Tiny Religion by dagothig

[raw]
made by dagothig for LD23 (COMPO)
This is my first Ludum Dare, and I must admit I'm pretty happy with result. Most of what I had planned out to do has been done, and there's even the possibility of winning and losing!

Sadly there is no music however, I simply did not have the time to do it.

In any case, this game here is sort of a reverse god game, where your people want to please your god as much as possible. Everything you do is perceived differently by your god and it is up to you to learn what it likes and what it dislikes. Also, annoy your good too much and your people will die.

The game is text-based, and the way you learn what you can do is through the help command, and if you want to learn what you can do for a specific action, you use the "action" help command (so for instance, train help will tell you what you can train)


This is done in XNA and thus it only works on windows (sorry for all the other OS users, I simply do not know any other language than C#)
This requires both the .net framework 4.0, found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851

and the XNA redistribuable, found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914

updated: changed the link to the patched version I had made during the extended submit period, also explains a bit more how to play

Ratings

Coolness 69% 3
Overall 3.03 401
Audio 2.26 519
Fun 2.69 494
Graphics 3.34 233
Humor 2.72 216
Innovation 3.54 148
Mood 2.56 518
Theme 3.03 436

Feedback

馃帳 dagothig
23. Apr 2012 路 02:00 UTC
Found a major bug while finally testing the game to full: apparently I had forgotten one line of code that meant that the god would randomly kill people faster and faster as you reached the goal, anyhow, here is a post-release patch that makes it more playable:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bkdfeeh7ccqudb3
Sheep
23. Apr 2012 路 12:47 UTC
Looks like a fun game. But I can't control it if I don't know all the commands. Do you have a list?
caranha
23. Apr 2012 路 13:10 UTC
That is a very cute game, with an interesting premise. Thanks for making it!

The good:
- I like the idea of text commands
- I loved the graphics
- the game itself is quite innovative.

The bad:
- There is very little feedback. For instance, once the god I had seemed to like houses (he smiled every time I built one), but then he started to kill a lot of people at once, while looking all blue and innocent. I don't know how far I am before the god starts killing people.
- It is really hard to play a text based game without knowing the dictionary. I saw on your screenshots that you could plant trees, but I found no word combination to do that (just an example)
- the game lags a bit when playing sound.
馃帳 dagothig
23. Apr 2012 路 14:33 UTC
ah, yes, for the part killing people while being all innocent, this is a bug I found after publishing the game (the link I put in the comments leads to a version which doesn't have the bug)
as for how to know how to do stuff, the way I made the game was that if you would write help, the game would return what you could do (so if I write help, then it would tell me "do", "train" "build") and then if you used an action plus help, then it would give you the actual choices (let's say you do "build help" then the game would tell you "house", "workshop", etc) In hindsight, I now realise this is a terribly flawed system xP
thanks for the feedback!
Sheep
23. Apr 2012 路 19:13 UTC
Now that I could have played the game properly:
I like the idea! Innovative! But I never saw the god being angry or happy, and poof, game over. Overall nice game.
robcozzens
26. Apr 2012 路 04:41 UTC
I would try it if you had a Web or OSX version.
ra4king
26. Apr 2012 路 04:59 UTC
Wooooo that was fun! Great job!
dukope
26. Apr 2012 路 05:14 UTC
If you're interested in supporting other platforms with C#, look into Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

