Greedy Merchants by jlreymendez

In the chaotic sea of Peronia merchants and pirates fight to get the biggest treassure. No one is safe in this short deathmatch!!
Crash your enemies and collect as many points as you can.
Try to get as many coins as you can in a short period of time to get points... but don't be so greedy!
* You don´t want to be the rich guy in a land of pirates! * :skull_crossbones:

Check out the artists behind the game: Credits
| HTML5 (web) | https://jlreymendez.itch.io/greedy-merchants |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/greedy-merchants |
Ratings
| Overall | 426th | 3.586⭐ | 112🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 447th | 3.45⭐ | 112🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 389th | 3.377⭐ | 112🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 327th | 3.732⭐ | 112🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 548th | 2.967⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 530th | 3.332⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 88🗳️ | 103🗨️ |
Great job!
Arts and sounds are from free sources, check out the credits to find them. :)
It's fun to play =)
@Talia Take it if you want it, but I don't recommend it.. haha! Thanks for playing!
Something along the lines of this, for example...

@colossal-gnome Yeah, shouldn't be too hard, but yes the arrows kind of blend with the islands behind it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Turning is hard until you get use to it. We did some improvements to it but it is still sometimes difficult.
@exezin you are a very capable pirate then.. arrr! Thanks for playing!
@koemeterion we are glad you like it. Thanks!
Very cool game! Took me a second to get how one turns into a white-flag ship and a pirate. Its really fun. Would accually love to play this at a lan-party.
Calming, fun music and I absolutly love the 'ARRGH!' :smile:
The graphics were nice aswell, especially the little horse on the flag.
What can I say, I got to be a pirate. Loved it!
Nice work!
Nos vemos el martes! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
#Arrgh
See you soon @versatile-box and thanks for stoping by and playing!
Played more than I expected! :D
There is a way to win although it might be counter intuitive. The levels or missions idea is something we might do, but we might think of it as a multiplayer game. We will see.. Thanks again!
I loved how you played around with the weight idea. I just think that there should be a way to "deposit" or drop the coins (instead of just hiding from the pirate in a corner hehe). I loved this. Please continue to work on it.
Thanks for playing @owc! The AI can be improved a lot yet, but we are happy with what we got in the allotted time.
Loved the audio and the "Aaarrr" !
Maybe highlight the player's ship, it tends to be confusing when you lose it.
Thanks @sahilts !!! Yes, we know that the menu is something we should correct.
Thanks @exnihilo for the review. Maybe we should check the balance as you recomend ;).
@xahell we also loved the "Awrrr!" You advice about highlighing the player is very useful!
I will check your game @kevin-mooney!! Thanks a lot for your review!!!
At first I sometimes got stuck on the islands, but after a while I got more used to it and didnt crash that often
And maybe the respawning could have happened at the same point where you died, so you didnt have to search the screen for your ship again ( or the above mentioned highlight either all the time or only when respawning at a different location )
To the game itself - amazing! Nice concept, great sounds/music, great artstyle, easy to understand the mechanics and I like how good the AI is! Very nice! I like it a lot! :)
Thanks for playing @likirus! There is a way of winning the game so keep at it and think of the theme. Also thanks for your feedback on the controls and the visibility!
Thanks for the kind words@x-budsterized-x! And yes @atlasarg should put the game on his profile thanks for reminding him.. ;)
We are glad that you like it @georgebgreen! We are starting to think about how to move this game forward. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thank you for your feedback @mambojambo! Yes, totally true we need to review the game design variables and maybe add a few mechanics to help the merchants out. But as you said we did have little time to do it, in fact it was just the last thing we did and with only a few hours to test it. We might go back and make a better playtest and analyze it soon.
If you need more deep info, you can summon me here. Hope I can help you with this feedback. Also, if possible check my game too.
We will certainly test your game!
"The more you have, the worse it is" @lamossus, but yeah if this were to turn into a full game we would need to add some balance and maybe some mechanics to help those merchants out. Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!
Maybe the speed can be relative to the number of gold of each boat (not only the extremes).
Nice mood.
Thanks for playing and sharing your ideas @dunin! We might play around with that relative speed idea.
Thanks @angelonians! Art is from Kenney. Check it out at http://kenney.nl
Also @mik3: I recognised the art style immediately. They got the graphics from @Kenney - https://kenney.nl/assets/pirate-pack
This is totally allowed in the JAM rules, but getting a high score for Kenney's graphics assets while Kenney is possibly also competing in this LD would be a dick move. So everybody has done the right thing here.
Also thanks for sharin @Kenney 's profile i wasn't aware he had participated on previous ludum's. That's awesome! Personal thanks to him!
Also, could you make it so that going around edges is a little bit easier?
Can't wait to see this game with local multiplayer mode (but the pace needs to be faster) :)
I'm only a bit upset because I died a bit too many times when trying to take a turn in some paths that were not next to walls. My timing was probably off half of the time, but still, I think that hitboxes could have been a bit more lenient.
Well, that was pretty much all I wanted to say about it. This would be a great multiplayer game as well, as some people have remarked before. Anyhow, [in behalf of my team](twitter.com/whalesangames), congratulations on making a very inspiring game. Cheers! :whale:
Thanks @cliff-lee-cl! Faster pacing? I think we agree with you, once you get use to the current speed it might be a bit to slow.
Thanks for your kind words @mosky! Your feedback is appreciated. Sorry for the bad implementation of the controls, we had a design different to pacman in mind for them but we couldn't execute it very well in the given time. We will certainly fix them in later versions, as we also add the very much acclaimed multiplayer. Is your twitter link correct? it takes me to an empty search.
Btw a boat got stuck in one of the matches lol.

