benburgh 2017-12-05 02:28
Oh man, I love the story you put into this! My biggest complaint is that it's hard to get started, but it's hard to avoid that with these style games.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Battle on the frontier
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.36 | 13 | ||
| Fun | 2.22 | 13 | ||
| Innovation | 2.59 | 13 | ||
| Theme | 2.27 | 13 | ||
| Graphics | 1.90 | 13 |
Oh man, I love the story you put into this! My biggest complaint is that it's hard to get started, but it's hard to avoid that with these style games.
There's a good foundation for a game here, but I wasn't aware of any objectives. The resource management was good, but it wasn't hard to survive just by making sure there was no deficit. The AI players were there, I saw them buying and selling in the shop, and the backstories for them were impressive, but this game would have been so much better if there were some interactions between players.
First time I opened the game, I clicked some buttons and it told me I won because the AI had run out of money. I have since noticed that the land count goes down when you buy a farm. But I don't know how many farms I have. Or the resources of my opponent. Or why would I need to interact with the market - things just go down to 0 price eventually, except land.
Those factions you list are nowhere to be seen.
If you start the game and spam the end turn button, your grain goes into negative numbers but you don't lose. I haven't managed to lose.
This game desperately needs a manual. I don't understand anything :(
If it wasn't for @sparewizard, I wouldn't even notice the presence of other players. I still doubt their existence even now, because the market seems to just be changing a bit each turn, without any signs of AI planning behind that. I assume that this is a project that started too ambitious, and you didn't have enough time to implement the map and the AIs. I do like what I see though.
This reminded my a lot of games like civ-clicker, however it did need much more polish. The core gameplay was there although nothing was really shown and explained. I had to read the description of the game and even then it made not much sense. I enjoyed the whole management of your resources thing, however I never really felt like I was under any pressure or urgency. I feel this game could definitely be further developed, with better graphics, audio, and variety. If you develop the core ideas and core gameplay (you have the basics of it down) it wouldn't be too hard and would be quite fun.