FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD44 → Earn Your Life

Earn Your Life

By acactus

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9812.9357
Fun10352.6059
Innovation6842.9857
Theme3323.6257
Graphics10272.2654
Humor3723.1153
Mood7343.0957

Comments

youpeoples 2019-04-29 22:48

Its just like real life. You do the things and at the end its just over. Were you satisfied? idk.. am dead.

karmicretribution 2019-04-30 01:23

It was interesting, but it lacked a tangible goal. Without any win/loss state, I could just click thru randomly without feeling like there was a particular point. However, the fit to the theme was very good, and the music was great!

jadedresearcher 2019-04-30 01:53

I liked that it let you decide if you lived a good life or not, and it made me feel like real life is that way too. You spend your time and only have so much of it.

tableguardian 2019-04-30 19:37

I feel bad for the poor simulated beings who I repeatedly forced to search for the truth and spread their word. If *only* there was some kind of higher purpose... though I guess life doesn't have a higher purpose either! Dark.

carraka 2019-05-01 02:32

I really enjoy these types of games, and being able to see everything I did at the end was a nice touch. Really creative options in here too! If you end up working on this more, I'd really want to see some of the choices you make earlier in the game influencing the choices you make later in the game. There also seemed to be some random events (family growing)? happening independently of that, and it would've been cool to see how those events were affected by or affected the choices you made. Also, the red on gray was a bit difficult to read, and the numbers were difficult to read as well, so that would be something to improve.

And I also liked that I got to decide whether I was satisfied. Wish I could have a dream that long ... would probably learn a lot. Or faff about for 9999 years.

acactus 2019-05-01 14:17

@carraka If i make an updated version of this in the future, probably the first thing it’d have is the option to play without the text filters. I wanted it to look like a digital alarm clock in this version- im sorry if that design makes it difficult to follow the text.

While many options can only happen if you take other options first (you cannot go to mars unless you build a spaceship, for example) it’s a very simplified system, and the random blurbs about other things going on in your life are completely unrelated. I’ll try to come up with ways to add more depth to both of those in the future.

Thank you all very much for the feedback so far!

cikyt 2019-05-01 21:36

❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )

sylvie 2019-05-04 00:21

I thought it was funny how you can do crimes for years and then run for political office or join the police and nobody seems to care.

qlqrcoisa 2019-05-04 02:44

good.

dorblin7z7 2019-05-04 03:53

Interesting little idea, I like that I was able to build a little story and read it at the end.

harark 2019-05-04 05:48

That was exciting! Really liked the music. Would have liked it if there had been a branching of sorts, where new options are unlocked depending on what you choose to do. Maybe that is already the case, but wasn't clear. Then again, content creation is not really the strong side of game jams. Good work!

shadowkitsune 2019-05-04 20:54

Good game! But there's a few things that could make it better. - There is no consequences to your actions, that is something necessary in a game, without consequences the player reaches a point of "just clicking buttons real fast" after a while. - It would be cool to have a more sarcastic mood set in than a darker mood, joking about how life is shitty is always better than just saying it. - Changing the available options after a choice would make the game more dynamic, thus simulating the sense of action vs consequence.

Overall, is a good game with problems probably caused by bad planning or time constraints.

codesity 2019-05-04 21:05

An interessting Story and Text Adventure. It could be more design, but I Like how you compared it with the theme. Good Work!

copper-aardvark-games 2019-05-04 21:41

Really cool text based games. I always love these sort of thing because the visual story all takes place in your mind and sort of forces your brain to create the environment described. Very admirable take on the theme.

heyycap 2019-05-05 05:07

Our team toyed with this type of idea. Sometimes you have the same answer twice on the choices... And it didn't seem to matter what I chose, and there was an unpredictable result after choosing certain things, without an apparent cause.

link 2019-05-05 09:32

I bit repetitive, you should add more events. A storyline would be great too.

coatline 2019-05-05 18:04

Like @link said, it was a little repetitive and so was the music but I guess better have it than not. It was an interesting concept and I thought of doing something like that too. Maybe make the UI a little more interesting and a sound when you clicked a button. Good work!

popdaddygames 2019-05-05 21:51

I love the text based idea here- this is dope.

luckydaisy 2019-05-06 05:33

I enjoyed faffing off for an entire lifetime. Felt a bit too real though.. perfectly mirrors my life of crime :smile:

cubicode 2019-05-06 13:49

It fits the theme quite well, but for me, the options are quite random. I could have joined the army with an age of 73. I wonder what my yob there was...

acactus 2019-05-06 14:46

@cubicode 6DFC9598-B2B3-4E44-B088-CF7A449D9E8B.jpeg :p

For real though, i just assumed the option to join the military would be drowned out by other options at that time. This is more evidence that i did not have a very good implementation of “the things you do unlock other things” mechanic, along with the fact that other folk keep telling me to include that feature when it is already there.

joror 2019-05-06 20:28

Interesting game! The choices seem to ramp up to some interesting choices (Illuminati? :P) but in the end would like something more punchy - go out with a bang somehow. The music made it somewhat tense, which was a bit weird with the subject, but makes is a bit more lighthearted.

davidsheadgames 2019-05-07 02:18

I liked some of the options :P

However...

I faffed about my entire life... At age 71, I won a contest. And at age 76, I was an inspiration to many.

Truly an epic life.

Then at the next life, I faffed about my entire life. Only at age 74, was I haunted by the past.

Truly an epic life.

If I could give some real criticism, though, it's a bit basic and making "real" choices doesn't seem to lead anywhere new... also, putting a blurry shadow behind text makes it really hard to read.

I also notice, regardless of how often I refresh, my name is always "Connie Swift".

The music was alright, though, and I like putting it as optional at the bottom in the web version. That was a nice touch.

peachtreeoath 2019-05-07 05:26

Was there any particular game you used as inspiration for this game? I've played quite a few life sims on web/mobile and was wondering if it was one of those. I liked the coat of paint you put on the genre. Usually it's just plain text but I felt like the digital interface really emphasized that the clock was ticking on your life. Since I expected standard life sim gameplay, I thought it was pretty funny how some of the choices lined up. Like going to art school....then construction worker....then back to art school lol. Only halfway did I realize it was a more freeform game than I had expected. Fun concept, I'd love to try making one of these games myself one day. Perhaps when I faff about next year.

enderswype 2019-05-07 08:07

really ? you have to click on play the music yourself ? XD what's next you have to fixe bugs in the game before launching it ? XD i missed randomess in, with events and stuff

mrbrooms 2019-05-07 12:16

very simple but interesting ;)

acactus 2019-05-08 01:04

@enderswype I figured having the music in it's own player would be an okay thing, since the game itself isn't in a format that usually has music attached to it. (It IS supposed to start playing on it's own though, so I'll take a look at that.)

acactus 2019-05-08 01:07

@peachtreeoath I did not have any particular game in mind when I made this, though I did know that other games (Bitlife for example) do a similar thing. I tried to differentiate mine a little by giving it a system which is, relative to those games (and befitting the rushed jam nature) more simplified and random.

luis-j-benitez 2019-05-08 17:36

Im sure you had a lot of effort programming but i miss any kind of meaning related to the choices.

pedro137br 2019-05-09 17:22

Loved the idea but as other people said it needs more meaning on your choices

rob-white 2019-05-19 23:24

Cool interpretation of the theme. It would have been better had it worked similarly to a choose your own adventure (spending x time doing x activities unlocking access to further activities in that profession).