Sacrificed supplies

daniel-abeleira 2018-12-02 17:19

Hey! Nice game, I'm already tired of seeing cult clickers and the jam hasn't even finished :joy: . Seriously, good job and good luck with the ratings

mr-chocolatesalmon 2018-12-04 03:49

Nice and simple. Good job. Was a bit confused at the start and wasn't able to restart the game, but picked it up pretty quick.

elitegoliath 2018-12-14 16:36

I have to say this entry is pretty refreshing. The "Jam" is the ultimate challenge, and you did it. It's simple, it's entertaining, and it's far from what I wuld call "jank". You should be proud that you were able to complete this entry.

yyz 2018-12-14 22:05

Hey, neat game and indeed this Ludum Dare is one big challenge ;)

I wasn't sure of the goal of the game at the start. As the hunger and thirst bars went up, I tried to feed the man by dragging the apple and water bottles to the man, but I think this ended up getting fed to the hot air balloon instead, with the water actually lowering the fire. It feels unintuitive for it to work that way so I wasn't sure why it was made as such. Was I supposed to accidentally do that and throw everything to the balloon? If so, what was the point?

After I used up everything, I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to do except wait for something interesting to happen, but the game seemed to drag on for a while. I tried clicking around and finding something to do but there was nothing to do at all. Consider engaging the player in some way. If it's meant to just be a long waiting scene, considering maybe having some birds that fly by that you can click on. Or maybe the hot air balloon has some mini interactable elements that you can discover more and more as you click around the screen. Otherwise, it may be better to prematurely end the game or speed it up when there is nothing left for the player to do. The bar values move very slowly for me at this point and there was just no point in playing except to wait for the bars to completely empty or fill up. After that, the game over screen appears, which isn't a very satisfying ending after the long wait too. Maybe have different messages based on what the player sacrifices or his score. That way I am encouraged to play again and am curious to discover more about the game - what if I sacrifice all the apples but kept water? What if I made him die of hunger? Etc.

Also, can the hunger and thirst bars be influenced at all? I notice them increasing at a constant speed. I'm not sure what the point of having the bars are if there does not seem to be a visible way to change them. This is also in stark contrast to the fire bar which is able to change. I tried keeping the supplies, and hoarding it, but I don't know if it changes anything. If it does, it needs to be more obvious.

As for the art, the character's and sky's pixelized style seems inconsistent with the rest of the world. Their pixels look rather big and scaled up compared to say the apple and the thin pixel outline of the balloon. Try to aim for a consistent look so your character and world blends together in your game. The character also looks like he was drawn with just a few pixels but scaled up massively as he appears to have a much lower "pixel resolution" compared to the other objects.

A minor point but you should consider renaming the zip used for the submission to the title of your game. I downloaded the zip, then could not find your game because the zip name used was a very generic name (LudumDare43.zip?). Considering there are so many other games, renaming your zip to a distinct name is a small thing to help your players.

Great game and I'm glad I got to try something unique today :)

joror 2018-12-15 13:05

Simple little game, good foundation for more complexity? Perhaps you could start off already hungry/thirsty, so you got something to do immediately.

zozer 2018-12-15 21:37

Nice concept but the game is way too slow it takes all the fun. also, random challenges which force you to use or sacrifice supplies might make it better.

bloodyorchiddc 2018-12-16 04:04

I run out of my supply for about 240 points. The innovation is good but the game is a little bit lack of challenge. If the status can dorp down quickly with che basket shake harder it should be great. I think the game is proper to go forward dev to put it on cellphone, spend a couple of min for a round.

wisstopher 2018-12-16 18:07

A nice simple game! My only critic is that i would have liked something more to do, whether that was obstacles you had to overcome, ways to gain more supplies or something else. Other than that good entry :smiley:

manimal 2018-12-16 21:57

When I was observing the main picture of the game in the games lobby. I saw a huge potential in this game about the theme. Why did you not use something as a weight as a one of the parameter, to let player decide which object to throw away to for exampole avoid an obstacle? Ballon is very good idea about this theme but hunger and thirst are killing the mood.

tinymushroom 2018-12-16 23:09

The balloon looked and "felt" good. The box and cords moving back and forth felt natural, and the clouds behind you set the mood well. However, as others have mentioned, there's a lack of interactivity. Although others suggest adding features (which requires more dev time), the quickest fix for this is to speed up your timeline. If you make everything deplete twice as fast, the player doesn't have to wait as long.

A game can be very short and still be enjoyable--don't feel the need to drag out the experience.