Black Market Empire by Neil
Black Market Empire is a game where you need to manage your various suppliers and contacts over the globe to ensure that shipments of drugs, organs and weapons are delivered to the right locations on time!
Luckily there is software developed that will help you accomplish this goal. Log in to the secure network*, manage your contacts, contracts and make as many bitcoin as you can. If you are broke, you lose the game.
* The "log in" is just a fun way to get the player's name and help create the illusion that you are connecting to a secret secure network!
The game is played over four phases.
Upkeep:
In this phase you will collect resources from your contacts and pay them. You can also fire contacts and fulfill contracts in this phase.
New contact:
Pick a new contact. Each contact will procure a certain amount of drugs, organs and/or weapons for you. They will charge a weekly rate for this service. Each contact is active in a specific continent (Africa, Asia, Europe, USA or South America). To view a contact's details click on their contact icon on the map. This will also give you access to the fire button. Some restrictions apply. You can have a maximum of 10 contacts, and a maximum of 5 per continent.
New Contract:
Contracts are for a specific resource, within a specific time frame. If a contract is fulfilled, the amount of resources will be deducted from your stockpiles, and you will be rewarded in bitcoins. If a contract is not fulfilled in time, the amount of resources that was due will be subtracted from your bitcoins.
Fulfill Contracts:
During this turn you can fulfill contracts and fire contacts. You can view contracts by opening the contract panel on the left of the screen. You can fulfill contracts early by clicking on checkmark next to the contract.
Example:
10 Organs in 5 weeks, BC90.
You will receive BC90 if you deliver 10 organs in 5 weeks or sooner. If you do not deliver, 10 BC will be deducted from you and the contract removed. No other resources will be deducted.
If you reach 0 BC at any stage, the game is over!
Development:
It was quite a learning experience designing this game! It was our first time using the new UI tools from Unity 4.6. Very nice and very powerful, but a bit more practice would have helped a lot. We also lost several hours due to rolling blackouts, a year end function and a slightly demanding 6 month old! It is not really balanced, and we cut a lot of features, but I think there is something interesting here :)
Hope you have fun!
PS. I have no idea if the Linux version will work. Please let me know if it doesn't!
Luckily there is software developed that will help you accomplish this goal. Log in to the secure network*, manage your contacts, contracts and make as many bitcoin as you can. If you are broke, you lose the game.
* The "log in" is just a fun way to get the player's name and help create the illusion that you are connecting to a secret secure network!
The game is played over four phases.
Upkeep:
In this phase you will collect resources from your contacts and pay them. You can also fire contacts and fulfill contracts in this phase.
New contact:
Pick a new contact. Each contact will procure a certain amount of drugs, organs and/or weapons for you. They will charge a weekly rate for this service. Each contact is active in a specific continent (Africa, Asia, Europe, USA or South America). To view a contact's details click on their contact icon on the map. This will also give you access to the fire button. Some restrictions apply. You can have a maximum of 10 contacts, and a maximum of 5 per continent.
New Contract:
Contracts are for a specific resource, within a specific time frame. If a contract is fulfilled, the amount of resources will be deducted from your stockpiles, and you will be rewarded in bitcoins. If a contract is not fulfilled in time, the amount of resources that was due will be subtracted from your bitcoins.
Fulfill Contracts:
During this turn you can fulfill contracts and fire contacts. You can view contracts by opening the contract panel on the left of the screen. You can fulfill contracts early by clicking on checkmark next to the contract.
Example:
10 Organs in 5 weeks, BC90.
You will receive BC90 if you deliver 10 organs in 5 weeks or sooner. If you do not deliver, 10 BC will be deducted from you and the contract removed. No other resources will be deducted.
If you reach 0 BC at any stage, the game is over!
Development:
It was quite a learning experience designing this game! It was our first time using the new UI tools from Unity 4.6. Very nice and very powerful, but a bit more practice would have helped a lot. We also lost several hours due to rolling blackouts, a year end function and a slightly demanding 6 month old! It is not really balanced, and we cut a lot of features, but I think there is something interesting here :)
Hope you have fun!
PS. I have no idea if the Linux version will work. Please let me know if it doesn't!
Ratings
| Coolness | 52% | 3 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.23 | 485 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.80 | 693 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.73 | 746 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.35 | 623 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.30 | 333 |
| Mood(Jam) | 2.63 | 786 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.47 | 583 |
-The connection screen is kindof a second screen even though it is pretty much unimportant in the game.
Now more detailled feedback:
- I wish I could only satisfy contracts on areas I have a contact, because right now, the location of contracts is meaningless.
- you should make a smaller version for people like me that don't have a huge HD screen. I had the screen cut when playing, so I didn't saw any tutorial text on my first run, it was frustrating.
- I wish there was a goal or an end, right now I played 40+ weeks and stacked coins with my contacts.
Look out for a post compo version with better balance, rule tweaks, supply routes, more unique contacts and random events!
As to several comments relating to theme, it fits in that the game is about managing a criminal enterprise from a single computer screen! Maybe a bit vague or meta, but that was the intention! :-)
easy to figure out how to 'win' there is no real win,
once you get to the stage of 10 employers it's pretty much done :p
Second - Would have been nice to have a win condition. I got to 10/10 suppliers and over 2000 BTC and it didn't seem like I could have ever lost from there. Also the similarity between the words "contact" and "contract" can make the instructions quite difficult to parse.
And thanks for your rating! :)
I had fun getting the hang of this, but once I figured it out there wasn't much else to do besides accumulate bitcoins. I like it quite a bit!