Catastrophic Cities by Drauthius
Introduction
A game where you are the leading politician, deciding on which areas the budget will be spent. The city grows without you being able to control it, and so does your headache.
Instructions
Use your budget and place it on four different areas: * Industry
Use your budget to stimulate new companies and factories to move into your city. This will increase the number of jobs, but result in a small hit to your approval rating, due to all the pollution.
Fire brigade
Fight fire with the fire fighters. Build a fire station, and start redirecting money to them. Note: The amount of money you can sink in it depends on the number of built and usable (i.e. non-burning and non-diseased) stations your city currently has. Just building a station will not be enough for them to do their job!
Police
Fight criminals with the police force. Build a police station, and start redirecting money to them. Note: The amount of money you can sink in it depends on the number of built and usable (i.e. non-burning and non-diseased) stations your city currently has. Just building a station will not be enough for them to do their job!
Health care
Fight disease with the medical staff. Build a hospital, and start redirecting money to them. Note: The amount of money you can sink in it depends on the number of built and usable (i.e. non-burning and non-diseased) hospitals your city currently has. Just building a hospital will not be enough for them to do their job!
Values:
Money
Money is received each turn, and income rate increases with the number of houses in your city.
Approval rate
Decreases when fire, disease, and crime rages freely in your city.
Crime rate
Increases with unemployment and disasters.
Unemployment
Decreases mostly with the number of factories available in the city, but also decreases slightly by building new stations and hospitals.
Apologies
The game is very rough, unpolished, and imbalanced.
Authors
Programmer: Albert Diserholt and Worai Col
Graphics: Sunisa Diserholt
Ratings
| Overall | 572th | 3.456⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 657th | 3.222⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 643th | 3.089⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 614th | 3.4⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 326th | 3.891⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 637th | 2.631⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 886th | 2.181⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 810th | 2.967⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 56🗨️ |
Although you warned me, it is reallly imba :D
Your game looks great, but I have so much trouble trying to figure out what does what - maybe the system works well, maybe the system doesn't - I can't really tell because I can't follow the causality of what's going on on the screen - your text explanation is fine, but noone reads, and the moment-to-moment gameplay relies on feedback to the players.
And then there's the matter of the random builds - do the locations of stations and hospitals etc matter? If they do then I should be able to direct where they go. If not then maybe the graphic you have there doesn't make sense - or it needs to be made clearer that it doesn't matter, that you can see the station putting out fires from any distance, for example.
The icons on the screen aren't really clear - I can understand the fire icon but I can't tell whether my efforts in spending has made any difference. I can't tell if I overspent or underspent on the fire department - I spent, and the fires hasn't gone out.
Then the putting money into things thing - I can't tell what the money has gone to/is going to. I can't tell if I've overspent or underspent - again, feedback to the player on this is needed.
Feels like the dials about spendings should be locked in where they were, having to hit + every turn feel wrong.
Are there goals? Like growing the population? Or keeping bad things down? I can't really tell.
I really liked the graphics and the amount of detail you have put into them. It feels very nice, when the city grows without you placing the buildings manually. Also the user interface and the icons were structured and well made.
### Idea
The idea is very innovative and I haven't seen anything like that before. I like the fact that you have to watch multiple values (money, criminal rate, acceptance rate), and so on.
### Theme
This game suited the theme very well. The more industry you have, the worse it is :-)
### Overall
As you said yourself, the balancing was not good. After a short amount of time I had nearly no fires (or at least I could put them off in one round) and my acceptance rate was constantly at 95% to 100%. For a prototype this is very good and I would have loved if it would be a little harder and if there would be an actual goal :-)
However, after a certain time, it just becomes too easy as I just get more and more money available to throw at arising problems.
The city graphics are lovely, adorable little buildings. The music is just enough to provide atmosphere and fits the game well, but does get grating eventually. It's hard to tell what does what, it feels like maybe improving fire and health decreases unemployment somewhat, but not as much as industry and that crime is constant at 0 unemployment, but i'm not sure what fires and diseases actually do. Also, approval rating sometimes seemed to shift a lot arbitrarily even though I had kept everything down.
Only real comment I have is that I wasn't entirely sure where the income increase was coming from
It'd help alot if the old values perhaps would be remembered when you end a turn, that'd make for faster gameplay and less boring clicking.
Otherwise cool game!
I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work but I wish if there was more informations given to the player such as the % reduction once you build,ect.. We can figure it out after few trials though.
A cool feature you could add in my opinion is to add upgrades to the buildings and/or add new threats overtime.
Aside from that, I loved the game, nicely done.
I was unsure if the location of my buildings played any role. It was annoying to see that my second fire department was built practically next to the first one. I also don't know whether to prioritize building new buildings, or simply spending the money on the departments as they were.
I did see a relation between my spending on each of the 4 factors: I was able to keep crime, unemployment, and health at a very low number and I was still making a profit. So I think the balance was not too bad, but I would've liked a bit more feedback. Every sim player loves graphs :)
Also, nice graphics!
Graphics are great, and the icons are clear. It's easy to gauge your progress at a glance, and is rewarding to see your city grow. I like the UX for the most part, although the text % could be nicely augmented with bars, etc. Anyways, a fantastic game to have been made in a jam!
But fun experience! It really shows promise and a lot of potential. Keep up the great work!