Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Downsteam
By smeljey, PixelKoko and MilkaGoat
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 663 | 3.50 | 38 | |
| Fun | 775 | 3.23 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 604 | 3.31 | 38 | |
| Theme | 531 | 3.95 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 441 | 3.91 | 38 | |
| Audio | 512 | 3.31 | 38 | |
| Humor | 908 | 2.51 | 33 | |
| Mood | 597 | 3.52 | 37 |
The game graphics look really good, music fits too. The UI could use some work to make it more clear like bigger more readable text, icons for items to not to have to read everything also adding opening/closing animations or other colors for low fuel or health. Overall a good game could use some more polish
I really like the controls and flow. Also great you managed to fit in a tutorial. Well done :D
Lots of content. Graphics are cute. Would be really cool to have an indicator for the sell tab wether Im going + or - in the current city. I got also ripped off multiple times in cities that had coal shortage and the buy/sell prices werent really adjusted. So for example I bought coal in Goldenhammer for 89 Gold, Stonegate had a shortage of coal. I assumed if travel there I can sell my coal for great amounts of money. However, I was able to sell my coal there for 80. I needed so sell it since I have wasted so much fuel that I need to refuel. Enjoyed it very much though but would need some rebalancing.!
cool idea. i liked the music but the record slowing effect got repetitive fairly quickly. the enemies showing up were a nice touch. the flavor text in the battle screen was great, the wolf one gave me a little chuckle. i would have like to be able to still click the towns thru the transparent stats area on the right. overall, well done
Cool jam!
I wanted to echo some of the other commentor's input. Like @manogugas I also found the UI to be hard to read in some parts. E.g. the White text with the road as a background. Or differentiating enabled vs disabled buttons. It was always possible to read stuff, just required effort which feels more jarring in a game like this where you're often reading and comparing text.
I also really like the visuals. The vehicle art is so charming and got me pretty invested it keeping it alive.
Like @rhewid I also felt I got unfair trades sometimes. The game was functioning perfectly and when I examined the buy and sell prices more closely I could have seen that some of the choices I made were silly. However, my expectation as a player when I saw "coal shortage", purchased as much could as I could and then arrive in the town to see they're only paying 50% of my cost ... that made me _feel_ cheated. I felt myself wanting to be heavily rewarded.
This game had some genuine replay-ability for me. Trying to optimize the route for maximum efficiency gain really tickles that itch in me. Well done on the graphics and gameplay. This was definitely one of the games that I have played for the longest so far. Infact, I might go back for some more. Cheers!
Realy fun game, would love to play it when it gets more polish becouse UI and menuing is somewhat annoying, nevertheless great job!
I see comments above have outlined some of what my thoughts also were about this game, but despite its flaws it's a quite good entry. good job
cool art and the atmosphere!
Thank you guys (@rradu @rhewid @sledzik @gerolmed @ashashza @manogugas @jimmybobb @theparticularpixel @polinachrr) for your feedback!
It was kinda hard to balance the economy system, and I guess, I'll rebalance it after some time. I also feel, that random events should change prices more drastically.
I understand your annoyance with the UI, there is too much information on the screen and it's not readable enough. Going to add some icons to the UI, change it a bit, and add more visual indicators of the player state (when the fuel is running out, how far you can go with the current amount of fuel, etc.) and how profitable the deals are in the cities.
Going to check your games soon! (if I didn't before)
@theparticularpixel Thanks for the feedback! I agree, the music there needs more variety, as well as more additional sounds, rebalancing and adjusting parameters need taken place. The programmer had to implement directly for me because I was running out of time; however, I hope to fix all of the issues, volume inconsistencies and create better variations shortly.
Fun game! It has already been said before but the slow down effect on the music got old real fast. The economic effect of the game really kept me playing for a while!
I like the idea and its impressively well developed. Maybe a bit too ambitious for a game jam? One thing that annoyed me though was that a city states iron surplus but the price there is still higher than in a different city where there is no surplus.
