FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Keep 'em Alive: Retro

Keep 'em Alive: Retro

By mobiledev

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5313.7931
Fun4993.6931
Innovation4303.7130
Theme3274.1031
Graphics2174.3632
Humor10083.0329
Mood11193.4430

Comments

sheinxy 2020-04-22 02:51

Charming retro style!

The game is great, although a bit confusing to me (but it's because I suck at strategy games x3)

Could use some audio!

The art style is wonderful though!

Well done!

New_Piskel.gif

manadream 2020-04-22 02:54

Bugs aside, I really like this game! The art is awesome, very cute and fun to watch the little people running around. Some chill music and sound effects would greatly add to the mood. I love these kind of sim games, I'd definitely buy this game when it's fully built out.

arity 2020-04-22 02:58

Cool game idea, wish it wasn't so buggy! I can't seem to get very far into it... I do hope you fix those! Specifically the guy running off screen for no reason, and I'd like to see visual feedback about whether I can place a building where my mouse cursor is! Good job, looking forward to seeing an update!

james-kusardi 2020-04-22 03:15

cute! honestly don't completely get all the mechanics, but the art is real stylish :)

gamescodedogs 2020-04-24 09:09

Like from a fan of Hidden Folks :)

animaster 2020-04-24 09:34

I liked the art style so i tried to understand all the mechanics and invest some time into it. And it's pretty fun to play! It's just need some more responsiveness in actions, and maybe possibility of task management. Like, you choose cop, send him to give oeders, and while he run you grab doctor and send him heal citizens. Either way, great job, really liked it!

elzach 2020-04-24 09:41

I can only echo the previous posters. The art-style is fantastic - although the readability of the icons could be improved (in terms of figuring out their respective function from just looking at them).

I think not starting the player with enough money to build a hospital and/or a police station is kinda holding the game back, because the gameloop is tied to those. Waiting around to generate money to be able to actually play the game isn't the best, because you're incentivised to save for those neccessary facilities you can't really engage with the game.

A bit of 8bit music would've been a great improvement aswell!

Made it to night 6, but couldn't change back to the builder, so there was no way to progress in a meaningful way. ^^

mobiledev 2020-04-24 09:52

@elzach Thank you so much for the feedback. I totally agree that the readability for the icons could be improved, and when I didn't have the screenshot showing the functionality of each button, people were completely lost. I wanted to try to make a game in this genre, but honestly I have no idea how to tweak it, so I understand now that not having enough money at the start is somewhat of a problem. I'll keep learning from this. Once again, thank you :)

kjscott 2020-04-24 10:38

At some point the controls for swapping characters got locked. I was stuck as a police officer (hadn't build a hospital yet) for about 2 in game days and wasn't able to swap out. I clicked on each of the tabs and pressed all the keys and nothing seemed to work. Eventually I double clicked on the police officer and it swapped me back to the neutral running around person then after that a single click on the police officer tab seemed to work fine.

despdair 2020-04-24 10:57

graphics are really cool. I think game could use a minimap and some tutorial episodes, I cannot understand what I should do. Also adding some overlay texts to buttons (like when I hover them there should be some text with name) can help player to understand what it does. Overall nice interpretation

elzach 2020-04-24 11:24

@mobiledev if you're open to experimentation and suggestions, I would tweak the game like this: * reduce the cost of houses * police-officers work automatically in a small radius (so you're incentivised to build more) * sick people should fill up hospitals to a capacity (similar to how they fill up factories and malls) * doctors should test people automatically in a small radius, instead of the player knowing who's sick immediately

The appeal of citybuilders and to some extend godgames is to see something grow and either nuture it or see how your actions are impacting it. Changes to cost would make it easier to grow and loop back to making it easier for the disease to spread. Instead of clicking on each individual sick person to heal them personally it would become more of a push and pull between growing and keeping the pandemic in check.

trexxak 2020-04-24 12:20

Oh wow, I really love this! The artstyle is so very nice and I love finally finding a city builder/ god simulator among the entries. Really glad you tipped your toes into this genre!

As for the gameplay, ye, there's a bit potential still open, but I could totally see the finished product blow up in the mobile market space (I guess that's your target platform from the orientation of the playscreen and... well your name :D ) Keep up the great work!

baturinsky 2020-04-24 14:41

Illness hits too early before you have means to fight it.

taddl 2020-04-24 18:26

Really nice artstyle, and a very cool concept.

gorypixels 2020-04-24 19:37

For some weird reason it won't start on my crappy PC, but the artstyle looks amazing! :D

echo-team 2020-04-24 20:29

Lost 10% health trying to get the game to fit on my screen XD Also they didn't seem to be very impressed by my policeman anymore the second time around. They just fornicated and bought toilet paper as usual.

Really slick art and I like the country border stuff. It's got animations and everything. Very polished. Much stars.

fizzyapple12 2020-04-24 21:02

I really like the art style and fun gameplay! Keep up the good work!

renrok 2020-04-26 16:29

Beautiful and unique artstyle! But definitely, as someone mentioned, could use some sound.

Gameplay felt a little convoluted. Good thing you wrote detailed instructions, because I wouldn't figure out what I have to do on my own :sweat_smile:

Also, didn't understand if a hospital and a police station building does anything on its own, other than give you access to doctor and policeman characters. Seems like you have to control your population disease and discipline by hand, and juggling 3 characters at a time is quite difficult. The fact that movement and action use are both controlled by LMB made it even harder. Maybe it would be better to assign movement to arrow keys/WASD?

Other than that, a very interesting game!

sharbelfs 2020-04-27 15:36

really nice game. It's a little complicated to understand at first, but the rules helped a lot. The only thing for me it that it's a little tricky what to choose between the cop to make more money or the hospital to have more people alive, usually by the time I get the hospital half of my population is already dead =P. And for the map, I didn't really see why not be just a flat map, that would make life a little easier, or maybe a grid like.

dennerbougo 2020-04-28 14:12

very good, I like games like that

emil0227 2020-05-04 20:20

Nice game design, I enjoy playing it !

gafled 2020-05-07 00:46

This game is amazing and really in depth. i like the idea of fighting a disease rather than being the disease.The game is very well polished and my only complaint is that some of the game systems were difficult to figure out. I wish there was a tutorial so I would know what I was doing.

frostbyte4k 2020-05-07 02:03

I found it hard to enjoy this game I think this is mostly due to the lack of feed back which probably also contributes to the confusion on how to play the game. Here's a talk which may help "Juice it or lose it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg. I quite like the art, animation, and over all astetic though.

hellequinne 2020-05-07 21:13

Great visual style; I love the polish that you put into the interface -- as well as the player's walk animation. Also, nice use of the theme.

Like other commenters, I had trouble playing (even after reading the instructions). If you ever do more work on the project, you might consider adding text labels on buttons, changing button art depending on if you can afford it (for buildings) or if it's toggled (police/construction), etc, etc. Of course, it's hard to add that kind of detail during a short game jam. Looks like you set out to do a challenging project; good on you for taking a stab at it.