A Dying City by minimurgle
A game about balancing money, crime, and power.

You are the police chief looking over a map of the city. You are paid periodically by the government but it's not enough. To earn money you'll have to strike up deals with the mob, but will it be worth the extra crime in the area?
This is my first Ludum Dare but that's no reason to hold back on criticism. I'm here to learn just like so many other people, so throw it all at me. Don't worry I'm not fragile.
Update 01
Bugfixes * Sound should no longer default to 0
Staying at 0 approval should now trigger a loss
Possibly fixed issue where lose conditions would trigger falsely
Want more?
Well Here's the remake! It took me a bit, and it currently has less than the original. This is what you'll be wanting to follow if you want to keep an eye on the game.
| Windows | https://minimurgle.itch.io/a-dying-city-ld40 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-dying-city |
Ratings
| Overall | 560th | 2.929⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 595th | 2.671⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 188th | 3.485⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 418th | 3.286⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 612th | 2.371⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 487th | 2.036⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 511th | 1.979⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 559th | 2.5⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
My first ludum dare too :D
Love the take you have on the theme, it's different to what i've seen so far and you've done some cool stuff with risk and reward.
Gameplay's very strategic, i'm very bad at these games.
I would love to see this fleshed out and polished, maybe you could keep working on it after the jam.
Good one for adding a volume slider too.
Finishing up a game that you just put a bunch of effort into only to realize that you're gonna start over is one rollercoaster of emotions.
@darylsteak Graphics wise I had wanted to keep it simple but decent looking. I think I managed simple, but not quite as nice to look at. When I remake it I think I'll be going for 3d, as I personally think that'd look better.
@prostone Yeah still not sure what exactly was causing that. Unfortunately I didn't have time to figure out.
This concept has a lot of potential. I hope you keep at it. I'd love to see what it could be.
1. is it really intentional for making it blue or what but that really trigger me for....idk, it feels like it's not full i guess, i'm a perfectionist and when i see blue behind it without any reason it just blow me away lol
2. too much "you need to do each of this" in each turn, why not make a simple log that tell "this <insert city name or sector> is doing nothing" or simple notification each turn if we forget to do something in a section
3. the charity pop-up thing, referencing to some kinda GameObject, maybe you need to fix that

maybe that's about it.....i just feel "heavy" only from 2 turn, check and re-check every sector if they're really doing something, best of luck to you mate, sorry English is not my first language XD
@belowparallel-ian When I remake the game I plan on going 3D and proceduraly generating the cities. That way the amount of sectors can be chosen for each session
@darkgrisen Yeah I had planned on doing a lot more for instructions, but I ran out of time.
@netherlab I had been planning on doing little bars since the beginning, I'm still not sure why I didn't. Though you should be glad to know that when I remake it I plan on having a lot of visual representation, both obvious and subtle.
@wskilljoy Thanks!
@koemeterion I'm glad you like it! I would love to keep working on it, but instead I'm gonna completely remake it. There are some issues in the code structure and so many things I want to change, it'll be easier than fixing it.
@keilazu I had planned on doing a wooden background, as if it were a map sitting on a desk, I just never got around to it.
I would have loved it if I'd had time to get a log or some way to lesson the amount of needed work each turn.
Yeah I'm not really sure what causes that. I would have liked to fix it but time constraints (again)
...Yay, volume settings and good music!
...It would be nice to have some indication from the map what I am doing in each district, there are a lot of them to keep track of. Also, maybe some indication of what each of the numbers mean.
...Is the crime rate how much the crime level increases by? What happens when it increases?
The breaking news just told me that a factory has gone bankrupt in (unityengine.gameobject). Interesting, I don’t know where that is. Also, what does a factory closing mean for the game? More crime is my guess.
...I have no public opinion, and have not for three turns, but I haven’t lost? It just keeps warning me that I will be replaced…. Now the game ends when I ran out of money. Does the low opinion just drain my money?