Nice game, getting richer and kinda "progressing" through unlocking (more like being able to finally afford) new materials was satisfying, although I wish there was an actual goal in the game. I had one major issue though - pressing ESC to close city view was also closing fullscreen mode in web html player, which is very irritating, as in native resolution, the text is small and hard to read. Having more neutral keybinding for browser game migh be a good idea.
The game is very well made. I loved the visuals, the music, and the mood.
It felt like I was overwhelmed by the wolves though :D
Really cool game! Nice art style. It is a bit hard to decide where to go without knowing prices at the start, once text with information about surplus or shortage are displayed it is fine, so maybe they should be there from the start? Anyway, good job with the game!
Hey, thank you all for your feedback!
@zimny11 Actually, you can open price panel for different cities by left clicking on them and pressing the "City" button
@lisek-gagatek Yeah, I always forget about choosing good hotkeys for browser, I'm really sorry about that :D
@retrific Some cities have higher/lower prices for certain resources from the start, and when shortage/surplus event happens it doesn't change the price much. I'll rebalance it later, to make events change the price more drastically.
How on Earth did I miss that!? Thanks :)
Cool game! Cute art. Great job. Good luck!
The idea is really creative. I dig the supply and demand idea. This might be one of the only games I've seen that has made some creative use of the theme. I just think the UI needs to be improved so its more obvious whats going on. Colors blend in with the background and sometimes, somethings just aren't obvious, like fuel.
The graphics reminded of the good times with the first consoles!
Cute pixel art! The music is quite charming too, but had a bit of an abrupt ending. The economy aspect seems pretty interesting too. Overall, very on theme!
Really great overall entry. Unfortunately, I suck at it and was unable to win. Seems like a game of attrition. As others have said, I think the balance could use some work.
This reminds me a bit of Escape Velocity, if you've ever played that. One thing it had was each planet had both a numerical value and "High" "Low" "Very High" etc next to the price. That saved you some bookkeeping – I think having to remember exactly how much I bought something for was a bit of a pain here. Similarly, I think selling at a discount makes the game extra hard, you should maybe just make them 1:1 so people have fewer numbers to remember.
I finally figured out how to make a profit but just cheesing it between two towns, did that for awhile so I could finally afford some upgrades, then I forgot to refuel once and lost. :-( I think that's it for me.
Nice game! Cute pixel art and nice music!
@eli-delventhal Wow, the idea about textual representation of the amount of resources is great! I haven't thought about it in that way before. Unfortunately I haven't ever played Escape Velocity, but I'm gonna check it. Thank you for this advice!
This is really fun and the graphics and sound are great! I am… not good at it lol. I keep getting stuck in places where there are only a couple viable neighboring cities but none of them will buy resources from me at a profit. I guess that's part of the strategy!
I think the thing that would most improve this work making the UI easier to navigate. For example, would easier to open a city by just clicking on it, rather than clicking on it and then clicking the button in the bottom right (I don't think anything else uses the left click?). A way to snap the camera back to your vehicle would be nice, too — there were a bunch of times that I'd move around and then have trouble finding where I was. This game practically cries out for a minimap haha.
All in all great job! Really solid game.
@jakelazaroff Yes, UI needs some work. Also, you can move camera back to the vehicle using "Space" button. It is not smooth and should be improved, but at least it works.
@smeljey Whoops, missed that in the description! Good stuff :)
Interesting game! Nice music and really cute pixel art - thumbs up!
Really sweet pixel art, I do like the concept but I felt like I 'solved' the game just by going between two cities. Maybe I just got lucky with prices? I did see that economy rebalance is on your radar though, which is sick! With some tweaks this game will be even more awesome! I do have one question though, is the time-keeping just for flair? Or does it have some gameplay impacts as well? Either way, it might be a nice little detail to have a UI icon for the current season, just to up some cartoony feel :smile: great work!!
@terquey Thank you for the feedback! Enemies grow stronger and some events are unlocked with the time. But the seasons itself doesn't do anything for now :)