Island Businessman

the-triumvirate 2017-12-05 20:17

Would be nice if you added some help at the beginning, like, what exectly you're supposed to do. It took me some minutes to find the forest at the bottom right, for example.

mighty-chebo 2017-12-05 20:47

I agree with the above comment - at least some help text is needed. At the beginning of the game, a player has no way to know how to get enough wood to build the first house.

Collecting wood in general seems to be very flawed, unless I missed a method (and, if I did, you need to tell the player their options). Manually clicking the forest grants 1 wood every 3 seconds and the rowboat grants 2 wood every 7 seconds (or so). To get the 50 wood needed for one of the lowest-level houses, that's over 2 minutes of manual clicking and just waiting. I dread to imagine the 50 solid minutes of manual clicking needed to buy one of the 1,000 wood buildings. This issue combines with the slow money income rate to set the pace of the game very low. I know you said that it's a casual experience but I believe that speeding up the earnings somewhat would make the game much more satisfying. Being able to spend your resources is much more fun than waiting to earn them.

I would reconsider the costings of the buildings as well - they're pretty inconsistent in a cost-per-person sense. Considering how long it would take to fill the map, there's no real point in aiming for the higher tiers of buildings as they generally don't grant you more income for your expenditure and you're missing out on potential income while you're saving up to buy them.

It seems that you designed the game so that a player could return and continue where they left off but when I did so, all of my lower-tier buildings had disappeared (though I kept the same population) and the rowboat stopped dropping off wood (but kept leaving and returning).

In general, you've got the basis of what could be a fun and satisfying game but the core of it needs work. I would maybe go back to the drawing board and make sure the very basics work really well before extrapolating out into the higher tiers and so on. I hope you continue to work on this and other games. I think there's potential.

noble-robot 2017-12-05 21:25

I couldn't get the game to work. I hit play and saw the grid. I could select one of them and see a list of items, but clicking those had no effect. Tried with both keyboard and controller.

I like the concept, though. I hope others will be able to get it working.

prodigalson 2017-12-09 16:37

I liked Tycoon types of games and was looking forward to building my small empire on this island but I could not figure out how to get collect the resources required to build it. I know a comment above mentions how to do this but adding it either on the description section on this page or in an in-game menu would be helpful. The music delayed in starting making me think for the minute that there was no sound. However, it sounds like you undertook this project all by yourself which is a huge thing to take on your own so props on doing that.

With a little more polish on game mechanics/controls, a simple "how to" guide, and perhaps a mode that starts with a partially built map and you build from there would make this even more fun to play.

notspaghettigames 2017-12-11 21:31

I like the concept of this game. I also have played many games that follow this approach and thoroughly enjoy them. However, without a sense of direction in the beginning to let the player know what to do or how the game works it can become very confusing and tedious. With enough time and feedback this game has a lot of potential well done!

vasco-rodrigues 2017-12-17 12:32

First game of this kind I played in this LD. I have no idea how difficult it is to build a game of this genre, but it seems a lot of work, congrats on finishing it in time.

I think the start is just a bit too slow, maybe start with more money so you can build more houses (and get more money faster).

The boat is a cool idea, maybe there should be an option to upgrade the boat or even an upgrade to the forest (silly idea :p) so you could gather wood faster.

With a little more polish I think you can have a very good game. Keep up the good work!

japes 2017-12-20 19:59

Yes - the explanation was definitely necessary! Cool music and a cool idea, but I agree with everything @mighty-chebo said. Once I realised that I would be clicking the forest and boat for hours before seeing anything different, I lost interest very quickly. With a bit of work it could be a fun game.

frozenfractal 2017-12-22 15:53

The music is pretty nice, although there are some weird drumrolls at times and it doesn't really fit in with the game.

Graphics are a mishmash of different styles and perspectives. Next time, maybe you could try for more consistency, even if it means that each individual sprite would looks less nice.

Wood gathering is really tedious, and the boat doesn't make it better. In fact, it seems using the boat is actually slower than the forest?

dcolgan 2017-12-23 02:52

The above explanations were indeed enormously helpful. As with all clicker games, I spent much more time playing this one than I expected to. Music helped the atmosphere.

mrphil 2017-12-23 04:44

I feel like the game has a lot of potential. I did get a bit bored with just clicking the forest, and would like to be able to buy a chainsaw or something to go faster or get more wood. Please keep working on it, I'd like to see more.

kodiqi 2017-12-23 22:43

I enjoy clicker/incremental games, which I feel is the best fit for classifying this game and I think you could learn a lot from that genre to improve IBM. This game doesn't have a good progression system, so the player isn't getting any kind of positive feedback loop from playing. Everything thing you buy costs the same amount of effort, regardless of how long you have been playing. Productivity should have a snowball effect, i.e. the more money you have -> the more wood you can produce -> the more houses you can build -> the more money you make. The boat is a good start but it only adds a small amount to wood production and you have to click it every time, some kind of automation would be good and encourage the player to leave the game running (idle).

Also, I don't see any benefit to the size of the map. I would suggest reducing it all to fit on a single screen, no WSAD movement needed. The graphics would probably look better zoomed out too.