arista 2021-04-27 17:42
Very interesting idea but I was a bit puzzled by how to play the game. Could you maybe explain a bit better the controls? I really want to play the game as it seems super fun!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Peak Oil
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.50 | 6 | ||
| Fun | 2.50 | 6 | ||
| Innovation | 3.50 | 6 | ||
| Theme | 4.25 | 6 | ||
| Graphics | 2.50 | 6 | ||
| Mood | 2.83 | 5 |
Very interesting idea but I was a bit puzzled by how to play the game. Could you maybe explain a bit better the controls? I really want to play the game as it seems super fun!
Hi @arista, thanks for the feedback. I just wrote some how-to on the description page, hope that helps.
Hi! Is there a working Linux download link? This one 404's...
Hi @adam-selker, we made one but it didn't seem to be working. You can try to build the game yourself tho, there are instruction in the source tarball on how to do it (you'll need a few deps).
Edit: I put up a small script to build/install everything in a tmp directory, the whole thing with all dependencies is less than 3Mb.
Pretty intense little simulation game, there's an impressive amount here for a jam. I didn't have the time to go for any really deep wells, but I did several shallow ones and some radar scanning and enjoyed it. It would have been handy to have a little more information available in the game, like specifically how deep each radar scan reaches and each rig (before placing it). It would also be amazing to have a record of all the scans and info you've discovered instead of trying to remember if I scanned between these two trees before, but of course you can only do so much.
I was also reminded of the saying that players will optimize the fun out of a game if you let them. This came up after I saw the price go above $4 early on and then refused to sell until it went there again, even when I was sitting there with $0 in the bank doing nothing. Not too sure what the fix would be for that particular case but overall I did enjoy watching the market and deciding when to sell.
Overall I would probably play the heck out of this as a fully-fledged game.
Hi @adam-selker, I've uploaded a linux build; let me know if it works for you.
https://pedantic.software/fxc/peakoil_linux64.tar.gz
Hi @bmacintosh, thanks for the feedback!
I've added the maximum depths in the game description.
Remembering the scan results is indeed challenging. We didn't have time to implement storing and retrieval of the results.
Linux build works great! Thank you!
There's an impressive amount here. I feel like, given time, I could really get to _understand_ this game, and milk the oil field for all it's worth.
Like @bmacintosh said, I ended up with no money / no pumps a few times, waiting for prices to spike. It would be nice to e.g. set a threshold above which to auto-sell, because a few times I missed spikes because I didn't move my mouse fast enough. Likewise, would be nice to auto-destroy pumps that fall below some efficiency threshold, like $3 per barrel. Spent a lot of time panning around and checking on my rigs.
More in-game info might be nice, but IMO the annotated screenshots are plenty of info, if I can be bothered to alt-tab over.
On a HiDPI screen (3200x1800), the GUI is really small, and even on a normal screen, the cursor is hard to see. It would be nice to have a big black-and-white cross or something, instead of red on green.
I don't 100% understand pressure and so on? It would be nice to have like a one-paragraph description of the relationship between pressure, depth, pump type, cost per second, and oil per second.
The radar and probe system is really cool. It would be nice for the info to linger, e.g. be displayed on the ground, rather than just have to remember it. It's neat, though, really illustrates the value of information.
In all, this feels like 1/3 game and 2/3 teacher of hard business lessons: opportunity cost, risks, timing, paying attention. Definitely worth playing, thank you.