synystercola 2019-04-30 02:58
Addicting. Things did go a little too quick for me. The simplistic graphics did help.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Root Maker
By Jason Porritt, joe-bustamante, andyp, dtkelch and Kyle Harris AO
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 851 | 3.13 | 52 | |
| Fun | 862 | 2.91 | 51 | |
| Innovation | 450 | 3.23 | 51 | |
| Theme | 523 | 3.39 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 871 | 2.94 | 52 | |
| Audio | 450 | 3.18 | 52 | |
| Humor | 673 | 2.62 | 46 | |
| Mood | 850 | 2.91 | 50 |
Addicting. Things did go a little too quick for me. The simplistic graphics did help.
Neat game! Didn't notice the second tab for too long. Late game options seem to do nothing? Keypad support would be great.
Ah, "your life is currency" == "currency is your life". I checked it out for a bit. It was a bit difficult to get into, my numbed wasn't working so I was having to play with the regular number keys. I think it could benefit from some on-screen controls, allow players to use mouse only. But aside from timing your buy/sells to get the highest numbers, is there really anything else to it?
Really great game, gets stale very fast though, and while the "Influence options do help to change up the gameplay a bit, the game only held my interest long enough for me to unlock "Spread rumour" which I'm not even sure what it did. But overall the production quality on this is amazing, very clean and it both looks nice and sounds nice. Great Work!
@madbarron @shaolin-dave @jomiak thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated. Keyboard support is definitely something we'd like to add support for soon, and some on-screen controls/making it easier to interact with in general, but we just ran out of time during the jam. But yes, if you make enough Root you'll eventually unlock an influence tab, and after that there's even the option to start a cult - but it takes a bit to get there. We'll keep working on tuning the rate of progression so unlocking things comes at a good pace and you can do more than just currency. Thanks again - really helpful stuff for us to hear!
I like it. Feeling like a broker on a commodore64 ^^
It took a while to get into and mouse only support is needed, but overall, great game!
Interesting take on the "currency" part of the theme, love the aesthetic and music too! Would be great if it had stuff like "sell all" or "autosell at certain price", since there were times where I missed a great opportunity while typing out the exact amount I had to sell.
@akirassasin @game-coder28 thanks for the feedback! Having an "autosell at price" ability is a really interesting suggestion - definitely something I think we would like to add.
What a game, interesting. I made some money for sure. Imagine having a machine running nothing but this software. What a feeling.
Nice take on the theme. Graphics are good and everything seems polished. A bit hard to play though, feels more like actual work than a game at times. Still had some fun, well done!
Really cool idea, I like how it fits with the theme.
the music was so good! the game moved a little quickly in the beginning, but once the hang of it, the game was really fun. the only thing i found a little frustrating was using the mouse to select the currency you are buying/selling. great work!
very solid concept. we had a similar idea and really like how y'all figured out exchange rates and real time changes in prices.
@hare-software @matthew-hrehirchuk Thanks for the feedback! I'll take the "feels like work" comment as partial compliment, but yeah the usability still needs some work. The switching between mouse and keyboard leave a lot to be desired. That's definitely on our radar for post-jam improvements.
fun. Would have loved a sell all, buy max button. I was unable to 'influence' not sure it that feature made it in, but I was intrigued.
Neat idea. I like the clean interface, and the music was pleasant.
Other people have mentioned more mouse support and numpad support, which would be good. On top of that, I feel like "buy all" and "sell all" buttons would be helpful. Similarly, if you try to sell more than you own, it would be good if the game just sold everything instead of requiring you to input an exact amount.
Maybe it was just my luck with the RNG, but I don't feel like there was much incentive to buy or sell at any particular time. You've got nothing to do with your money except buy more money. There's no reason to get impatient. I bought as much of one currency as I could when it hit 99, then just waited for a few minutes for it to drop to 1 and sold it all. I made my fortune 99 times bigger just like that. In fact, I just did that same strategy again while writing this review. After that, the currencies all hovered at a really unfavourable exchange rate for a long time.
If there was something else to do with the money that required immediate attention, you could have a decent risk/reward mechanic.
Also, I tried all of the influence options but couldn't tell if they actually did anything.
Ha nice, "your life is currency" is a good way of looking a the theme. The music was great, but the gameplay just isn't for me I think. I made a bit of money but not really on purpose :)
Lots of waiting around doing nothing, but I found it weirdly compelling nonetheless and played for a long time. If there's an ending, I didn't manage to reach it even with over 1 billion root.
