Alien Gift Exchange by zazery

[raw]
made by zazery for LD30 (JAM)
Post-Jam version: A minor combat tweak was made to made to combat to reduce enemy health and rate at which Earth is devastated. It's now actually beatable.

It's the 1950's and The Agency has just made first contact. First contact did not go well and they are launching a full scale assault. It's up to you, agent, to befriend other alien races in hopes to acquire advanced alien technology to survive the attack.

Instructions:
- Select a gift and press send gift, if you match them up with the right gift you will get a better item. Match poorly and they may turn against you.
- Clicking on aliens gives you additional text.
- Refill your earthly gifts by clicking Restock, but it costs a day to do.

HOW IT WORKS
Aliens have preferences for these attributes: military, technology, entertainment, and food. Each gift has a value for those attributes as well. Look at an alien portrait and read the text clues to figure out what to give them. Food preferences are the easiest to figure out based on the alien portraits.

In combat
- Click on Doomsday Gifts to boost Earth's stats. The better they are the longer and more powerful they are.
- Strength speeds up their destruction
- Defense slows Earth's devastation
- Culture weakens enemy morale and causes them to leave.

Programming & Balancing - Eric Raue (@ericraue)
Illustration & Concept - Fellipe Martins (@fell_martins)

Ratings

Coolness 26% 1872
Overall(Jam) 3.35 294
Fun(Jam) 3.33 214
Graphics(Jam) 4.30 66
Humor(Jam) 3.90 30
Innovation(Jam) 3.52 140
Mood(Jam) 3.29 282
Theme(Jam) 3.95 46

Feedback

SoulGame
27. Aug 2014 路 01:03 UTC
One thing is sure : you're game is both thematic and original. The arts helped to create a nice mood and convinced me to pay attention to dialogues. Plus the idea of giving gifts to some random aliens to gain protection is quite fun. After that the game turns quickly into a click-click, give random gift, click again, etc. If there was a specific strategy to apply, I fail to find it out. Also I'm not sure why I keep getting told 'WAIT' but it breaks a bit the game feel. Then the war begun, I used all my amazing gift to buff the earth like hell... and it was devastated xD Didn't get the hang of it was kind of fun.
AlucardX60
27. Aug 2014 路 01:28 UTC
I really like it but sometimes it was unclear what gift an alien want's and even then sometimes you don't have it. The combat phase was also a little unclear and by the time I was clicking on doomsday gifts the fight was pretty much over.
Otherwise I really like the art style and use of the theme. Good work.
sikosis
27. Aug 2014 路 05:22 UTC
Very cool graphics and nice effects. Fun to play too.
馃帳 zazery
27. Aug 2014 路 21:04 UTC
Absolutely agree we could have done a better job communicating what aliens desire. I updated the entry description with an explanation of how the underlying system works.

Also made a minor tweak (post jam version) to the combat system to actually make it beatable. Enemies deal less devastation and have slightly less (hidden) health per enemy.

Lastly I remove the Wait message, which was to prevent players from interacting before the alien dialogue sequence was finished. Clicking too fast might break things but it feels better without it.

Thanks for the feedback!

-Eric
Nuclear Napalm
29. Aug 2014 路 04:24 UTC
Very cool idea! It was really fun to play! Good job!
Hypnohustla
29. Aug 2014 路 07:54 UTC
Love the character designs. I'm a bad gift giver it seems. Didn't take long for me to be in war with the majority of aliens. Really good game :)
Nooner Bear
31. Aug 2014 路 06:13 UTC
Good work on this one!
TeamQuadratic
31. Aug 2014 路 06:17 UTC
This is some snazzy stuff
the art was nice and smooth and the "cryptic" language was also cool
Oddly Shaped Pixels
02. Sep 2014 路 06:31 UTC
Had difficulties seeing what they were interested in but had a great time anyway.
The art and presentation is just top notch and the idea is super original!
Traumendes_Madchen
03. Sep 2014 路 15:46 UTC
Funny game. I feel it would be better with some music though. What the aliens want isn't very clear so it's mostly choosing at random.
Snicklodocus
05. Sep 2014 路 03:02 UTC
Really great. I loved the alien portraits and humor. At first it's hard to figure out what to give aliens, but it makes more sense as you play. Enjoyed it!
t4u
05. Sep 2014 路 13:10 UTC
Fun idea. Great graphics+ humour. It was unclear to me even if I made a good choice of gift or not. I lost combat before even I read instruction.
01101101
08. Sep 2014 路 07:26 UTC
Really cool idea !!! ... love this hkind of humor and ambiance. so really sad there is no sound no music no sfx ! ... it could be a great value !
GrooveMan
10. Sep 2014 路 08:58 UTC
Liaising with aliens turns out to be pretty fun! The designs are all really solid, and I love the washed-out 60s tech aesthetic. I totally get why you did a rebalanced post-jam version - combat is pretty frantic and confusing at first glance.
Rage Paint
12. Sep 2014 路 03:29 UTC
Took me awhile to figure out I could click the aliens to get more clues. Ended up saving earth my third time around. Nice art work and the text for the aliens speaking was a nice touch.
xandy
14. Sep 2014 路 13:02 UTC
very cool game!