cloverfall 2026-04-20 14:47
Nice game, and had a cool depth to it. Really liked the UI, nice job
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → The Union
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 190 | 3.90 | 22 | |
| Fun | 512 | 3.26 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 255 | 3.65 | 22 | |
| Theme | 421 | 3.75 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 358 | 3.86 | 21 | |
| Audio | 430 | 3.25 | 22 | |
| Humor | 429 | 2.75 | 20 | |
| Mood | 365 | 3.72 | 22 |
Nice game, and had a cool depth to it. Really liked the UI, nice job
Nice work, and interesting idea, it's really fun
Very cool visual design. I appreciate the mechanical focus by making this a largely text-focused game. I think an in-game tutorial level would help make this more accessible, as it stands there's just a lot of text to read to understand what's going on.
Wow, this is some seriously high-quality UI and polishing. Incredibly cool work in just three days! But there are so many mechanics, the tutorial is overwhelming, and it's scary to even start playing. Anyway, great work! Your game has definitely piqued my interest enough to continue playing. I also send a like for political hints ;)
This looks very cool but there seems to be a lot of complexity inherent in the idea and all of it is front-loaded, so I was mostly just clicking around at random...
@cloverfall Thank you! I used the vanilla web stack for this, so it wasn't hard to get a decent looking UI pretty quickly.
@arada Thank you!
@pastmoments That's solid. I was worried about that and tried to put together an explainer tutorial, but it was just more text
@greenradiation Absolutely fair. It is kind of a lot. It's a tough balance with this genre. If you go too deep, it alienates people, but if you go too shallow then it gets really obvious you're just moving numbers on a spreadsheet. It's probably why this kind of game isn't super common in a short jam.
@squimmy I feel that completely. It's a lot to jump into and hard to tell where to start. I can also tell you right now it isn't balanced at all. I did a few tweaks in the last build for the really obvious stuff, but it's a real challenge to execute something like this in the time.
Impressively executed considering the scope you set for yourself! I loved the theming/vibe of it, UI was really nice. The UX of how actions and commands are set up and managing your roster as it gets larger is a little tricky but that's some pretty nit picky critique. Well done! You should be proud of this.
Really cool and a lot of depth - but man is there a lot going on managing all those cities at once! I got overwhelmed pretty quickly, but tried my best. Still though, really awesome game, you did a great job!
Absolutely awesome. Very solid mechanics, figuring out hore everything works is super fun!
Level of polish is absolutely crazy. And there is even narrative bits on the radio??? And a tutorial??
Would defenitely play some more in my free time.
Top notch banger entry!!!
@csuth17 Thank you so much! Honestly, I thought about taking each region down to 3 cities, and maybe even consolidating some of the regions. Because the implementation complexity was such that adding more regions and cities didn't complicate development, I kinda overdid it.
@drainkid Thank you! Yeah, it does get to be a lot. I noticed that in playtesting, but I was against the wire and didn't want to cut so much that I broke something. I think after rating is over, I'm going to simplify the map a bit.
@dogshroom I've been a web dev for years and a friend has recently gotten me on board with using the web stack. We both focus primarily on narrative games, so most engines are overkill, and the ones built for IF often get in the way. Web is just crazy good for 2d narrative and strategy games.
There was a point after I'd implemented most of the core systems that I realized this game would be incomprehensible if I didn't explain some of it. I hate that it basically had to be an info dump, and it probably means I was doing too much if the systems weren't self-explanatory. But it was a lot of fun to build.
this game was really great. however i couldn't beat it because the enemy had taken over the last whole region, and any saboteurs were all removed every turn no matter what i tried. besides that end-game edge case, what a fun game. and awesome use of the theme! Everything was so involved and detailed, great music, sound, style and theme. i really liked it!
the game is quite interesting, but the tutorial contains too much text, and at first I wanted to close the game, but overall, the game is cool and exciting
on the subject of rules, I think you could reword the tutorial somewhat to make it feel like less of an info dump, even if it still ultimately is one. if you take a look at the rulebook for pretty much any board game or card game, you'll notice that "the objective of the game" is usually one of the earlier paragraphs, because it gives you a thing to keep in mind to tie everything together.
as an example, the closest board/card game next to me is Rook, so I opened it up and the rulebook *starts with* "the objective of the game is to be the first to reach 300 points". so now while I read the rest of the book any time it mentions points I know those are important and why they are important, it gives me a lens through which to read the rest of the rules that clarifies what sort of game this is.
in your game I noticed that it took quite some time to get around to explaining what the objective was. after a few text boxes I started feeling unfocused because I didn't yet know what all these actions I could take had to do with the objective of the game. since this game is effectively a board game, it might help to open up some board games you have nearby and take a look at how their rules are structured.
Like several other folks, I fell off the tutorial, just started going for it and trying stuff and let me tell you, the really good theming and how the story is presented carries The Union.
I like the 2 ongoing stories, the immediate story of you and your crew swaying cities, dodging surveillance and undermining P2042 and influencing folks to join your cause. There's an appreciable number of systems in place that made me cautious about keeping my crew safe and taking back the US. Both are not always possible, so I tend to favor keeping recruits so we can recover more of the country elsewhere and influence our way back in when we can.
Then there's the global story over the radio, reading about this world genuinely made me feel for the humanity around me. From ads for the absurd products in these hard times to a point where P2042 took California (insert the Propellerheads track here) and Silicon Valley folded like a lawn chair in a tornado. There's a good sense of humor in the writing, too.
tl;dr edition: I felt really invested in my crew and the world we occupy.
It takes a lot to get me to read what's going on in a game and The Union really did it for me. Maybe its the direction of current events or maybe its that I like me a good conspiracy story. Either way, really ambitious undertaking in a jam time frame.
This is an amazing entry. I'm astounded that one person created this in the time allotted. The writing was well done, the operative names were funny, the UI and map were clean and polished, and everything felt very complete. I'm blown away at the depth. Saving this one to revisit after the jam.
My only two complaints: the music got a bit repetitive. I think a slower or less busy track might have fit better. The UI was good, but I kept finding myself trying to click an operative order like Travel or Build and then select the city on the map. I wish there was some function to use instead of the list or targets. Small gripe on an otherwise completely impressive entry.