stalemeat 2024-10-08 06:33
Cool management game. I like how the UI was set up. It made it easier to figure out what was going on. Looks like a lot of work went into this good job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Unlucky fried chicken
By daniel-c, Bananplyte, bjornstenlund, IsacB, NeverContent, Onabing, Meowcuz and emily-c
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 493 | 3.60 | 46 | |
| Fun | 524 | 3.43 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 242 | 3.67 | 46 | |
| Theme | 585 | 3.63 | 47 | |
| Graphics | 538 | 3.67 | 47 | |
| Audio | 339 | 3.52 | 46 | |
| Humor | 83 | 3.95 | 47 | |
| Mood | 622 | 3.43 | 46 |
Cool management game. I like how the UI was set up. It made it easier to figure out what was going on. Looks like a lot of work went into this good job!
@stalemeat Thank you so much for the praise! I spent way too much time on reinventing the concept of animation blueprints for a silly doom joke
Really cool game, I ended up at around 12k points when the wallhacking truck killed all my hens in on strike! Camera felt a bit slow, but other than that I enjoyed my time. Really funny sound effects xD
@supersayafynn So glad to hear you enjoyed the game! The drunk driving truck is for sure one of my favorite late additions, a shame to hear that you suffered from it - but a vigilant chicken farmer must always be ready for ghost trucks!
If I remember the points correctly that must be A-tier or B-tier? That is an amazing score! I think that's sort of where my own record ended up - and I played a LOT of times to reach that score!
Also thanks for the sound effect praise 😊 it's 90% my own mouth
Ah those damn lorry drivers! *shakes fist*
Fun throw-around-er! Had a bit of trouble understanding that I was throwing and not dragging. The economy was hard to keep up with, but you know, those are the times...
3D and 2D Art was on point as well; 3D especially - sound effects were fun too. Well done!
Haha, yeah we don't like where the world is headed one bit. :D
Thanks for the feedback!
@joror Are you implying that my 2D programmer-art isn't as good as the 3d art from actual artists??
Jokes aside thanks for playing! The game gets insanely hard in the end - the throw instead of drag actually got in the last day, so I think the tutorial might be off, sorry bout that
Thanks for the praise for sound! I will gladly let that go to my head!
See, I told you people wouldn't like the fling mechanic. >_<
@nevercontent People weren't ready for the microwave oven either. Me and Björn are the new Steve Jobs of the fling-like genre.
So quiet down, Wozniak.
I am really jealous how you created so many 3d assets. Would love to have that skill as well
Very good game. Liked it a lot.
For a moment I forgot I was playing a jam game. First of all, the gameplay loop is cool, I really got into it. Funny, really enjoable music.
@bastelbasti Thank you <3 We had two amazing artists in @isacb and @daniel-c that really made some magic happen - I'm also incredibly jealous of their ability. I made the farmer-head and grade screen. As you can tell my art-skills are much more mortal.
@vladmirps Thank you! That means alot!
@heiden-bzr Oh wow! Thank you so much for those lovely words! I had a lot of fun making the music, especially when everyone else was setting up everything!
I like the concept a lot ! Well done :thumbsup:
@noah-mazard Thank you!! 🐔
A fun game! My story: 1. I log into the game and am surprised by the detailed tutorial. 2. I see two chickens and a rooster. 3. Connecting! 4. Oh, eggs! We are selling! 5. Let's feed the chickens 6. The chickens are dead! I remember the tutorial. I'm trying to figure out where to sleep. I see that the farmer is sleeping in the cottage. 7. I buy eggs. The chickens have appeared, but where can they sleep? Back and forth, back and forth. Oh, they sleep in the same place as the farmer! 8. Where did my cock go?
In general, I really liked it. I would be glad to see the volume settings in the game next time. And also so that the rooster does not run away)
@pacelin @onabing will be over the moon to hear his tutorial being praised - truly one of those tasks that are sorely needed but not very fun to do!
Thank you for the lovely words - I was debating prioritizing putting the volumes in - but at the stage of making the options menu there were 150 sound assets that would need to be categorized into their separate BUS settings - and I didn't want to chance someone turning off my glorious music - so I instead wasted time on putting in way too many screen resolution options to make up for it.
@bananplyte Yes, sound settings sometimes go to the back burner when developing a game in a short time, but very often this underestimates the ratings for the soundtrack, so I advise you to prepare yourself a tool for working with sounds for future jams.
@pacelin You're of course right, the smart thing to do is to implement it as one of your first things and just build new sounds upon the cornerstone of already in-place foundations.
Congrats!!! so many assets, jesus! I love the idea, good game!!
@julesleech Thank you so much! The real assets were the friends we made along the way. And my sounds.
i dont really get it but funny farmer
@beadyeyes That's alright, that's clearly the most vital feature of the game anyway.
Haven't at first understood why i can't sell brown chicken. Later got it that it's for breeding, it's very crucial, since i sell for 100$ and one egg costs 100$.
Very interesting management game, one of the types i love to see on the jam. Well done!
