Colony Planner by spirulence

[raw]
made by spirulence for LD31 (JAM)
You are the central planer of Haven's Farm, a struggling space colony on the edge of the Crown's territory. You decide what plans and strategies the colony will employ to improve its position. But beware the dangers of industrialization!

Note that you can bookmark the page to save your progress.

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Art by Molly
Art by Cheshir
Audio, Programming, Design by spirulence

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TUTORIAL

Colony Planner is a card-based economy game. You have two main things that you do: play cards, and buy cards.

TL;DR
Level 1: Play credits, buy stuff that gets you labor and food, and then buy and play the Farmer's Market cards.

PLAYING CARDS

Playing cards is simple: you click on a green-bordered card in your hand to play it. If a card in your hand has gray borders, you don't have enough resources to play that card right now, and you must wait until later in your turn or for a later turn.

You can tell which resources a card needs and which resources it produces by looking at the description underneath the picture. A minus (-) in front of the number means that number of that resource is required and consumed when that card is played.

Sometimes, a card can only be played if another explicitly named kind of card has already been played this turn. Cards that have requirements like this will say "must have _______ in play".

BUYING CARDS

Buying cards is also simple: click on any green-bordered card in the Buy area. Cards here are organized into a few categories. Click on a category in the upper left to view cards in that category.

Just like playing cards, buying cards takes resources. Luckily, the only kind of resource used to buy cards is credits, which you gain by playing 1 Credit cards and a few other cards. The credit cost for a card is listed only in the Buy area underneath --cost-- for each card.

Also, some cards in the second level require that you've bought another card before. These cards say "must have purchased ( _____ )".

MUSIC AND SOUND

Music is disabled by default. It can be enabled by clicking on "Play Music" in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It can be disabled by clicking again.

Sound is enabled by default. It can be toggled by clicking "Toggle Sounds" in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

"Need Help?" plays an annoying, less detailed version of the information presented here.

Ratings

Coolness 26% 2075
Overall(Jam) 3.20 514
Audio(Jam) 3.74 93
Fun(Jam) 3.05 496
Graphics(Jam) 3.37 456
Humor(Jam) 3.53 117
Innovation(Jam) 3.10 459
Mood(Jam) 3.50 199
Theme(Jam) 3.16 807

Feedback

BlueTheLemon
09. Dec 2014 · 17:03 UTC
Congratulation for finishing this Game ! \o/

I Was cought off guard by the awesome introduction ! It was really great ! A good way to put the player in the mood !
My main concern was the objectives ! I didn't really understood what to do. I mean, there is a clear objective at one point but i had no idea of how to reach it.
Plus, the way you use money to buy things is weird. I was tempted to click on what i wanted to buy. But minor concern.
I like the ton of your game, and the humor !
My Advice for next time : Give the payer more ways to project itself in the futur
floorman
10. Dec 2014 · 19:54 UTC
I want to play this game, but I don't know how...

Looks interesting though. =)
Nitrodeus
10. Dec 2014 · 19:56 UTC
Wow nice game !
Really liked the funny audio comments and the graphics, although it's true at first it's not very clear what to do. A quick tutorial after the intro would be perfect :)
Bloxri
10. Dec 2014 · 20:03 UTC
I actually really loved this game. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on, but once I did, I had a lot of fun. And even before I did, when motivated me to stick with it and figure it out was the captivating audio narrative. Very well done, I wish you best of luck!
ruerob
10. Dec 2014 · 20:13 UTC
I really like your game, but a manual or a tutorial would really help to understand what i have to do. The sounds the pictures and the story are great and it really looks like i could have a lot of fun with your game.
KilledByAPixel
10. Dec 2014 · 20:23 UTC
I like the intro and voice overs. Overall it seemed put together really solid. As a player though I didn't really understand what to do. There should be some way to lose, if I keep clicking next turn it just seems to keep going.
🎤 spirulence
11. Dec 2014 · 23:30 UTC
I've added some instructions to this page.

Thank you for the kind comments, everyone. If I could go back and add a visual tutorial to the game, I would. I expect I'll do this in the post-ld version.
Xanjos
18. Dec 2014 · 02:08 UTC
I want to give this a try but the web page says that no application appears to be running :/
SumGato
19. Dec 2014 · 17:22 UTC
Cloud9 can't get you to your requested workspace. Here are some suggestions on how to figure out what's going on:

Check that the workspace name (ludum-dare-31) and username (spirulence) are typed correctly.
Check that the server is successfully running on Cloud9:
If the server hit an error, the output window will have a message telling you what it is
If you're in the middle of debugging code, your server might be paused right now
The server might be running on a different port; make sure it's on port $PORT with $IP as the IP address
🎤 spirulence
23. Dec 2014 · 11:29 UTC
Sorry guys, I'm on the free Cloud9 plan, and the workspace turns off after a week. I've restarted it.
01rafael
29. Dec 2014 · 05:40 UTC
link was broke