iguanana 2022-04-03 23:41
This is awesome for a first jam! It took me a little bit to get a hang of what I was supposed to do, but it is a really neat idea. I also love the Papers Please vibe I got, especially from the music. Great job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Casually Comitting Tax Evasion
By frizuo
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 462 | 3.17 | 33 | |
| Fun | 577 | 2.56 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 119 | 3.75 | 32 | |
| Theme | 290 | 3.67 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 301 | 3.46 | 31 | |
| Audio | 215 | 3.42 | 30 | |
| Humor | 53 | 3.88 | 19 | |
| Mood | 389 | 3.06 | 31 |
This is awesome for a first jam! It took me a little bit to get a hang of what I was supposed to do, but it is a really neat idea. I also love the Papers Please vibe I got, especially from the music. Great job!
Well done for a first jam!
Love your take on the theme with the whole "death and taxes" thing. I struggled a bit on the later levels, mostly due to my natural instinct to tab between text boxes when I'm typing fast which PAUSES THE GAME (diabolical), and the overlaying UI elements and my ensuing confusion was inevitable defeat. Once I got a better feel for the controls I was able to finish all five levels, and had a good time doing it. Solid execution and a fun game!
@bucketh3ad heh you're totally right with the whole tab pausing thing, I just couldn't figure out what other ket to put it on because Escape minimizes the game;-;. Thanks a lot for playing!
ow. the how to play the game text hurt my eyes a bit lol - I never found out to play but I really dig the rest of what you did. Good stuff! Also funny concept.
@lucas-guimaraes haha yea, I didn't have time to make a proper tutorial because I had irl stuff to do, thanks for your feedback!
I like the aesthetic of the game, and the audio is really well done!
I had a really hard time figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. It felt weird that my papers kept sliding across my desk like it was ice, and the papers being in the foreground of the tutorial text really made it hard to learn the mechanics.
Once I realized there was a second game screen I was supposed to be looking at, I made some progress, but I still struggled with understanding the quota for a bit.
Cool game!
Original idea for sure! background text was bit cutoff, or was that intentional?
@mgear Ah yeah that was a mistake on my part, I messed up my ui so all the text gets slightly misplaced if you're not in fullscreen 1920x1080, thanks for your comment!
@badcop Thanks a lot for playing! Yeah the tutorial text was more of a last minute replacement for a tutorial which I didn't have time to make to to irl stuff I had to do.
This looks good and I like the artwork but I really can't figure out how to play. It took me a while to find the income screen but I'm not sure what to do. Tried a number of times but keep getting it wrong.
@taffaz Firstly, thanks for playing! Yeah I completely understand, I'll just leave this here in case anybody else is confused about what to do.
Here is the general strategy: Subtract from either your sales or business expense until your taxable income turns green, after that add the values you subtracted back into the personal expenses value. Type the taxable income into the income section of the green tax slip and the total of donations+personal expense into the writeoff section. The property tax slip just needs you to write down what's on the computer screen.
I meant for this to imitate how frustrating it is to do taxes in real life, guess I was a bit too accurate :p
Nice take on the theme! Unfortunately I couldn't get past level three as I'm too slow. As has already been mentioned, the help text could have been clearer - it's also difficult if you have to read things multiple times because you have to move the papers about to see the bit you're trying to understand. Another nice-to-have would have been transitioning between the levels when you've completed them, but I understand that time constraints make small things like that hard to get in. A very charming game that's reminiscent of *Papers Please*.
@frizuo Thanks for that, managed to figure it out now you've gave that description.
@taffaz Glad to hear!
@dan-livings All valid comments, there are definitely some things that I couldn't manage to implement because of time. Thanks a lot for playing!
Can't figure out how to play, maybe it is because I am an accountant irl haha. Like the idea though.
@papaya Thanks for playing! Yeah I was tryin to use what I remember from principles of accounts except I'm watering it down by a looooooooot. Anyways, here's the general strat, maybe it might help you have a better time :)
Here is the general strategy: Subtract from either your sales or business expense until your taxable income turns green, after that add the values you subtracted back into the personal expenses value. Type the taxable income into the income section of the green tax slip and the total of donations+personal expense into the writeoff section. The property tax slip just needs you to write down what’s on the computer screen. Couldn’t make a proper tutorial because of irl stuff :p
Try following this while in the tutorial because you will have unlimited time!
Well done! I've not played Papers Please yet, but I have screwed up my taxes...so yeeting some numbers onto forms and hoping for the best is my wheelhouse. Like mentioned previously, it could use some difficulty tuning...but I like the atmosphere you created and it's a very fun take on the theme. Super charming!
