Zen Demiurgy by mortus
Zen Demiurgy is a meditative game about creating the world for the people you don't control.

Play on itch.io (Unity WebGL or Windows downloadable)
Post-compo edit: added the mute music button
:: CONTROLS ::
M - mute music
O - overview the map
Space - create/place new tile
Q/E/Mouse Wheel - rotate tile
WASD/Arrows - move around the map
:: INSTRUCTIONS ::
You can only place a new tile if all of its borders match the surrounding tiles' borders.
Build paths to the boxes for the scouts to collect. Types of boxes: Population - adds one unit. Exploration - places tiles around itself. Tools - adds 1 toolbox (needed to build town). Tiles - more tiles for you to place. Mystery - one of the above randomly.
Scouts won't go too far away from the town, to build more towns you need to gather tools. New towns increase the population by 1.
You get score: 1 point for each tile placed; 5 points for every unit; 5 points for every town.
Please share your top score (bottom-right corner of the screen)!
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/zen-demiurgy |
Ratings
| Overall | 9th | 4.36⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 11th | 4.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 34th | 4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 106th | 3.96⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 134th | 4.2⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 115th | 3.75⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 423th | 2.474⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 27th | 4.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
I like the tile-board game style and the way you need all type of boxes (at a time, I neglected tools, and nobody goes to new crates because their were too far from towns...)
score: 113.
I really enjoyed this game, the UI could use a bit of work as the control with keyboard + mouse is always something wonky for me, but this didn't remove any of my enjoyment!
My best score was only 42 during my first tries but I'm sure I'll be back to it and try to do better!
(You can see me playing this game for the first time on the vod https://youtu.be/_Upt3PIzndo?t=2h34m11s )
Scouts are a little bit better in a post-compo version that's downloadable at the bottom of an itch.io page. They are still dumb (they're supposed to be), but they find crates much faster usually. It also has an option to play with mouse only, without using keyboard, so check it out if you liked the game.
My only complaint would the the controls. Rotating tiles did not work particularly well unless my cursors was hovering over the tile. Which is even less excusable when considering that the tile was not always placed at the location I had my cursors if I was trying to place a tile at the edged of the screen. Some other way to move across the map than WASD would probably help too, because I primarly used my mouse for the gameplay, so I ended up forgetting about WASD a few times. Maybe some way to drag yourself around the map with the mouse would be a good alternative.
Either way though, aside from the controls, I felt everything in this game was well done. The graphcis are nice and meld well with the sounds. Just hands down an overall enjoyable experience.
I can't stop playing...
**EDIT**
Oh I finally realized to use the arrow keys and to rotate the pieces... many more possibilities...
:)
I scored 127 and seeing the other comments I think I can be pretty glad of it.
Graphics are quite simple but it corresponds to the game and the environment. The concept is really good and I don't know how many parties I did but wow ! really cool game.
The sound loop is really effective and not annoying at all. I think I played like 30 or 40 minutes of your game because I wanted to beat my previous score that was 99 and I was frustrated not to get 100 points :D
Really cool game.
One last thing, I got stuck couple of time, the units were not moving from the home town at the beginning so maybe add a little menu to restart a game would be cool, as you don't have to Alt-F4 and relaunch the game :)
Some thing I thought while playing, it could be iunteresting to have some kind of capability to "sacrifice" a group to get an item closer so another group can pick it up. It's really frustrating not to be able to pick something just because the groupe is coming back to town. So maybe "sacrificing a group" could be intersesting as it remove points but keep the player going
Really cool game buddy, I think it's one of the game (if not THE ONE) I enjoyed most !
If you wanna update it and continue develping it I would be pleased to test it !
See ya' !
also had some issues with tiles placing from pressing space to get a tile to place if it was in a valid place to drop it when trying to bring out the tile.
I liked the grapichs. Cool idea of mechanics :)
The controls are a little hybrid I must say, it's strange having to press space each time to call the next tile.. the full mouse gameplay is really welcomed though!
I also find that the UI needs some more polish. Sometimes we can't see it becaused it is mixed within the land. Definitely needs a background or something.
It is hard to see which crate does what, and also to know if they are in the range of scouts. Could be nice to have a circle around each city to indicate to which range the scouts can move.
To conclude, it's really nitpicking remarks but I prefer to tell you cause your game really has potential. It's still a great work for a jam, and with some more polish, it could really become a sort of fast paced Civilization (like Polytopia on mobile). Well done!
@mwcz I REALLY wanted to have birds in the game and was quite happy I've managed to add them in the last hour. Glad that you've liked them!
Congratulations! Great job!
I really liked this one, especially the artstyle and the carcasonne-like gameplay, but it seems to get a bit monotone after a while. I think it would be nice to have a second slot for another puzzle piece so you would have more opportunities. Or maybe a crate that gives you a needed tile or lets you remove an unwanted tile. Another thing I would like to see is a reward (f.e. in points) for filling the plane so the motivation is higher to not just build to the boxes (a limited view range could help here as well).
All in all I just can say: Nice Work!
Edit: It would also be nice to have a button which shows the current reachable places. Currently I'm sometimes not sure if a box is connected or not. Thanks again for building this game, I'm really having fun here^^
Only issues: missing restart menu, tile not under visible cursor (at least in WebGL build), hard to see which box is which bonus (noticed it only after several games),
Some things I'd change for more relaxing gameplay: the unknown on how far the scouts will explore is a bit frustrating sometimes, and I'm not sure how the new-town mechanic works either
My best score is ~~98~~ 116. So far :)
@merlin Thanks for a good feedback, actually all of those features are present in a post-compo version I'm working on right now.
@meenners Yes, you can rotate the tiles using the mouse wheel or Q/E buttons.
@bajarymi I believe that bug is fixed for the post-compo version currently available at the bottom of the page. Not sure though (definitely fixed in a current version I'm working on right now).
@balthazaar There's a downloadable post-compo version at the bottom of the game's page which has the restart button, it can also be played with mouse only and doesn't pause in background.