Your feedback is appreciated @cubeeo! The points are achieved via a combinations of coins at the end of the game and ships sunk.
There is two points that may improve the game-feel in my opinion. First, the help screen is not visible enough, I missed it until I saw it on your screen-shot. Second, we often miss our turns by taking it too early, as A player I expected that if the ship's bow was on a case we can turn, instead the midle of the ship as to be on the case.
Thanks @lucas-ferrantelli! We are glad people are enjoying it!
Thanks @chipmonkey! Yeah, that is the only strategy that will work for this version. We wanted to make the theme feel very strong like that. But in the future we want to balance it a bit more for multiplayer, feel free to drop any ideas that you might have.
Thanks for your feedback @arron-fowler! Although we didn't create the sounds (reason why we opt out of that category) we did put some effort into selecting the right audios to give the correct feeling, that people are enjoying it makes us very happy! Stay tuned maybe the multiplayer version will pick your interest a bit more.
I will certainly play your game before the ludum is over.
Well done! :clap:
I am a bit confused on the mechanics. I get the basics after reading the in game text, but the finer details I still don't get. Why are the significance of the two scores? How much do I get/lose from taking ships? I tried to watch the scores to figure it out, but it was difficult remembering my score and the opponent's score while colliding and doing the math real time during play. It looks like if my ship is taken I lose 10 of the flag and 5 of the coin. What is taken of the opponent's gold?
Minor bug: If I chose a non-red color (not the first option), I continue the game and press start with the red color selected I get my old color.
I may just suck at playing games, but I also find myself getting caught on walls which was pretty frustrating. Maybe it could just preserve the last direction for the next intersection and not turn toward walls?
Anyway, awesome game.
Come check out my game if you like!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
Your feedback is appreciated @shyguy567! The scoring works like this: you get many points for sinking ships and a few for each coin you have. The thing is that when you sink a ship you steal coins from them so they lose some more points and you earn some more points (in addition to the sinking scoring). Sinking ships is by far the most effective in this version. Also thanks for reporting that bug!
Thanks @illabom! We are glad you liked it. I will add your game to my list, I am trying to play the games of everyone that left feedback here.
Thanks for the feedback and for streaming your gameplay @creamybacon2!
Al principio no entendía muy bien cómo podía ganar si al mismo tiempo no debía tener más monedas, pero luego me di cuenta de que el contador de monedas es independiente del de puntos. Siento que no es fácil notarlo bien al principio porque estar pendiente de los números y al mismo tiempo de la acción no es fácil. Sugeriría algún tipo de indicador que saliera encima o debajo del barco al obtener o perder puntos/monedas. Por ejemplo: que al tomar una moneda, apareciera +2/+1 (junto a los símbolos de puntos/monedas), de modo que sea claro que se ganaron 2 puntos y 1 moneda, o que al ser hundido apareciera -X/-Y. No sé si me explico bien.
También sugeriría limitar el control del jugador de modo que no pueda dar curvas si no está en una intersección. Muchas veces me atasqué porque giraba antes de tiempo, no sé si por costumbre de otros juegos como Pac-Man (donde el personaje sólo gira en las intersecciones).
En general, creo que es una entrada divertida :)
estamos viendo la posibilidad de hacer una version multiplayer en un futuro cercano, asi que espera novedades!
Gracias de nuevo!
El hecho de estar constantemente cambiando entre mercader y pirata es genial y le da dinamismo a las partidas; una generación de mapas aleatorios sumaria bastante creo, haciendo cada partida unica.
Creo que tienen una base solida como para incorporarle un montón de cosas y armar un lindo party game, que creo que es el lado a donde tiene que apuntar el juego.
Felicitaciones!
ah, casi me olvido, excelente integración de los sonidos!
La musica, el arte y el estilo pacman con tema de piratas le dan un toque original a todo el juego, se siente pulido. Increible como armaste AI en dos dias.
Gracias @sirjupitron! Somos tres programadores en el equipo así que tuvimos suficiente tiempo para dedicarle a la AI, que a pesar de sus errores y simplezas logramos algo que funciona bien.