Less is More by FacticiusVir

[raw]
made by FacticiusVir for LD26 (COMPO)
Welcome to Less is More!

You'll need .NET 4.5 (http://bit.ly/ZYrRgq) & XNA 4.0R (http://bit.ly/11PKzer) to play this game. Oh, and there's a potato in there, too.

In this game, you are the boss of a brand new interplanetary trading company. You've just bought your first ship, and it can ship anything anywhere.
The problem is, it can't carry much, and it flies very slowly.

If you could buy a more specialised ship, it would carry more and go faster.

But that makes them very expensive.
So expensive, no-one has ever been able to buy a ship that only carries one kind of cargo.
So that's what you're going to do!

Each planet on the map trades mainly in two goods: an import and an export. Buys Exports cheaply, and sell Imports for lots of profit!

Click on the planet with your ship in orbit to go to the trade screen, where you can buy or sell goods.
From that screen, you can also leave orbit, and select a new planet to travel to.

When you have enough money, go to the shop to buy new ships to add to your fleet.
In the shop, select the goods you don't think you'll want to trade to increase the capacity of the others.

Remember, the less cargo types a ship carries, the more it can carry, the faster it goes, but the more it costs!

You can also press M to pause the music at any time.
Press Escape to go back from some screens.

You can only have one ship in orbit of a planet at once - other ships will queue up for it to leave before they can trade.

And always remember-
Less is More!

Ratings

Coolness 52% 3
Overall 2.83 914
Audio 2.30 785
Fun 2.71 807
Graphics 2.09 1224
Humor 1.93 791
Innovation 2.63 912
Mood 2.74 696
Theme 2.92 1080

Feedback

puttputt
29. Apr 2013 路 18:22 UTC
Felt like I was playing a text based Freelancer :D
berkano
29. Apr 2013 路 18:26 UTC
I'm having problems clicking on the Buy/Sell screen, and some of the buttons don't seem to work properly :-( Shame because I love space traders!! Bookmarking this in case you find a way to fix it!
馃帳 FacticiusVir
29. Apr 2013 路 18:27 UTC
Which buttons aren't working?
invaderJim
29. Apr 2013 路 18:31 UTC
Resolution is too high for my laptop. Can only see the bottom 2/3 of the screen and can't move the window :( Will try from my desktop machine and rate later.
rainblade studios
29. Apr 2013 路 19:15 UTC
I don't have windows.
berkano
29. Apr 2013 路 19:25 UTC
@FacticiusVir I ran it again and it's working!
HelkeGames
29. Apr 2013 路 19:36 UTC
Nice game :)
KilledByAPixel
29. Apr 2013 路 19:38 UTC
Interesting game concept. I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the text and choices of what to buy, maybe it would have been better to focus on only a few things. I eventually sort of figured out how to play but the screen flickering and music were kind of distracting.
cmayhem
29. Apr 2013 路 19:56 UTC
First of all I loved this game so that is the only reason I'm being so critical! All it really needs is more complex economy with larger (procedurally generated) universe, fuel to limit how far you can travel and maybe some missions.

It would be nice if the export / import goods were marked clearly in the trading screen.

Often I would press the 'Back' button instead of the 'Leave Orbit' and then wonder why I could not travel to another planet.

Needs 'Buy Max' and 'Sell All' -buttons.
cahman
29. Apr 2013 路 20:06 UTC
Nice game! There needs to be some sort of variation among the prices (but I know there's only so much time to work with). I really like the planet names, are they randomly generated?
theGiallo
29. Apr 2013 路 20:29 UTC
I have windows 7 and it crashes without even starting. :(
馃帳 FacticiusVir
29. Apr 2013 路 20:41 UTC
Be sure to check if you have .NET 4.5 & XNA 4 (Refresh) installed - there's links in the description at the top of this page.
HuvaaKoodia
29. Apr 2013 路 20:54 UTC
+Screenshot reminded me of MOO2
+Simple and effective

-The interface is a bit clunky.
-FPS oddly unstable
-No fullscreen support
-Weird resolution
馃帳 FacticiusVir
29. Apr 2013 路 20:57 UTC
@KilledByAPixel - yeah, I get that; I just came up with a list of trade goods and kind of stuck with it, didn't spend enough time working on that area of game balance.

@CMayhem - Thanks! The economy is simplified to guarantee that the random universe would never leave you stuck in a position you couldn't make money from, but with more structure to the universe generation I could probably plan the economy better. The next items on my ToDo list, after sound effects, where limiting travel distances & and a Buy Max button!

@cahman - Yup, the economy is very flat, so there's a lot of scope for improvement there. The planet name generator was thrown together in the five minutes before the competition ended, and combines 2-4 random syllables from a set containing all combinations of a consonant and a vowel - code is here http://bit.ly/11RnAzx
Cirrial
29. Apr 2013 路 20:58 UTC
Can't actually run it for some reason? Either the program doesn't open or if it does it immediately crashes. Using Windows 7 64 bit if that helps any.
馃帳 FacticiusVir
29. Apr 2013 路 20:59 UTC
@HuvaaKoodia - Fullscreen was interfering with streaming to Twitch, so that was a casualty of my vanity, I'm afraid!
馃帳 FacticiusVir
29. Apr 2013 路 21:10 UTC
As a few people have mentioned a crash on start-up, I've uploaded a new version with a crash-report dialog; if you don't see that appear and it still crashes, it's almost certainly that you've not got the right version of .NET
SuperlevelSebastian
02. May 2013 路 04:14 UTC
Sadly it's not working for Win32-versions. :(
Dark Acre Jack
02. May 2013 路 21:40 UTC
Pretty ambition for an LD. Made me want to play Black Market.
kddekadenz
04. May 2013 路 11:21 UTC
Fails to emulated under Linux using Wine.
sudorossy
04. May 2013 路 21:27 UTC
The UI could have done with some work. I know it was supposed to be minimal, but it was hard to discern between what you interacted with, and what you couldn't.
manax
07. May 2013 路 23:06 UTC
Nice idea, captured the essence of space trading games. Clever victory condition. :)

Yes, a Buy All would have been nice. It took me a bit to figure out the interface, didn't realize the "Shop" button meant "buy a ship". Took a bit to figure out that I could click on the cargo types, to configure the ship. For a while I had several ships flying around with all cargo types... until I realized.