be a smoother experience. Congratulations on finishing your first LD game!
Hey, just a hint: You need to mark the game on itch.io as Windows compatible, otherwise it won't allow downloading it via the itch client.
@cerno-b Thanks for the heads up! I missed that
It's a cool concept, having to balance income (from crime) against spending to prevent crime and still make a place for citizens to live in.
The gameplay itself is a bit tedious, there are some UI improvements that would help the game take great strides in playability:
- Don't reset the actions after each round. I wanted to try different settings and have them run for a while to get a feeling for the mechanics but having to click each sector in each round to change the settings takes a lot of patience - Give the player a chance to get all information on one screen: Current action of each sector, the full report etc. That way they won't have to keep track of all the info in their minds. - You can do a lot by color coding your cities. Income in the red? Add a red dollar sign next to the city. Crime rate critical? Draw a burglar's mask, color coded for severity. - If you want to keep your separate report cards, simplify them. Minimize mouse paths and click count. Don't force the player to move across the screen to find the exit button. Let them click anywhere on screen to close the window. It doesn't need to be that large to convey a little bit of information. Just have a small window pop up right next to the city or something.
Finally the music becomes a bit repetitive. Did you use a music generator? Nothing wrong with that, just make sure you spend enough time with it until you find a track that fits your game. Here, I think something with longer, more atmospheric notes might have been more appropriate.
These issues are mainly about ui and usability. I commend you to make a strategy game like that. I would never dare, because tuning it must be really hard. Kudos.
@cerno-b Thanks for the feedback! I had toyed around with the idea of having it stay each turn. In the end I went with my personal preference. Definitely wish I'd added an option though.
Yeah I would have loved it if I had time to add in more info for the player. I considered making it a jam submission instead but I had my heart set on doing the compo.
You can actually right click to close most windows. I forgot to add it into the help section of the pause menu. I actually made the music in Bosca Cieol. I wish I'd spent more time playing around with it. I'd originally planned to have the music slower and melodic. Not really sure how I ended up with something that reminds me of transport tycoon.
I should have most of these issues fixed when I remake it. If it weren't for some family christmas parties I'd be spending this weekend working on procedural generation using Worely Noise to make the cities. That way people can play with as many sectors they want.
[**Here's the page for the remake.**](https://minimurgle.itch.io/a-dying-city) I'll be posting devlogs here for those who are interested. I'd considered doing it on the ld40 version's itch page but I figured I'd just make a new one now.