FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD45 → In Time Like These

In Time Like These

By miu and Mirialena

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall28
Fun29
Innovation28
Theme29
Graphics29
Humor24
Mood26

Comments

jayometric 2019-10-08 02:06

I got to day 13. Interesting concept! So many can factories!!!!

gabas 2019-10-08 02:09

I`ve played a little, but didn't get any gold =( . Nice music and atmosphere, the ui are a little confused, and the art became a little repetitive. Good job.

jolett 2019-10-08 02:12

Nice Game! I played until day 21. The game is a fun game of resource management and reacting to the different situations given to you. Also, the theme of starting with nothing really shows in this game, as you really do start with no food nor water. Great Job!

miu 2019-10-08 02:31

@jayometric Thanks, yes can factories are pretty much the most common thing ever in this world, no supermarket, everyone find food directly at the factories :)

@gabas thanks for playing, yes gold is actually a content we cut out but I apparently forgot to remove it ^^' also the artist fell sick during the jam so we only had part of the art that was meant to be.

@jolett Thanks, if you go up to day 40, you might see the end

purrseus 2019-10-08 02:44

To me, the game felt really samey at around day 3. I played for a whole week, but basically clicked through all the adventures and always felt like I had more than enogh resources by doing so. Felt really easy to me, but not engaging enough to continue after that. I really liked the whole mood you created though! And even if the music might not be by you, it was an excellent choice!

jesusache 2019-10-08 02:47

I sorta understand that you were going for a lower pace game, but it's still frustrating how little input and information the player has. I really liked the way the little snippets were written, and it did seem to be pointing towards something, but when you start getting the same messages again, it kills every sense of progression you were making. If maybe at the end of the day you got a new story about the person that lives their best self in times like these, it would give you a better reason to advance.

Graphics are kinda messy, specially the way the text is set up. In general text doesn't need to be that big or spaced out, but the music is appropriately eerie and foreboding.

Hope my feedback helps in times like these :)

miu 2019-10-08 12:05

@purrseus Thanks, yep I wanted to make more than a 100 events and even have more characters to accompagny the hero that would add more mouth to feed but I had to cut all this part because I lacked time, I'm surely gonna continue working on it to make it more appealing

@jesusache actually these little snippets are a mean to introduce one of the two ends, so that it doesn't comes out of the blue, I wanted to have each one to appear only once but I had trouble with it and ran out of time to fix the problem. I assume you're talking about the problem I have with the text being all over the place when you go on an adventure, that's a problem I only came to know when I uploaded the game actually, I'm in the middle of fixing it. Thanks for your feedback in time like these :)

netmute 2019-10-08 15:43

Mac tester checking in! Runs great. The text doesn't fit the boxes, not sure if that's a Mac thing.

I had fun overall! Starved to death on day 3 :thumbsup:

miu 2019-10-08 16:20

@netmute thanks a lot, the text not fitting is due to a bug on the size of the panel shifting from my version for a reason that I found and fixed in the version I'm currently working on, also finding ressources is purely random so the difficulty of my game is too :)

bigwhiteshogun 2019-10-08 17:01

Very solid proof of concept that needs some balancing out. Maybe day meter should speed up more when you go out so there is some downside of doing so. I would also recommend a button like wait till tomorrow that you can press but will cost you food and water, or if you don't have this will lower your food and water metere.

miu 2019-10-08 17:09

@bigwhiteshogun thanks for your review, actually the day meter is lowered a bit when you go on an adventure, but it seems not that obvious so I'm gonna lower it even more in the next build, I however didn't think of a "wait" button, I'll also be doing it in the post jam build along with different difficulties

derek-volker 2019-10-09 11:52

It is certainly interesting the concept of a story-driven game like this, however i felt that the execution came out a bit flawed. In a short time it becomes only click the "go on an adventure" the faster you can before the bars drop. If the adventure part was more than only text, maybe giving you choices which could result in different outcomes it would be a lot more interesting. The music is good and fits into the concept, but soon became repetitive. Maybe it should be longer? Anyway, the concept is interesting enough to provide a good game, but it needs polishing.

miu 2019-10-09 12:02

@derek-volker thanks, I'll take that into consideration, the music is not made by me but for the full build, I'll have more than one probably

gustavo-rocha 2019-10-09 14:14

very interesting concept! Great work!