Overall I really like the concept that you are going for. It makes sense with regards to the theme, and seems like it would be quite the interesting challenge with a little more polish on the interface. However the interface has no good indicators of what effect different actions will have on the state of the world, and my random guessing (more police in places with high crime rates, fight in places with high crime levels) ended up with me having a lot of money and no public opinion. That is really the only problem that I had with this game, it wasn’t able to tell me what I needed to do to succeed at it. I think that it is a great game, especially as a first entry into LD, and all that it would have needed to grab my attention for a lot longer is more feedback and interface polish. Great job!
btw the rules say it's OK to make simple bugfixes after the compo. If you wanna upload a new build with a higher default volume (no other changes), you can do that - just edit your post to explain what's different.
I think the fact that people actually like the music is pretty surprsing. It's not something I'd consider myself good at.
Yep crimerate is how much the crimelevel increases everyturn. Definitely could do better explaining what things do what. Not really sure what causes the (unityengine.gameobject) thing but I have an idea what it might be, and if it is that then I'm absolutely blind.
Public opinion was working in the build before this, not sure how I broke it.
@randomnine When I remake the game getting more visual indications is gonna be top priority. I also plan on having the maps being proceduraly generated so that players can choose how many sectors to play with.
I can make bugfixes? Thank god, I must missed that when I went through them
Some points to take notice:
- After choosing an action in each district it would be nice to have a feedback that I already selected an action there. This could be made as simple as changing the district color from red to blue, for example.
- There are lots of numbers in the game and I found a little hard to get a grasp of it all. Maybe using bars to help display info can make it more simple to people understand what's going on.
Overall I enjoyed the game! I think working on the aforementioned aspects would make it even better
I had problems feeling any sense of agency - I would choose things, but got absolutely no feedback on what their results would be, and were. Usually I could watch the numbers change on just one district when I ended my turn, and get some feedback ("yep, cutting a deal increased crime"), but not enough to make any interesting decisions, or answer the obvious questions of how much things cost and how much they helped.
I like little sim/strategy games like this, it's a nice change from most entries. I did enjoy playing it, even if I was confused =).
I had originally planned on having a little exclamation point in sectors that didn't have a selected action. Unfortunately it slipped my mind until the last minutes.
Little bars would be nice and was my original plan. Still not sure why I went for numbers
I don't plan on developing this version any further as it has a lot of underlying issues. Instead I'll be completely remaking it.
@jimbly
I wish I had gone and added a chart to each sector showing how all the variables have changed over each turn.
Glad you enjoyed it!
ill check it out on itch.io
feel free to visit me here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/team-or-greed
The gameplay itself is a bit tedious, there are some UI improvements that would help the game take great strides in playability:
- Don't reset the actions after each round. I wanted to try different settings and have them run for a while to get a feeling for the mechanics but having to click each sector in each round to change the settings takes a lot of patience
- Give the player a chance to get all information on one screen: Current action of each sector, the full report etc. That way they won't have to keep track of all the info in their minds.
- You can do a lot by color coding your cities. Income in the red? Add a red dollar sign next to the city. Crime rate critical? Draw a burglar's mask, color coded for severity.
- If you want to keep your separate report cards, simplify them. Minimize mouse paths and click count. Don't force the player to move across the screen to find the exit button. Let them click anywhere on screen to close the window. It doesn't need to be that large to convey a little bit of information. Just have a small window pop up right next to the city or something.
Finally the music becomes a bit repetitive. Did you use a music generator? Nothing wrong with that, just make sure you spend enough time with it until you find a track that fits your game. Here, I think something with longer, more atmospheric notes might have been more appropriate.
These issues are mainly about ui and usability. I commend you to make a strategy game like that. I would never dare, because tuning it must be really hard. Kudos.
I had toyed around with the idea of having it stay each turn. In the end I went with my personal preference. Definitely wish I'd added an option though.
Yeah I would have loved it if I had time to add in more info for the player. I considered making it a jam submission instead but I had my heart set on doing the compo.
You can actually right click to close most windows. I forgot to add it into the help section of the pause menu.
I actually made the music in Bosca Cieol. I wish I'd spent more time playing around with it. I'd originally planned to have the music slower and melodic. Not really sure how I ended up with something that reminds me of transport tycoon.
I should have most of these issues fixed when I remake it. If it weren't for some family christmas parties I'd be spending this weekend working on procedural generation using Worely Noise to make the cities. That way people can play with as many sectors they want.