fukusplutus 2020-04-21 02:51
when
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Madagascar Simulator 2020
By echo-team
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1356 | 3.44 | 38 | |
| Fun | 1627 | 3.12 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 655 | 3.57 | 37 | |
| Theme | 537 | 3.98 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 2050 | 2.83 | 36 | |
| Audio | 1 | |||
| Humor | 816 | 3.19 | 35 | |
| Mood | 1799 | 3.03 | 33 |
when
A little bit topical, but way stressful, I knew I was done for when I looked up and said "it's only April!?"
@fukusplutus then
@mmason Haha, yeah... I only made it to April too. It got a lot harder when I increased the number of ports from my initial test amount. I tried to rebalance it but it was getting pretty near the end of the 3rd day.
Awesomely stressful game. I made it to 229 million.
oh come'on it's just a media hoax.. we still survive with a million dollars here :laughing:
~.PNG
@amazura The nation surives. President Madagascar doesn't :P He was in the capital.
Blimey, that was difficult! An interesting concept. Good job.
Interesting game. But it is pretty unclear what vessels are save and which not. First I was only letting in the grey/white boats because the others where red and I associate that with bad things. But then I suddenly got some corona cases. Maybe adding pictures of which boats are cargo ships to the instructions screen would have cleared things up. I like how you have to time the ships coming in and that they do not all stop on the same distance from the port, this gives them some character. Keep up the good work!
@lamasaurus When I originally made them I didn't realize they would be so small on the screen. Anyways, white boats bad (cruiseships full of sick people), red boats good (merchant vessels full of ~~money~~ goods).
Nice game, at first to boats were a bit confussing. And great name, Madagascar was so hard to infect in Pandemic :laughing:
Very relevant game in our time :)
Interesting management simulation about COVID-19 impacting island economy. I really missed some business funk soundtrack on this!
Nice Game. I think it gets a little boring after a while.
*Why can't the president stop the government from opening new ports around the island? Politics... That's why!*
Fetching real world data to model the island is impressive attention to detail. I would have just sloppily traced it from a map and plotted down infrastructure here and there.
The difficulty ramp up is very high. It is essentially impossible to keep tabs on more than ~10 ports effectively, so 40+ ports is way too much! For a simple challenge, such as this one, clarity is important and that is lost in the mass of ships and planes arriving from every single direction.
There are a few interactions you could have added to make the process more enjoyable: **1)** Economic obligations. The government has to pay a penalty for each denied shipment (Ports should only attract shipments if they are open) **2)** People need goods to survive. Block every port and people will starve and riot **3)** People like their rights. Limit the right to movement for too long and people will riot (The virus spreading around will scare people and make it easier lock things down, though.) **4)** Societal stability. Riots breed chaos, which will eventually get the president ousted
Those might sound like lofty system to simulate, but the can be faked with just a few numbers going up and down. Tweaking them might take a few moments, of course, and there aren't always enough moments left in a jam.
In all, good work getting the project finished on time, yet the design is too simple for a "simulator".
Very topical and made me realize why the theme was chosen in the end. I totally was not thinking of COVID-19 when I was voting personally. I would say it starts off a bit slow, I restarted multiple times thinking it hadn't started. The gameplay does become a bit tedious after a while though. It would be interesting to have a "SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING." button or Shutdown All Port and Shutdown All Airports. Definitely not that broken if you take in some ideas others have mentioned to balance out the access to such options.
Good work on your entry!
Thanks everyone! Got enough ratings for a score now too!
@huvaakoodia I have to admit the name was mostly chosen as a pun, since the year is involved. They're all good points, but as you said, not enough moments. I actually would have saved a lot of time by not using real-world data, but where is the fun in that XD
@youbestrong Interestingly, the game is so hard because due to time constraints, the progression is linear, and I didn't want the start to be too slow. After a night's sleep I realized the solution was much simpler, a simple start bonus will make early ports appear much faster. Ah well. I like the SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING button(s) idea, it is very topical to the meme reference, and shutting down most things is actually key in getting through 2020 ;)
Wow, I found it easy at the begining then all the airports opened, and I was lost between all the planes coming and lefting the country !!! Stressful ! Good game of "emergency state simulation" xD
Well, that escalated quickly.. maybe a bit too quickly. I think adding more ports is a good way to up the challenge but right now there is a bit too many ships/planes and it gets visually overwhelming fast. Less ships/planes with more spread would be fairer I think. Concept is neat and topical though!
A bit hard to swap between ports with a mouse and the start is maybe a bit too slow knowing the exponential diffuculty curve but fun game overall with a very funny theme.
Great idea for a game. Unfortunately, it gets too hard to soon. It's only hard to tell apart which boats and plains are good or which are bad if you're not paying attention to the start screen.
Really nice game! Very hard, but fits the theme perfectly!
Really fun! Started very easy, then ramped up really fast and I became overwhelmed. Probably need to tweek the difficulty curve, or maybe I just suck. Sound effects when passenger ships are coming in would have been really helpful too. But it's a game jam, so no time for everything, I know :) Good job!
Very fun
@mmason @sofy35 @rojola @alobker @amazura @stickle @peterbuo @dingotime @fukusplutus @polarfuchs @flying-dog-fish @mcjammydodger @lamasaurus @jojopalambas @pixel-error @undead-aubergine @huvaakoodia @youbestrong @silkworm-sweatshop I wish there was an @everyone, lol. Anyways, there's a post-jam version that has some of your comments applied to it. Check it out if you like! :)
I was *really* hoping for a sweet remix of the pandemic song to loop. Audio was missing for me. That would have really set the mood.
I like the idea, at some point it just overwhelms without any variation and that's something I'd want (maybe you can hire people who are risky but do the work for you, at a gamble)...
Good job.