It's not XNA, but there may be other cross-platform .net game frameworks.
馃帳 dagothig
26. Apr 2012 路 05:19 UTC
aye, thanks for the link, I'll look into it
xBlinkedx
26. Apr 2012 路 05:27 UTC
Very interesting to say the least. It was a bit hard figuring out what to do. I loved the graphic style though.
FireSlash
26. Apr 2012 路 06:21 UTC
You don't need to package installers with XNA apps. I actually suggest you don't for LD, since it's a pain to have XNA games cluttering up your install list. I usually list the XNA and .NET4 installer links on my page for those who don't already have them.
R3ason
26. Apr 2012 路 06:22 UTC
Way fun! Low expectations, but I was so wrong! Took a minute to figure out that you type [command] Help, but after that it was pretty straight forward. Love it! Thanks!
Topaz
26. Apr 2012 路 06:56 UTC
The thing which I need to accept to download the thing isn't in English, so I can't read it before clicking "I Accept".
Sorry :(
馃帳 dagothig
26. Apr 2012 路 07:09 UTC
Reuploaded the game so that it wouln'd contain the package installers, and editted the entry so it would contain links to the installers
icefallgames
26. Apr 2012 路 07:35 UTC
The graphics are really nice, and I was surprised at how many things I figured out how to do. However, the god never seemed to change expression at all, so I'm not sure how to judge if what I did was good or bad. His mouth/eyes flickered briefly, but I couldn't tell if that meant anything.
icefallgames
26. Apr 2012 路 07:41 UTC
Ah, I see, I didn't notice I could type "[command] help". I'm still finding it hard to read the god's expressions though, and I haven't figured out how I can attack. It just tells me "no attacking possible".
TheGamingProject
26. Apr 2012 路 07:45 UTC
Once I figured out I could type help build/do/train I thought it was quite good. I felt like the only thing that made my God happy was training craftsman, everything else gave him a sad face.
馃帳 dagothig
26. Apr 2012 路 07:45 UTC
you need to have an enemy to attack, and to have an enemy, you must know an island with evil-doers on it (which you find by building bridges and being lucky)
cakemonitor
26. Apr 2012 路 07:47 UTC
This is a great idea and the game has really nice graphics, but even with using the help menu I couldn't get to grips with the commands e.g. I wanted to try "do summon" but it tells me only a priest can do that, so I train a priest (it says 1 priest is trained) and it still tells me only a priest can summon so I think maybe the priest needs a temple and I build one but still it tells me only a priest can do summon ... that's a bit frustrating. Also, the god's reactions flashed up too quickly so it was difficult to tell what (s)he did/did not like - maybe you could have the text appear in the log coloured green for things the god likes and red for things the god does not like. Just a few ideas. Overall it's a very nice entry. Well done :)
馃帳 dagothig
26. Apr 2012 路 07:50 UTC
actually, I did make the god more expressive in my post-ludum-dare versions, and also, regarding the priests, I do admit the in-game tooltip isn't completely right, because the way it works, its not because you have a priest that the summon will actually work, its based on random chance on how many priests you have, so 1 priest will no guarantee a success
馃帳 dagothig
26. Apr 2012 路 07:54 UTC
also, thanks for playing and giving feedback :)
roundcrisis
26. Apr 2012 路 18:27 UTC
Nice drawings. Not sure what the end condition is :D
KhaoTom
27. Apr 2012 路 05:50 UTC
Drawing of super happy god made me super happy. Cute game!
spirulence
27. Apr 2012 路 06:25 UTC
Very cute graphics. The humanoid sounds made me laugh! Kept wishing for some calm music to play. I played for a little while and then stopped when there was no obvious progression towards an ending.
cjke.7777
27. Apr 2012 路 07:59 UTC
The style looks cool, but felt unguided - I was at a loss as what to do. Great effort!
Puzzlem00n
28. Apr 2012 路 01:28 UTC
One of my favorites so far! All my god liked seemed to be bridges... and he hated craftsman.
RHY3756547
29. Apr 2012 路 14:31 UTC
Really cool. I enjoyed figuring out everything you could do, but it took a little while. Awesome graphics too.
Jiggawatt
30. Apr 2012 路 09:56 UTC
Neat premise, but the execution can be disorientating. The god doesn't seem to care about anything I build/do/train, apart from lashing out on me in an eventual game over. I mean, a lot of the game is about figuring out what to do (and that can be fun in a "game-long tutorial" kind of way, it's not necessarily a design flaw), but there isn't sufficient feedback to make it work.
Datamosh
03. May 2012 路 07:11 UTC
At first I got confused, but then I was all over it. By the way, your art style is simply AWESOME.
Madball
06. May 2012 路 08:50 UTC
Interesting idea, but I didn't really get how to play. I discovered commands (By myself :P), but, you know, it isn't enough to play. And God feedback was a bit wierd: When I do something, he only shows emotion for a moment. And most of the time not instantly, so I have to stare at him waiting for feedback.
madflame991
06. May 2012 路 12:42 UTC
+ graphics are really nice
+ sounds are funny

- I had no idea what I can build/train without looking in the graphics folder
- is text input really necessary?
Chaoseed
06. May 2012 路 19:08 UTC
I think the graphics and sound are great. I kinda like the gameplay, even though it's frustrating trying to figure out what God thinks (to steal a song lyric). The biggest problem I had, however, was that there was nothing showing me I was making progress. I say "build house", and I wait for a while...and it seems like nothing happens. Is there a problem? Do I need more builders? If you had a little meter going up, that would solve the problem. Come on, half the fun of playing, say, StarCraft is watching little meters go up. ;)
JellyFame
13. May 2012 路 19:02 UTC
Don't have access to windows box :(
Lower screenshots look really great
Datw
13. May 2012 路 23:02 UTC
Good concept, but the god feedback is to tiny (no pun), and there's not much point to do the things.