Like others, I just couldn't figure it out. But, I cant figure out REAL taxes either, so.... Good job! Very realistic!
I really liked the graphics and the music was really nice too! The idea was really innovative, I've not seen a game like this before! I also liked how the lots of different control options for centring things and using the papers. An interactive tutorial might have helped, but it is a game jam, so I totally understand time constraints for that! Overall, I really like the graphics and idea!
Nice game with original idea. I really like the graphics.
Honestly, I had no idea what I was supposed to do in the game, event after reading through the tutorial text multiple times. Here's why: - First of all, if you have long texts, don't give them a pixel art font. It is really hard to read and makes understanding it harder - It was really hard to understand what you meant with the text since you had a lot of game specific words in it. Color coding things could have helped, as well as making sure that things are named the same in tutorial text and game itself (Never found where the grand total I was supposed to be under was)
It seemed like a cool idea, but I unfortunately didn't understand anything about it (was able to submit property tax without getting arrested)
I never knew doing my taxes could be so fun. Kinda reminds me of the game Papers Please. Very nice game!
Can't believe this is your first one tbh. Really well done, the game is complete and it has a direction, it sticks with its theme, and it has an art style and everything!
I will say that it was extremely confusing to figure out what to do at first - the tutorial being a fat wall of text on the background made for a not-so-fun experience at the beginning.
But once I figured everything out I had a great time playing!
@bangthewall Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I definitely didn't do well in terms of getting info across to the player, there was supposed to be an interactive tutorial but time wasnt on my side.
For a first Game Jam, this is impressive. Love the ambience: graphics & audio. "How to play" was a bit hard to understand. Mainly because I didn't read there is a secondary screen ("Income view"). In addition to color-coding shortcut (as said by @bangthewall), you could maybe add a screenshot of "Income view" on this webpage.
@draconic-rabbit Will do, thanks for the feedback!
Interesting idea, but was sort of hard to play. Most people will struggle to read walls of text, but it looks cool. Keep up the good work. Well done on your first Game Jam!
Great job, especially on your first game jam! The game is fun to try out, and I like that it is a bit confusing as really life taxes are :) Cool music and nice, coherent art style too.
Really liked the idea of this! It's a great first game jam game for sure. It was a bit confusing to get going at first but I enjoyed it once I got going on it.
One critique was, there was a lot of text I was supposed to read in game but it wasn't the easiest font to read, while also you had other game objects covering the text.
Congratulations on your first game jam. It's quite a challenge to make a first game with limited time and handing in something complete with music and everything. Great job!
The graphics were nice and reminded me of games of my childhood. I think the whole game including the premise felt very C64-ish, games like Oil Imperium come to mind. The music was interesting, it sounded a bit like a nod to The Godfather theme, was this intended?
I can't say all that much about the gameplay because to be honest, I found it a bit hard to grasp, but I would like to comment a little bit about accessibility.
The more complex a game's mechanics are, the more important it is to deliver an accessible explanation of those mechanics to ease the player into the game.
In this case, the introduction is done via a "wall of text", which can cause players to lose interest because they want to play instead of reading a manual, especially in a game jam.
For a game with complex rules, this can generally be achieved by different means:
* Introducing different parts of the game level by level * A tutorial (interactive manual) * An infographic that visually explains what to do and how to do it.
The third option is most suited for a game jam since it only requires a single image that is mostly made up of sprites you already have. The other two take more time to set up. And if you present the player with text, make sure to deliver is in digestible chunks.
When it comes to keyboard input, it is often advisable to pick keys that are next to each other. I think you used q, t and p for centering the corresponding letters, which is a good mnemonic, but players who want to use this feature more often would struggle accessing the keys fast because they are quite a bit spaced out.
Sometimes the simpler mechanic is the better one even though I imagine it is tempting to play around with all the features a game engine has to offer (and I fall into this trap quite often). So maybe instead of using "floaty" letters that run the danger of drifting off screen, it would have been a better choice to use normal objects that stay in place, which could have made the three centering keys obsolete which would have simplified the game's control scheme and helped the player focus more on the actual mechanics of how to avoid taxes.
Overall I think you realized a fresh concept and created something new. That in and of itself is very impressive, especially for a first entry. My criticism is mostly about the tools of the trade: What mechanics can I use to realize my idea in a way that makes the game fun to interact with? How can I make the player understand the game in an enjoyable manner? These things grow over time with each game you make. What is more important is to come up with clever ideas to create games that stand out among the crowd and I think you are on the right track there.
Nice one, keep up the great work!
@cerno-b Thanks for playing and thank you so much for the informative comment!