Live or DIE! by jondalnas

[raw]
made by jondalnas for LD 38 (COMPO)

Hi.

This is my first and definitely not last, Ludum Dare game. Thanks for playing it, I hope you enjoy.

CONTROLS

Select an area with the mouse.

After selecting an area, you can define what zone the area is going to be by clicking on the zone tab.

The different zones are: - Housing - Growing Wheet (Yes, it is called Wheet. It's a crop that needs Wood supports to grow, like a tomato plant) - Growing Trees

Add a job by clicking on the red plus and then the job you want, under a specific category.

The jobs and categories are:

-Houses - Build, Builds a house in the Housing zone if there is Room, a house needs a 3 pixel radius of free grass, building a house consumes 100 Wood and creates 2 new Rooms

-Trees - Plant, Plants a tree in the Growing Trees zone, trees needs a 2 pixel radius of grass to grow - Chop, Chops any tree on the map, chopping down a tree yields 20 Wood

-Wheet - Plant, Plants all the Wheet it can in a Growing Wheet zone, planting Wheet consumes 1 Wood - Hrvst, Harvest harvests all the Wheet it can on the map, harvesting 1 Wheet plant yields 2 Food

-Animal - Baby, Makes a baby if there is Room enough, a baby needs 1 Room - Handl, Handle is used to handle any animals that is on the map like, Wolfs that becomes dogs, that will handle any animal automatically for you, Chickens that will be killed and used as Food, Llamas that also will be killed and used as Food, etc.

Close all menus and and deselect all areas with right mouse button.

Post Compo: You can now use shift to add 9 jobs when selecting a job.

Game ([Java](https://java.com/) is required)

Game (Post Compo)

Source

Ratings

Overall 315th 3.211⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 312th 3.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 346th 2.947⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 225th 3.526⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 319th 3.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 246th 2.6⭐ 17🧑‍⚖️
Mood 435th 2.611⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 19🗨️

Feedback

Zelos
02. May 2017 · 10:46 UTC
I feel like you got a really good game here, but I'm a bit confused by the interface.

**Graphics:** Work really well for this type of game. No complaints here.

**Audio:** Well, there isn't any. Might want to opt out here.

**Gameplay:** For me personally the instructions where not enough to pick up and play your game. I've been trying assigning areas and jobs, but I'm really not sure what anything does and what I should be focussing on.
I actually took way longer than I'd like to admit to understand that the bigger labels 'house', 'trees', 'vheet' (did you mean wheat?) are just categories and not clickable buttons. They look just like the buttons, which is pretty confusing.

So I clicked around for a while and my characters did some stuff, but I didn't get what the goal was or what the individual things did exactly. I think you just need a better tutorial or descriptions for the individual actions.

Overall I still think you got a good game here. Nice work!
Pradyumn Shukla
06. May 2017 · 03:15 UTC
Pretty nice game
tyranosaw
06. May 2017 · 03:39 UTC
This is a great first entry! Though on my second entry i made a same mistake you have done here. There is no 'Tutorial' or some way to teach the player how to play. Not sure if you had enough time though but i do see that you have put the information required in the description. Sometimes people don't read that and just play the game. So when they play, they are confused and don't know how to play.

This is a good video on what makes a good tutorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCPcn-Q5nKE

Maybe for the next Ludum Dare, scope smaller and give yourself time to do stuff like tutorials. Remember, think about the player. Congratulations on the game, Great Work!
candlesan
06. May 2017 · 04:28 UTC
Seems like a "God Game" economy simulator. Reminds me of sort of a rugged frontier cross between SimCity and Craft the World. I got my guys cutting down some wood and making a house.

Is there a way to delete a job that is not valid? I can see the job shows up in red and the villagers will skip it but I coudln't find a way to actually just abort the job if I was thinking maybe I didn't want them to do it at all anymore.
Gama Croma
18. May 2017 · 09:05 UTC
This looks like a nice game hidden behind a complex interface
Instead of having all the jobs in a list, why not click on a zone and select the required job there.
Instead of zoning then choosing what type, why not choose type first and then automatically zone for that.
Good luck, this is a great start!
Jimbly
19. May 2017 · 16:52 UTC
Nice game! I had no problem with the UI, found it pretty intuitive. Found myself wanting to know how much population I had though (figure that would have been a good "goal"/number to make bigger as a player).
lavwa
20. May 2017 · 01:22 UTC
A little bit complex at first but finally works quite well. The idea is very interesting, like tyranosaw, great work, keep thinking about the player and your games will shine :)
ToonTeamJ
20. May 2017 · 01:26 UTC
It seems like a pretty interesting game, but I had trouble figuring out how everything worked. I think an in-game tutorial would be be very helpful.
Zarkonnen
20. May 2017 · 07:50 UTC
That's a sweet little Dorflike. (Dwarf Fortress like)
Swynfel
20. May 2017 · 09:06 UTC
Nice game!
The problem is: it's very complexe and you can't understand it on you first tries. There is a lot of content and a lot of different parameters you can play with. A short tutorial could have helped, instead of having to read your description. Some simple things that could have made it more clear could also have been to organise the joblist in columns (one for tree-related stuff, one for wheat, one for animals, and one for house&babies) and have actions you can't preform yet greyed out.
Anyway, it's great for a first try, and I hope to see you in the next Ludum Dare!
Cydouzo
20. May 2017 · 10:25 UTC
I had much fun playing this game, until it bugged and my characters couldn't make any more move.
Also, a lot of people told you, but you really need a tutorial (I'm not sure it's the purpose of the game description to be a tutorial).
I find the needed quantity of wood for anything enormous, I spent something like 40% of my time chopping trees.
Good job!!!!
zgragselus
20. May 2017 · 11:15 UTC
The game is complex and has some depth in mechanics, but...

I don't really like the execution, the controls are frustrating (you can't re-select zone when editing another one, etc.), with the looks of the game it is indeed hard to control and play it. I found myself struggling more with controls than enjoying the game.
icxon
20. May 2017 · 11:19 UTC
You should add some images to the game description, since it's completely unexpected what you will see.

And wolves ate all my animals.

Joblist hides a part of a map too.

![Live or DIE!.png](///raw/2e1/z/484b.png)

But it was fun to play. Thank you.