miu 2019-10-09 14:16

@gustavo-rocha thanks for playing :)

gisam 2019-10-09 14:29

It's interesting but it lack some balancing / diferents thing to do. The current strategy is to use imemdiatly all your drops for don't lose them after, maybe a health system where you're loosing health when u cannot lose consumable may balance the thing

miu 2019-10-09 15:04

@gisam thanks, I think that or making the losing thing a lil less frequent, I was planning to add a battle system in the post jam build (something I wanted to do in this build actually alongside with commerce), maybe also having things to do at home like improving the house or something else

karanveer 2019-10-09 15:08

i kind of felt it kinda felt repetitive after like 6 days and...i dont know should i keep playing it but it got kinda pretty looped ...hopefully there's more features added and some different images...overall...one thing was good meeting so many cyborgs along the way :P

miu 2019-10-09 15:14

@karanveer I'm currently working on the bugless version and I'm improving some features as well, in the new version, days will be skipable and the end will happens sooner

karanveer 2019-10-09 19:30

Cool! :D

miu 2019-10-09 19:37

@karanveer how is it now? Also even if this is a new version I don't really consider it like the post-jam version I talked about in other comments

karanveer 2019-10-09 19:38

oh you updated? let me try!

karanveer 2019-10-09 19:43

ld.PNG i got greedy and died on day 6 and completely forgot that i had to eat and drink too hahahah now that i look back its so funny to me. Im gonna try again lol. i guess maintaniing that balance along with testing your patience is the key! :D If so, Good Work ! :D

miu 2019-10-09 21:10

@karanveer thanks :D

dmanzano101 2019-10-10 13:42

Nice concept. The only thing is having to decide not knowing the risks at the end generates the feeling that i am not in control just clicking buttons. Great Job!

miu 2019-10-10 19:13

@dmanzano101 thanks :)

selkkie 2019-10-11 16:03

It was interesting! Although, I somehow went many days without drinking any water, ahah. I would love to see some variety in the gameplay, too. Nice work so far, though, I hope you guys finish it!

omiya-games 2019-10-21 22:17

The setup of the game creates quite a claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere that works really well with the general narrative of the game. In addition, the scarce resources and the randomness of all events creates a hostile environment, which again works in favor of the narrative. I think when it comes to setting the mood, the game succeeds.

That said, I also felt the player didn't have *enough* control over their situation. The only significant decision I can see one making is either to risk adventuring or just keeping their stack of food and water supplies by staying home. That said, given how scarce resources are, and how many outcomes on adventuring leads to loss of resources, I never felt the incentive to save food and water. Instead, I favored using both food and water almost immediately, making the decision of whether to go adventuring or not trivial. More control over the outcome would have been appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_qRoOOl-s

miu 2019-10-22 16:42

@selkkie Thanks for your review, I'll take that into account when I'll continue to work on it @omiya-games Thanks for posting the video, also I'll be working on having the player have more control when I continue to work on it, just to be clear, the fact that you don't die when going out of food when staying at home is a bug, also the only mean to end the game is to go on an adventure after a fixed numbers of days passed.

allbetsareoff 2019-10-22 21:13

I played this game on stream with @Omiya-Games.

In Times Like These is a heavily randomized game of events similar to 60 Seconds! or parts of FTL. I have to admit that the events in and of themselves are not particularly interesting. In a game like this, the writing seems to be of paramount importance, and I think that the constant title-drops makes it difficult to take the game on it's own merits.

In addition, the events take away water and food so frequently that there is no reason to bank anything, and you should always consume any food or water you immediately. This is a disappointing design choice.

I would have like see a bigger variety of events, and some more focused writing.

miu 2019-10-22 22:53

@allbetsareoff Thanks for your review, I to be honest am quite ashamed of how that game actually is, I'm gonna learn more on randomisation and writing to make a full version way better than this, plus I've got some idea from what you said that I find quite interesting to exploit

elysiagriffin 2019-10-30 00:24

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494940957?t=3h34m19s

Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

miu 2019-11-03 15:52

@elysiagriffin thanks for playing it, I did got some nice feedback from it. See you soon :)