@ryzhovalex Yes sorry the brown one is the rooster and the egg is mostly actually to get you unstuck if you mess up
Thank you for the lovely words - there's way too little management games in my opinion!
A reasonably coherent self-contained idea and a decent realization. The game lacks a bit of balance in terms of economy and it repeatedly tried to change the resolution of my monitor. One of the sample works that can be done in such a limited time. My gratitude
@komarebi Thank you for the lovely words - we were definitely up against the clock with this one and it's a very hard game in the end. Thanks for playing!
Hey there fellow flinglike game :smile:
I appreciate the overhead icons to remind you of needs that need to be fulfilled, although the imminent death makes it somewhat difficult to focus on other tasks sometimes. Maybe if there was less consequence for not meeting them, like a hen falling asleep for a while or not being fed enough to lay eggs? I dunno.
Otherwise it's a consistent system of flinging things into things, and pretty funny too, trying to get your chickens out of the way of incoming cars. Congrats on your entry!
@hexstart My fling-like sibling! I fully agree that the game becomes so dang hard in the end that there's barely any time to think about anything except "oh shit oh shit oh shit". Right now the "needs" of the chickens degrade faster and faster with the difficulty - which increases every 45 seconds - and honestly maybe the game becomes hard enough even without chickens dying unsupervised in 5 seconds just because you played for seven minutes, but we were up against the clock and didn't test enough!
Thank you for playing and the lovely feedback!
I liked the voice lines and also the doom reference lol, the presentation as a whole has a funny charm to it.
I think the managing mechanics are good but I don't seem to be very good at the game...I can't get a higher rank than C lol
One critique is I wish the chickens wouldn't run off screen because that happened a few times and I couldn't do anything about it. It would be nice if there was some kind of mechanic to maybe call chicken back to a spot on the map so it prevents that. other than that I found it quite enjoyable, good entry!
@tetracold Honestly I made the game and I can't get higher than a B, I think it's just a bit unbalanced. A C-tier is a great score and probably more like a B+ at worst.
When you say that they ran off-screen do you mean that they moved to a place where you couldn't reach them even if you moved the camera? I don't think we're too transparent with the fact that we have quite a lot of camera movement freedom. But if you did reach C-tier - it's also possible that the chickens just became so dang fast. Their speed scale with the difficulty quite a lot.
Thank you so much for the feedback and thank you for finally calling out my stupid doom-joke 👌 I put waaaay too much time into that piece of code.
@bananplyte
Oh wait you can move the camera around?? Now I feel stupid cuz I completely missed that LMAO
that does make things a lot easier thanks for telling me!
@tetracold That's certainly not your fault - we never mention it anywhere - the tutorial was made midway through and never updated because there was always other areas to work on!
I definitely believe you could achieve the B-Tier easily with that bit of info!
I really like the low poly art style on this. However, i feel like the chicken's meters fall far too quickly, especially with how tough it can be to actually bring them to the feeding station/coop. Either way, its an interesting little management sim, nice work!
@eerongal I agree with you about the chicken meters - it's actually tied to the timer - so after a few minutes it becomes almost impossible. I think the game would be way more awesome with a day of just polish and balance. Thank you for your kind words <3
the meme reference is *chef kiss* Immagine.png
@ziobob A c aint much but its an honest score!
Good job and thank you for the lovely words <3
The cover and title of this game immediately caught my attention! I imagined it would be an economic simulation game, and in fact, it matched my expectations very well.
For me, it took quite a bit of time to figure out how all the mechanics actually work. I watched the tutorial before playing the game, but when I actually started playing, I forgot most of it and had to keep pausing to check.
It also took me some time to figure out how to feed the farmers fried chicken, and where exactly the chickens eat and rest XD
I found that having three slider bars above each unit, and with all of them being quite thin, made it a bit visually tiring. Also, the icons only appear when you hover over them—was this design intentional? I feel like if the slider bars for the chickens didn’t show up all the time, they could be made larger.
When I sent a chicken to rest, its energy bar instantly filled up, but there was no visual feedback, so I kept thinking I hadn’t placed the chicken in the coop properly. I think more visual cues could be added when the chickens are resting or eating!
I also feel like this game would benefit more from a real-time, guided tutorial rather than text and images. Of course, I completely understand that making such a tutorial might not be realistic for a Game Jam entry.
I’m looking forward to seeing how you further improve this game! I think it has great potential!
I was reminded of Black and White, the god game from Lionhead while playing this. It was really hard to keep my chickens satisfied with both food and sleep, and I accidently tossed them off the map a few times, too. 😂 I like the concept, and if the chickens were a little more self-sufficient that would be nice - but would they really still be chickens if they could take care of themselves? 😉
Cool premise, but it felt a bit hard to control and understand what was going on. For the food, for example, the fact that there are wheat bags lying around and also a food area with a floating number felt confusing; at first I thought you fed the chickens with the bags, and that the number was some sort of countdown until I got more bags. Same idea with the fried chicken; it took messing with anything interactable and just dragging the buckets around until I figured out you feed the farmer by flinging the buckets at his house...