I really like this game! An early concept I had during the jam was about cryptocurrencies, but the game itself failed. So far, _Root Maker_ is the only other Ludum Dare game that has to do with financial stuff that I've noticed. Great work!
I really liked this. I played it until it couldn't fit in the boxes anymore Root.PNG
This is a little too addicting. Add in a button to speed up and slow down time, and I'd be set. You guys are great!
The chill atmosphere on this game was very addictive. I managed to come out ahead which was fun. More generally I liked analyzing the trends in the market and seeing what to buy and sell. Those extra side benefits and having a cult was pretty funny as well.
To improve, I found it hard to see any connection between the influence system, the news system, and the prices. And the prices seemed to bottom out at 1.00 which made certain things too predictable.
Little complicated at first and then this game began to teach me how the actual stock market works and I had a lot of "OHHHH" moments. It was a very unique experience. Good style for it too.
It is difficult to understand what is happening. But once you understand the game becomes really good. The style reminds me of old economical games, such as a roller coaster or a transport tycoon. Good luck!
@ransom @sylvie @gentel thank you all for taking the time to leave some feedback and comment on the game! It's much appreciated. Some really interesting ideas in there, like speeding up the simulation or making the connection between events/influencing and currency prices a bit more explicitly. Additionally, that's a good point - there often isn't much incentive to sell right away when you can instead just wait for currency to drop to 1.0. Some ideas we've talked about for this include capping different currencies at different points or implementing trade fees. Thanks again for the feedback and for playing!
@maggardjosh @yubs @mertios @falak @calzep @flashviper thank you all for the feedback, and for taking time to play the game! Glad you all enjoyed it. Also @yubs that's an insane amount haha, well done. We're planning on fixing the text box issues soon.
I feel like the wolf of wall street! I had a lot of fun.
I inmediately understood what was going on and what was my gameplan but the UI made it a bit hard on me. A way to sell all would have been nice, the num pad didn't work, maybe a way of adding money with premade buttons of fixed values. I don't really know, but there is a lot of unused screenspace that could be used for other stuff. Maybe even plotting some values.
Well this is me just giving some random ideas in case you feel like further developing it.
Again, I really enjoyed it :D
It's somewhat sadistically enjoyable jumping on a currency when its at its low point and then watching the money explode like that.
It was then that an hour had passed and I was deep into forming my own cult that I realized I should probably take a break from it for a while.
Well done!
Found it a bit confusing at first but then got the hang of it for a bit. Fits the theme properly and I liked that chilling tune :)
Cute concept, but I think the missing QoL features pushed me away. It was not clear how the exchange rate worked (bigger number means cheaper in this game) and my backspace key kept moving me to a previous webpage. I wound up leaving my buy/sell amounts at a static amount and just mashing the button.
On-Screen keyboard would be a great help -- can't wait to play the director's cut!
Really enjoyed this one, although I couldn't seem to buy the items in the cult tab.
My team almost took a similar direction in choosing a Forex theme. Though we couldn't figure out how to make a game of it. This ended up being very charming. I was able to get up to a decent amount of money. Looks like there's some patterns you can exploit slightly. Overall a nice take on the theme. Not sure where the game could expand from here, but it's a fun little game you made.
Hey, another phaser 3 game! That's so cool!
I played for longer than I thought I would. It really, really could have used numpad support, but that's my only complaint.
@gerardb thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it! Those are all good ideas, and a few of them are ones we've had planned as potential additions post-jam. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment with them all (:
@bitdecay @jsd @davidsheadgames thanks guys, appreciate the feedback! Glad you liked it.
@cheesepencil @caleb thanks for the suggestions - none of us used a numpad and we had to implement our own text input component in our engine, so we totally overlooked it. So much for playtesting 🙃 But yea, numpad support is definitely on the to-do list, as well as providing mouse support for setting buy/sell amounts. Thanks for taking the time to leave some feedback, much appreciated!
@swen there was a bug previously where cult items couldn't be purchased or the buttons would sometimes be hidden - it should be fixed now, if you want to give it another go! Thanks for leaving a comment.
Interesting idea. :) I like the mood and style of this game (The music really sells it, too).
Unfortunately, much like the actual stock market, a lot of my choices seemed left up to chance as to whether or not they'd pay off. :/ I'd love to have been able to make more informed decisions, but even when I was given information on the bottom ticker, things seemed to move way to fast for me. Maybe some sort of turn-based approach would be more engaging here?
Also, please please please let me use the num-pad to enter transactions! My buy/sell rate was drastically slowed down by my inability to use it! :(