Shanghai by Warboys

[raw]
made by Warboys for LD29 (JAM)
You are a corrupt Chinese Government Official in 1940s Shanghai.

You're in the pocket of all the major embassies, working beneath the surface to undermine your city for monetary gain.

The Ticker generates Intelligence from various Government Ministries. You must take the Intel you want, drag it onto one of your spies, and then connect them to a Foreign Agent on the grid view of the city

Keep your patrons happy or face getting Shanghaied!

--How to Play---
1. Drag colored tickets into a spy slot at the top of the Grid
2. Match the colors to Foreign Agents by drawing a path
3. Making matches earns cash and pleases the embassies
4. Don't let the embassy flags hit the bottom or it's game over


--Bugs!---
ANDROID
Bug free! Android is the best way to play Shanghai. Please give it a shot :)

WEB
Some players are experiencing a bug where the city is not loading at the top of the screen (see the 2nd screenshot for what it should look like). We can't figure out what the problem is. The game still works but you cannot see when you will lose! Sorry for any inconvenience if this happens to you.


--The Team---
Chris McMath (@chrismcmath)
Samuel Green (@SamuelVirtu)

with Daniel Arnold-Mist & Jason Boesch

Ratings

Coolness 39% 1718
Overall(Jam) 3.46 202
Audio(Jam) 3.70 111
Fun(Jam) 3.04 341
Graphics(Jam) 3.25 425
Humor(Jam) 2.80 278
Innovation(Jam) 3.71 89
Mood(Jam) 3.23 288
Theme(Jam) 3.04 434

Feedback

馃帳 Warboys
29. Apr 2014 路 03:45 UTC
Reduced file size from 53mb to 5.3mb! I (Sam) was silly enough to use WAV files.

Should load much quicker now!
sugarbyte
29. Apr 2014 路 23:02 UTC
This is really great! Simple and fun, but the mood and music is wonderfully effective, even though I experienced the city-not-loading bug.
conormn
30. Apr 2014 路 03:08 UTC
The game gets really fun once you wrap your mind around the mechanics. Really well done. Would love to see a more flushed out version of this. Also the audi and spot lights were a really nice touch. Set the mood nicely.
Empyrealhell
30. Apr 2014 路 03:18 UTC
I don't think I played this game correctly, because sometimes the flags would just disappear. Sometimes they would take a long time and just sit there counting down. I couldn't tell what caused this, but I am colorblind, so I'm guessing it had something to do with that. That being said, it was an amusing game, though I guess if you can tell what's going on it, it might be less funny and more serious.

The concept was good though, I liked your interpretation of the theme, thank you for not taking it literally. It was well put together, and I can appreciate the quality, but I couldn't play it for very long, color games and I tend not to get along very well.
pkenney
30. Apr 2014 路 03:34 UTC
Yeah, shoot, I had the city-not-loading, too. I tried both chrome and firefox, but no dice, sorry.

There's a very cool feel to this game, the sound is great and the look is nice too. It really feels well-polished.

I had a number of misunderstandings about how to play... I didn't realize the colors had to match, even though that's dumb of me!

I finally got the basics, but without the city it was hard to gauge what was working.

What I liked about the game rules was when I made a match, I would lay down a track that would later get in the way for a future match, so the track was both good and bad. Causing my own mess is a cool type of strategy game, so nice work on that. Once things got ugly they could spiral out of control.
GertJohnny
30. Apr 2014 路 03:43 UTC
I couldn't figure it out at all in the beginning (I did ignore the instructions though, so there's that...), but once I got into a groove it was pretty satisfying. I still didn't have a good handle on whether or not I was going to lose or not though, I just kept connecting things and racking up points.
nimblegorilla
30. Apr 2014 路 03:48 UTC
Really cool game mechanic, but I had to read the directions a few times before figuring out where to drag stuff. I felt that the flags disappear a little too quickly. Music and graphics look nice!
liquidminduk
30. Apr 2014 路 04:03 UTC
"You've been Shanghaied!: nice
noom
30. Apr 2014 路 06:20 UTC
At first I was terribly confused about what was going on an how to play this game, but I stuck to it and eventually figured it out and found myself playing over and over, I wasted a good 30 minutes on this one. The gameplay is great, once you figure it out. I think my favorite part though was the sound track, really cool! Made me think of the 40's and that's awesome.
Solifuge
30. Apr 2014 路 07:11 UTC
Hi, this is Vector from the Victory Garden team! (posting under Solifuge's account)

This game was nice! I also experienced the city-not-loading bug, which made my experience pretty tense with the inability to figure out whether I was winning or losing. It'd also help to let us know what makes the flags in the Bund move in the first place, since I was trying to maximize my gains and didn't even know the direction I should be taking (rather than the flag problem, which would tell me how well I was doing it).

Still, I had a fraught couple of minutes of fun out of this, which is impressive for a game with one of its most important assets missing. Great job!
Kara Jayde
01. May 2014 路 02:44 UTC
Wow, this is awesome. This has been one of my fav. submissions played so far, very cool, innovative mechanics that allow for a lot of player tweaking/learning/feedback. Simple enough gameplay (a tutorial could be beneficial for those who don't pick it up), but with plenty of room for growth, and an interesting take on the theme!

I feel like this has lots of room for growth, even with its current level of fun. Maybe a more clear objective/goal could help (think of the difference between Bejeweled and Candy Crush, where one is specifically score driven, and the other has micro-objectives). An example of this could be 'score x amount for y ministry within timeframe'. You could have these procedurally generated or mark out specific ones and build an overall level list.

The screen needs to be made bigger, current reso was ridiculous for web streaming (for mobile I think it would need to be bigger too) especially on a monitor like mine, haha. Some more refined/district art could help sell it, though there's nothing wrong with what's currently presented. This is just for further development, otherwise I really love it.
M4rw4
01. May 2014 路 08:13 UTC
Nice idea, simple and fun :)
paps
01. May 2014 路 15:09 UTC
nice mechanics. loved the music
Larzan
02. May 2014 路 19:28 UTC
LOVE the music, but didn't really get when/why i am loosing?
馃帳 Warboys
03. May 2014 路 10:14 UTC
Sorry Larzan, that's probably because of the city-not-loading bug. We're going to have an Android version up soon, hopefully with OSX and Windows too, so that might solve the problem.
馃帳 Warboys
04. May 2014 路 09:10 UTC
Added an Android version! THE way to play (as you can tell from the resolution, the game was designed with mobile in mind). It should also fix that bloody city-not-loading bug!
mrexcessive
04. May 2014 路 18:47 UTC
Hi. Novel idea. Like the background music and atmos.
ethankennerly
05. May 2014 路 03:41 UTC
The atmosphere and story entranced me. If you continue to develop this, when I saw the tubes connect and points go up, I still was not sure how the connections were a metaphor for spy management.
607
17. May 2014 路 09:58 UTC
Pretty fun game! I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but it worked out okay for me:P The city was indeed not loading for me. So I think that's why I didn't really understand. It was still fun to play though! My high score is 7782.
mrbungle
17. May 2014 路 10:47 UTC
Cool little mechanic idea which builds mood effectively with its great sound design. Nice interpretation of the theme as well.
Cl茅ment Duquesne
18. May 2014 路 19:31 UTC
Very fun and efficient gameplay :)