I had a hard time understanding the mechanics and the goal of the game. What does "Fresh blood" do for instance?

Thanks for trying the game. Unfortunately I fell victim to the rushed tutorial syndrome (thinking my game "expalins iteself"). I did put a rules button in the game which you can check out but its rather sparse (and full of game specific lingo). Here's a more indepth explanation...

--- Tutorial ---

You play as the Mob. You goal is to occupy every square of the city.

The screen is split in two - the GUI on the left and the City on the right.

On the left hand side is the GUI which is split into "You" and "The Fuzz" (police). The Fuzz is controlled by the computer AI.

Under each heading you have two stats to pay attention to; "Gangsters" and "Fresh Blood". Gangsters is the total number of gangsters you have available to distribute to the city squares. Fresh Blood is the number of new gangsters you will receive (every 15 seconds).

The Fuzz have the same stats but with different terminology. This gives you an insight into how they are doing.

On the right hand side is the City. The city is divided into 25 squares/zones. A zone can have 1 of 4 states.

1) Neutral - indicated by the general peaceful appearance of the tile
2) Occupied by the Fuzz - indicated by the police cars
3) Occupied by you, the Mob - indicated by a black car, dead bodies, and no pedestrians
4) Fighting - indicated by the presence of both you and the fuzz and a general state of chaos.

If you hover over any zone, a badge will be displayed with a number on it. This is the defence value of that zone. To occupy it, you must have enough Gangsters. Click the zone to occupy it. Your number of gangsters will be reduced by the value.

Additionally, the badge that is displayed when you hover over a zone will help you identify it (orange is neutral, blue is controlled by the fuzz, red is controlled by you, blue and red split down the middle is a fight)

The Zones all behave a little differently when you try to Occupy them. Lets look at that.

1) Neutral - trying to occupy this will result in immediate occupation.
2) Occupied by you - trying to occupy this will remove any gansters already in the sapce and return them to you "Gangsters" count for redistribution.
3) Occupied by the fuzz - trying to occupy this will result in a fight. Your gangsters will decrement and the zone will change to a fight scene. After 5 seconds the fight will be resolved and you'll either be awarded the zone or the fuzz will.

Occupy more zones to increase your "Fresh Blood". This in turn will award you more gangsters every 15 seconds.

I hope that helps.

There's a lot of scope for expansion the game, particularly around tactics.

Nice game! Real time strategy games are always pretty cool in my books. :) As you've noticed, it was a little difficult to understand the game. I played again after reading your instructions, and it was a lot more clear. If I were you, I'd edit those instructions into the main description for your game. Good job on the game! :D

It was easy and was first difficult to see where you have won the area but worked still. Next add some more complex mechanics :)

Graphics are really nice. The game is a bit easy, but it's hard to write competitive AI in a short time span. Other than that, if the values of the zones were written with small text below them it'd be much better imo.

Nice effort. If you're considering on improving this game in the future, you might consider adding a couple of new mechanics into it to keep things interesting.

All in all this one is really nice. The graphics and music go together really well, I like the sort of 50s vibe its giving me. Its also really fun to play, if you like real time strategy games that is. My only complaint is that the stats are not well explained. It took me a while to figure out that fresh blood is how many new recruits you get per 15 seconds. Once you figure out how the system works, its really easy however. I went for all the cheaper properties before the fuzz got to them, and then took out the fez's properties one by one. Its a really nice game, but I really think you should make a better tutorial for it.

Nice little game. I managed to beat it after a few attempts. Though not incredibly flashy, it is complete. Well done!

I can't seem to run the game. When I double click the .bat file the cmd window opens up and slows down my computer a lot, but nothing seems to happen.

I'll try again on a different computer later on.

@Starspell

Sorry about that. Not sure what would cause it. Any output in the cmd window at all? - aside from the texture division by two warnings :)

Well done! It felt a bit like my game (where you take over a city selling meth while avoiding police), so I felt right at home! Man, those cops are pretty good at winning fights though, but all bad guys get caught in the end, so I can't complain ;)

Strange game... For the entire length of the game, "The Fuzz" has been at 20 coppers and 0 new recruits and this never changed. I've never seen them on the map whatsoever. So I just had to wait and take over all areas to win. I played the OS/X version, so maybe that's the reason for this strange bug?
Also, why are you distributing the Windows batch script and dll's with the Mac version? Or are they needed for the OS/X version to work? In that case, just ignore this question :P

Great game and its even complete. Thats rarely found under all the compo games and given that you said this is your first compo ever - well done! I actually played this quite a while without reading your detailed instructions and it was fine.
I agree though, that you should put the instructions into the description of your game - right under the links.

@naxum

Just tried your game. They do share similarities. I think yours is a little more complex though :)

Loved the visuals and the mood. The pace was a bit slow, but overall quite enjoyable.

@timtipgames - ouch! you must have found an obscure bug. I tested on OSX and it worked. The start is randomised so can you try a new game?

You're right about the distribution. I didn't have time for proper deployment. The windows and OSX version share the same codebase and assets. Should have stripped them out.

It's very addictive, but when you remove all the cops and they don't have enough "cop points" to buy a square, it's just a matter of time to you win.

Dominant strategies aside, it's a polished entry and the core idea of fighting over territory is very appealing. As others have said, adding a few more mechanics - e.g. buildings could have different effects - would make this a very good game.

Really nice game, the cops had no houses left but nothing happened, I thought I beat the game

@jerrre - thanks for the feedback. You only win if you occupy all zones with your gangsters (that includes neutral zones).

This gives the fuzz an opportunity to get a foothold again if they have enough coppers.

So if the gangster own 3 by 3 like this:

GGG
GGG
GGG

And the Fuzz when into the middle:

GGG
GFG
GGG

Which in my opinion they should not be able to. I reckon I should be able to beat them fairly easily, because they are surrounded by gangster. But I was annoyed that it took me a while to beat them, and sometime they would win too. Just my opinion.

@Digiraze

You are totally correct. I want to add tactics to the next version of the game so that you can surround to overwhelm and vice versa for defending. In fact, I was discussing this very thing with a friend last night.

I dunno, neat idea, but it all felt too random... I don't think anything I did had any effect on whether or not I won the battles, etc.

Took me a minute, but with your explanation I was able to figure it out and get a win! The key seemes to be to hit the coppers as fast as you can.

Really easy to play. The gameplay didn't have much depth nor difficulty, I think it was actually harder trying to read the description of how to play than to just jump in and figure it out. Congrats on your achievements here. :)

Interesting strategy game. The graphics look nice and are consistent. I only wish there was a bit more feedback on what's going on at each city block (maybe tint the buildings blue or red? I really don't know.)

I like the rhythm given by the flow of new recruits. In the beginning it makes the game almost feel turn-based as you have to keep spending all your goons on new territory to avoid falling behind. Then the real fun begins as you have to decide how many to keep on reserve to recover lost territories and what and when to attack.

Not sure what I like about this game, but it was fun!

This was pretty fun and solidly tied together, but I completed it on the first attempt and it felt very random, are the battles just a coin flip currently?

@Norgg

You're totally correct, battles are currently random. I ran out of time to implement a more complex system for resolving them.

I'm currently working on a full mobile release which will have much deeper strategic elements (as well as some extra depth).

Thanks for playing

Nice game pretty easy to figure out whats going on. I beat it first try but I liked the basic idea behind it. Seems like it could be fleshed out some more. Nice work!

I won on the first try. I can't see any other influencing factors then pure randomness on how the fights are resolved though. Also there should be something that shows when the next recruits come. But all in all this is a good idea and nice implementation with good gfx. Thank you!