Subterranean Farm Maniac by jmaasing

[raw]
made by jmaasing for LD25 (COMPO)
Requirements
This game requires a graphics card supporting OpenGL2. It also requires Java 6 or later installed. LWJGL does not working on OS X with Java7, sorry about that.

The Cavern
The cavern is a happy place, there is food for almost everyone since the mushroom farms are abundant. There are no wars, famines, conquests or death. Well, there is death, but no tradegy, the peoples of the cavern die happy after a full life.

You are the villian
You are the villian, specifically, you are "Famine". You loath the people of the cavern. You want to make them suffer and die of starvation.

You gain points when people die of starvation, you loose points when they die happy.

Game play
When you look at a mushroom farm you can make it burn with left clicking your mouse. Which causes the village to harvest less food, which makes them starve.
When you look at the village you can send them a goat as gift by left clicking with your mouse. Which makes them have more to eat. Which makes them have children. Which makes more of them.... more that can starve.
You can fly around using 'a','s','d','w'.

Visit the project page at http://code.google.com/p/subterraneanfarmmaniac/

Ratings

Coolness 46% 742
Overall 2.79 474
Audio 2.05 478
Fun 2.25 619
Graphics 2.96 364
Humor 2.22 469
Innovation 3.13 240
Mood 2.50 517
Theme 3.71 147

Feedback

scriptblocks
17. Dec 2012 · 01:18 UTC
Runs on Ubuntu I had to put quotes around the jar name because it has spaces:
java -Xmx512m -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=512m -jar "Subterranean Farm Maniac.jar"
Freakill
17. Dec 2012 · 03:59 UTC
Quite funny game, tricky at the beginning to search the equilibrium between population and starvation.
@daniel_sundberg
17. Dec 2012 · 08:54 UTC
Nice waters ;)
Mezzomatto
19. Dec 2012 · 05:14 UTC
Cool idea for a game. I was happy with it and engaged but perhaps a quick tutorial or even a "tip" for maximising starvations would more quickly engage newbies. A tad more visualisation would be good too but this was wholly adequate for a 48hr game. Well done.
deathray
20. Dec 2012 · 06:02 UTC
I was confused the first two times I played - I didn't even realize they had all died at first. But I finally figured it out, and it's pretty fun. I like simulation games like this. Maybe it would be good if there were some graphical representation of the population? (I like bars - filled my game with 'em).
dekart
20. Dec 2012 · 18:31 UTC
Nice concept
Cabral
20. Dec 2012 · 20:08 UTC
My highscore was 128 starved people, and this game gave a new meaning to "You reap what you sow".

It was really fun to figure out, I wish it wasn't so completely luck-based after you've got the strategy nailed down, but I understand that it needed to be simple to fit in 48 hours. It's nice to see what happens when you try different things, like not intervening at all or trying to stabilize the population to make it go forever (it appears to be impossible).

Besides that, the game could use a bit of polish, like a restart button, in-game instructions, music, etc. I think the graphics were fine, though. The sound effects were nice too, but they seemed to become bugged after the game restarted (the burn sound always played, no matter where you clicked).

Like I said, it was really fun! Great job!
Freakill
20. Dec 2012 · 20:36 UTC
There is now a Linux version and soon will upload Mac also :) Had problems porting and just discovered it was sound issues, so I had to disable it for Mac and Linux versions :(
🎤 jmaasing
20. Dec 2012 · 21:49 UTC
Thank's to all of you that have taken the time to try out this game. As you say, the sounds becomes bugged after replay, didn't manage to nail that bug before submission. Also, I totally agree with all the comments. More GUI elements would be nice, a bit of tutorial, fine tuning the simulation numbers and some more effects.

It is open source, if anyone want to continue building on it you are welcome. I don't plan on doing so but I'll help out if there is interest.
blob
21. Dec 2012 · 00:14 UTC
Original concept. You should explain the goat thing on the main page here. Its hard to understand withing the game.
Cássio Eduardo
21. Dec 2012 · 21:06 UTC
Nice. I didn't understand it at first.
FrederickK
21. Dec 2012 · 22:58 UTC
Very complex but nice idea.
Made an instructions for my game to you be able to play.
Jeremias
22. Dec 2012 · 21:24 UTC
As mentioned before, try to make a kind of representation how many people are alive (as people in the world or progression bars). Hard to figure out what is going on.
Joozey
30. Dec 2012 · 20:49 UTC
Interesting concept. Couldn't play it for too long though as jMonkey eventually crashed with an error.
prettymuchbryce
31. Dec 2012 · 20:23 UTC
I enjoyed this entry. I think there is definitely something here. I like the simplicity, although; I think it might be slightly too simple. I would assume that this is only because of your time constraints, and I would imagine that you had plans to take the game further. The engine is nice and satisfying to move around in. I think with a little more work this could be a really interesting game.
eli
05. Jan 2013 · 13:56 UTC
I love how this game looks!! The tiles are extremely expressive. I'd like to see a more fleshed-out version.

Good work!