A Town in Labor

3lstmsinatrenchcoat 2023-05-01 05:38

I wasn't able to click the tutorial link in LibreOffice Calc, but the main game itself seems to work (at least, entering the provided solutions gives the expected results). Unfortunately, I'm totally lost without the tutorial, and unclear on what I'm supposed to figure out as part of the puzzle vs. what I'm supposed to have learned from the tutorial.

EDIT: I figured out how to view the tutorial, and it turns out I'm still confused. Maybe if I wasn't tired from doing LD all weekend I could figure it out. The idea of a spreadsheet-based game is certainly something I've never seen before, though. I assume the puzzle is good when you're not sleep-deprived.

clemall 2023-05-01 13:28

Hey, your are the first entry that propose a game in.. excel :laughing: This is awesome! Your game is nice but quite challenging. Good job :thumbsup:

jajo 2023-05-01 14:49

It's great when you have no idea what you're doing in a game but are still having fun trying to figure it out. I love the medium choice, really great work all round.

perfectsquare 2023-05-01 15:16

This is so cool! I had so much fun trying to figure out the flight patterns and optimize my scores. You also did a great job picking the colour palette and adding the little bird visuals to set the mood (it looks WAYYY nicer than I was expecting when I read that it was an Excel game :sweat_smile:)

For anyone else who doesn't have Microsoft Excel, I was able to play by importing the file into Google Sheets. It's not perfect (some of the tutorial images were squished) but the gameplay works just fine and I'm so glad I didn't have to miss out on trying it!

floke 2023-05-01 23:08

I also played it in Google Sheets, thanks for that tip. I tried using OpenOffice Calc first - that does not work, the map stays blank.

This was probably the most challenging and definitely the most unique game I played so far. I only managed to beat the first level, the second already had my brain melt... Very cool idea!

elementary 2023-05-02 05:31

Besides the fact this reminded me more about work than playing a game, it's pretty interesting. It didn't really help that I ended up trying to formulate these as optimization problems for solver and actually ended up spending way more time on this than anything else for the evening, so good job in the fun category for me. Otherwise this was pretty unique for a game and the implementation was interesting to go through.

lisyarus 2023-05-02 08:50

Ah, every game jam must have an Excel game :) Took me a while to "launch" it, because I simply don't have any office-like software on my PC and I had to use Google Docs. The text in the tutorial was very hard to read (added a screenshot) even at 200% zoom, and the tutorial itself wasn't very clear. Eventually I figured out what to do, but didn't manage to solve the second level - it already felt incredibly complicated :( I've attached my best solution as a screenshot as well.

2023-05-02-113523_537x257_scrot.png 2023-05-02-114100_1207x532_scrot.png

evilgeniusdance 2023-05-03 08:36

Very interesting medium choice! As a puzzle its really good and also looks pretty

I also like this theme interpretation

b4ux1t3 2023-05-03 21:42

Ahahaahhahahahahahahaa. . . . . . . . .BDSM.

Great take on the theme, unique "engine", fun times.

japes 2023-05-04 18:13

Super interesting idea, I'm afraid I couldn't quite figure out a strategy though! But this was surprisingly polished and nicely presented for an excel game, and it seems like it could be an interesting brain teaser if I could wrap my head around it!

zefphyer 2023-05-07 15:27

A game in Excel! :O And without macros, no less. As someone who works with Excel a lot, nice job.

Fun puzzle game. I had to cheat on the second puzzle, because I didn't realize something about that one, but the rest I figured out with a bit of effort but pretty easily. The difficulty was mostly in how the houses propagated, especially for that last one where I was legit parsing through Excel formulas. The pixel-art-by-Excel-cells houses on the front page is neat.

My scores: 100%, (100%), 109%, 125%, and 106%.

chucks-feed-and-seed 2023-05-08 02:43

Very unique and cool. I think this type of game shines on levels about spatial reasoning where the flow can be visualized, like the west wind one. The final level is pretty tedious, since there's no real way to discern the path they'll take from a given cell - it's just trial and error, which I didn't find very fun. Trying to read the formulae in those cells to figure out what's being affected is also tedious due to the game grid not lining up with Excel's. However, the first four levels (the middle three, really) were a lot of fun and an interesting way to make a game. Well done!

sodoj 2023-05-08 17:57

Haha, this is super cool! I made a game in Paint and you made the one for Excel! Super impressive work and the game itself is really fun once you get into it. Great job dude!

jimbly 2023-05-10 23:18

Really cool making this in a spreadsheet. Not having access to Excel I tried loading this in Google Docs, and it _seems_ to be mostly working, but I cannot complete the tutorial. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if it's just imported poorly. From what I can figure out, the _only_ cell that can deliver to all requisite homes is F6, and there's no value of birds at F6 that actually meets the requirements... am I missing something, or is it bugged?

Screenshot 2023-05-10 161504.png

Link (just for @evogengames to use for debugging) to it on Google Docs [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11SNJUySyrVW8OyR0JI20cJvpmvmqOV-itGfNkc3eL7o/edit?usp=sharing).

(Edit: all other puzzles seemed completable, except I gave up on the last one, so maybe the Tutorial is just not completable?)

jimbly 2023-05-10 23:45

If anyone else wants a template of this imported into ***Google Sheets*** (with some minor layout fixes on the tutorial), start here, make a copy, have fun!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LTQg4dI2WK1CcnN8sDONyzPIYjxGXoYxpHx1VVYI_GE/edit?usp=sharing

evogengames 2023-05-11 07:38

Hi @jimbly,

Thank you very much for the ported build for Google Sheets! Indeed the tutorial is not completable, was mostly to explain the mechanics, I built the first level more of a beginner/introduction ;-)

Thanks a lot for trying out the game :-)

Kind regards

bentglasstube 2023-05-14 18:04

This was an interesting puzzle game. It's a little hard to understand what you are supposed to do because the spreadsheet just instantly updates values and at least I couldn't really understand how my birds were flying to deliver babies. I thought about looking at the formulas to cheat but that didn't seem in the spirit of the game. For some puzzles, I was basically able to just put birds in the target cells and get the numbers that way. For the last level, I had no idea what was going on. Anyway, pretty interesting game and what an unusual platform to use.

ditam 2023-05-15 14:39

Wow! Who knew that one of the most innovative games I find this jam is going to be about storks! (_I'll allow myself the dig at the birds because I too have made a stork game :-p_)

I had a lot of fun with this. The UX is surprisingly good for a spreadsheet, and the puzzles were interesting enough for 5 levels. Well, I didn't much like the final level called Chaos (I found it too, well, chaotic), so I tapped out there off by 1 delivery total. I did manage to beat the developer's score on Wavy West Wind though, here's my solution:

!> A5 5, C9 3, E2 5, F9 4, J3 3, Score 120%