A little bit of polish, especially in the tutorial, would've done a lot, I think. For one, the tutorial images should be bigger and have some sort of consistent alignment, and should look like they do in game (many of them have blank green backgrounds, which doesn't give the context I need to find these objects while playing). I do appreciate all of the symbols you used to show when things are happening, but the fact that you need them is perhaps a testament to how unintuitive it can be at some points. It's easy to fling a chicken *close* to the coop or the rooster and be unsure whether it triggered or not.
@ember44 @serenewind @budaniel Thanks for the feedback!
The status of the chickens we talked about updating but never got around to do :( We manage to add the indicators above their heads before they died, which made it a lot better! But it could definitely use some love just in general telling the player what's going on
If we'd had more test before it was done (classic gam jam problems I guess) I really think I would have updated the collisions for the coop, feeding pen and farmer house. It doesn't make it easier to understand what to do when the collisions screws you up a bit :P
One thing I thought of in hindsight, which we probably could have manage to squeeze in, would be to ask the player to start the game by flinging some food into the feeding pen and some into the farmers house, and disable everything else until that has happen :D
@serenewind We definitely suffer from a bit of feature overscope - as you say - it is definitely a bit unclear your first round and the tutorial was made too early and didn't fully reflect everything. There is of course also a ton of different visual polish we needed to add. With one day more the game would've been great - ( but isn't that every game jam? )
@budaniel Yes, you're absolutely right. I loved B&W growing up, and it's probably no coincidence that the game reminds you of it. The main difficulty of the game is definitely that the chickens become almost impossible to keep alive after 5~ or so minutes, and we needed a balance pass - but thank you for the lovely words!
@ember44 I agree with everything you said - and it's something we also said in our internal post-mortem afterwards. It's the classic issue when you have an eager team that loves to add cool funny features up until the last second where you end up with a game that's great fun once you figure out what is even happening!
Thank you for the lovely review!
The art style is great, and the humor adds a fun touch! The fling mechanic is cool but took a bit to get used to. I missed having a browser version, but overall it was enjoyable. Any plans to expand or refine it? Gj!
@bjornstenlund @bananplyte It's great to hear you're already thinking about these things! I definitely like the idea of giving the player a little interactable tutorial where you force them to understand the core mechanics before putting them on a timer.
@nazariglez Thank you so much!! I think we're just looking forward to bringing the teachings into LD57 and call this one a nice little project that turned out pretty good with room for improvement next time - we had a great time, but I think the little project is done and I think it kind of goes against the game jam spirit to go back and change it retroactively after the bell has already rung imo, not that I think less of people who want to make their games into the best games they can be
@ember44 Haha yes I ageee! Next time for sure!
I like the overall concept, but as others have stated, the "fling" controls for a game like this are kind of a miss. Keeping track of my hens also felt a lot more pixel hunt-y than it should've; I think the gauges should be visible all the time, rather than just on mouseover.
@ryusui Thank you for the feedback!
We did dabble in having the gauges be visible at all times - but at a certain point it felt a bit overwhelming for the player. I think the best option would maybe be to have it be "toggle-able" in the options - but we simply ran out of time for those quality of life things.
Personally I really like the flinging - but it obviously transforms the game into a "flinging-game" more than an actual management game - so it might be a matter of preference. You might be right in that a bit of a makeover of the game balance and features would result in a better game - but there's just so many hours in three days and we definitely worked up until the last minute.
Very nice game and cool 3d assets. well done!
@zeias Thank you so much for your lovely review! That warms our cold chicken-frying hearts.
can everyone pls rate my game its fun check out
Great concept! Love a farmer that really likes fried chicken. I struggled a bit with the fling controls in the beginning but when I got it it made so much more sense. I did loose my chickens
This game is a fantastic entry for Ludum Dare! It showcases a perfect balance between gameplay mechanics and visual presentation. The core mechanics are intuitive and easy to grasp, but they still offer enough depth to keep players engaged throughout the experience. I really appreciate how the concept stands out as both unique and well-executed, especially considering the time constraints of the jam. The attention to detail is evident, from the smooth animations to the clever level design, which enhances the overall experience. It’s clear that a lot of passion and creativity went into this project, and it shows in every aspect of the game. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more from the developer in future competitions! :)
@rohun Thank you so much for that lovely feedback! I fully agree with the game only making a lot of sense once you've played it - and it's the fault of us not doing a proper enough tutorial I think - and don't feel bad about losing your chickens - it's 100% part of the game loop!
@byshla Thank you!! What lovely words! Wow! <3
Great job! I only got an F on my first try but the music was a hilarious surprise. I'm glad I got to play it, and I'm looking forward to future entries!
@dangitspang Thank you so much! If you enjoyed the rating system with the music you can feel free to play our previous entry "Rise of the Catmancer" from April which introduced the beloved feature that we also love internally in our little group :D
Thanks for the lovely feedback! Look forward to have you play our future games!!!
Very good, Unique sound effects!!
@literato-games Thank you!
Unique drawing,I like your idea so much!
@zhu-guangle Wow! Thank you :D