Terraform Junction VS by Jwatt
Alright buddies here's some hot local multiplayer territory control action. Your primary weapon is controlling the flow of resources in a shared arena. Get the most suitable swag for yourself while poisoning the opponent's income flow.
More precise gameplay instructions on the game page.
NEW! Further development is GO: the post-jam build contains a practice mode and usability improvements, with more to come.
More precise gameplay instructions on the game page.
NEW! Further development is GO: the post-jam build contains a practice mode and usability improvements, with more to come.
Ratings
| Coolness | 58% | 3 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.31 | 447 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.21 | 312 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.06 | 514 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 3.58 | 369 |
| Humor(Jam) | 1.87 | 902 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.78 | 112 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.03 | 538 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.14 | 671 |
Also to reword what's said in the description, resources will always go straight forward when they can. If they can't and have to make a decision, they'll turn counterclockwise. Factor in collisions and dead ends fizzing them out. Reading paths quickly is the core skill that can be practiced in this game.
I figured a tutorial would defeat the point too. I'm giving the players a system, and it's up to them to find out what configurations are beneficial. I don't want to explicitly point out and create a bias toward certain strategies.
So the next best thing I could try was to make the system transparent - resources move around slowly enough, buildings have hopefully helpful descriptions, any text on screen updates in real time, etc.
It was not very clear to us how the game worked though. As others pointed out, coloured buildings and more clear feedback on how money is gained/lost would be helpful.
Another improvement is that when a resource gives the floating -20/+20 text, that text is the color of that resource - a simple thing that underlines at a glance what sort of income was useful and what wasn't. (Maybe score updates should somehow flash the total score too..?)
The next thing I noticed is that all floating text should have a 1px outline for clarity.
Maybe the post-jam version could have some sort of practice/infinity mode too, with like arrows showing where the resource wants to go. I don't know, wouldn't want to overcomplicate things or cause feature creep.
If I were to criticize anything it was mostly that I had hard time to separate the work of player 1 and 2 because of the colors. Other thing which I noticed were that controls were a bit difficult to grasp as I kept making circles with my own money! :)
Remember that everything, including your opponent's buildings and roads, is an asset. That's why it's possible to recover even from seemingly insurmountable cash differences. Playing this somehow "optimally" (well, at least without rushing through), Player 1 and Player 2 both usually have managed around $5000 in the end.
For some reason (maybe RNGsus hates me?) on the first playthrough I didn't get any power-plants - worked fine on later attempts, though.
Okay the dream is of course some kinda massive evolving simulation with learning AI and all that, but during game jams, I like to take one really specific aspect as the central theme and bring it to some sort of interesting conclusion. Like how logistics are the entire interface in this one.
Isn't it great how when you leave negative, nonconstructive feedback on someone's entry they can come over to your entry and leave equally negative, nonconstructive feedback?
At least I can write dirty words with the roads.
I don't care if this kind of poop-flinging happens to my game, but it's unfortunate if "revenge voting" is a thing that actually takes place on a larger scale here.
You shouldn't assume things, you know. It's bad form.