The game is quite interesting. Especially that in first few seconds there are new functions and tutorials appearing. But, as for me, It is not very easy to understand what to do at first launch

I agree with last coment. Game is REALLY interesting. I don't think the tutorials are clear enough tho. Also, the text on yout itch.io page is too bright on an already bright color page, so its kinda hard to read. I'll make sure to play it again latter. Congrats on the game, you made something awesome!

P.S: SFX scared the crap out of me at the end.

The game is difficult to understand as what erendelous said, there isn't any clear indication what to do other than telling the controls. This is probably a game where it requires a more extensive tutorial to how everything works. Give a chance for the player to do something first, like spawn a worker without the need of a timer yet, assign your worker to get food, etc. Afterwards, the real game will begin. Nice work though, I like the art style, I like the theme of it being very barren, I like the design of the monster, the mechanics work properly as I didn't encounter any bugs. So good work!

I agree with the above comment definitely needs some time for the player to under stand and read everything, but fun once you get the hang of it. Also top notch sound effects

I also agree, haha. It is quite difficult to understand.

Yeah the onboarding/tutorial can definitely be improved. It was one of the toughest problems I had with the game, as the mechanics are a bit hard to explain and I didn't have enough time to fully flesh out the tutorial. In a post-compo version, I will definitely look into the tutorial and the endgame as things to improve.

The tutorials are usually not what I'm looking at while struggling to progress, and go away by the time I think to check. The need and food numbers were not vary explicit in what they did or how you changed them. The large monster is nice, but I assumed I was controlling them at first, the tiny people do not stand out very well if you aren't looking for them.

It was good, but couldnt get pass the workshop, and then i quit because the music was kinda of annoying but, it looked cool and im sure it was good

Your game has an excellent aesthetic, thought its not very clear how you are supposed to obtain your 50 required food. The sound design is also incredible, I just would have loved to see a more thorough tutorial. It's excellent work for a game jam though, great job!

A really original idea, definitely hard though! I did manage to get a hospital in thought haha

Really cool concept. I liked running around and grabbing people and putting them where they were needed, very field general feel. The font was a bit tough to read and I didn't have any audio (before or after clicking the button that mentioned no audio). Quite a nice game, good work!

It's a little complex for me (I'm not good at RTS games :slight_frown:), but even from what I played I can tell that a lot of effort went into making a set of complex rules that demand a lot of micromanagement. From what I did play, it was still fun. Great job for making not only an in-game tutorial, but also for putting hints on the bottom of the page. I still didn't get very far, but they helped me get a lot further than just doing it on my own!

Nice pixel art style, but I definitely did have a hard time figuring out the controls and how to get the first radio tower constructed. It seems like I wasn't able to move vertically when holding space to grab it, for some reason.

I loved this entry! :smile: Great concept, and very good execution. My only gripes are how quickly the difficulty scales (doesn't leave a lot of room for experimentation), and the choice in font(letters squish together and are unreadable).

Lot of fun to play, and after a bit of messing around found it easy to pick up and play. Art was also good, really liked the design on the monster. I did have a weird bug though where the ui would overlay on itself and become illegible , most often this was with the workbench ui.

Killer job on the artwork and audio! Like others have mentioned, I just wish I had a better understanding of what I was doing :( The tutorial suggestions still left me a bit confused.

I loved the voice sound effects, and the game had a surprising amount of depth for a Ludum Dare entry. Great job!

Not gonna lie maybe its just that I am a little more tired than I thought I was but I had a really hard time figuring out what was going on in this game. I got it eventually, but still it was a little consufsing.

This was really hard. Kinda wished you had used a clearer font as well. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the mechanics but how hard they scaled up. I feel like there is a real good idea here.

You managed to include a lot of features and a tutorial. Quite a feat! I really liked the sound effects, especially the responses by the people("Aye aye, sir" 😂). The difficulty is a little high but the mechanics are fair. At first I didn't realize the change in the soundtrack indicated that the monster was about to feed (30s warning). Seems like it could use a more obvious visual cue than just the feeding time flashing in red.

All in all, a super well made game in 48 hours!

very nice game! love the art and the audio

in my eyes it is a little to hard - i keep getting eaten before i get in the flow

it kept saying to build a building with space but it did nothing?

An enjoyable jam game with a lot of progression and features built into it! You did well to create something so vast in the time frame, and it of course fits the theme well. Well done!

Took me a while, but good fun once I worked it out. Excellent graphics and sound.

@paperjack You need to go the item generated by the workshop (table) and hold space to drag it to a building spot.

Also thanks to everyone who played :heart:

The game is pretty interesting but it really took me a while to understand what is happening and what am I supposed to do. Putting a names beside buildings would help a lot since it is quite hard to guess what building is what and what is does.

Took me 2 failed attempts (~20 seconds) to fully understand the game mechanics, but it was worth it ! The game is really fun and well polished ! Good job !

Love the voices

i think characters can be a little bit big maybe. but it is good anyway

Hey, I spent a while on this but I don't think I got the "trick"... if I assign someone to the tower then a new person will come, but it's too slow by the 3rd round. What's the dominant strategy to get kick-started?

(I really love it though - it has me hooked!)

@mrspeaker What I found works is, build a tower -> dispenser -> tower. Then there will be a time/round where you need to consistently send stressed out workers to the dispensers :D

Glad you enjoyed the game! <3

this is awesome! especially love the audio

The fact that a machine that eviscerates people to offer their flesh to an eldritch abomination makes a "ping!" that I'm pretty sure you recorded from your microwave is just the cherry on top. Great stuff!

The game has a lot of potential. really fun to play

Needed few plays to get to know what is doing what. Probably opening building menu should pause time flow. Beside that quite fun game nothing to complain about. Nice graphics, music and mechanics.

Cool concept! Thanks so much for bringing it by the stream!

I played this for about an hour before it crashed. It was a good hour.

So this is a great mix of mechanics and more narrative weight working together with the theme of the jam. At first I wasn't feeling it and I was about to give up, because the alien's hunger was tuned too high between rounds. But then I stopped thinking of the people as people and it all came together with a sadistic click. Or a microwave *bing* as the game itself provides.

This isn't the puzzle game I originally concluded it was when I figured there is an almost dictated order of constructing buildings. As a quick aside here it may be a good idea to limit the first building choice to only a propaganda tower for this reason to smooth out the difficulty. Instead it's a single player, economic match of Starcraft only the people are the economy you manage. There is a lot of micro here. You're scurrying around scooping up units with space bar and then putting out fires by using them on empty production buildings. Which mostly produce more units to scurry around micromanaging.

In my last round before the game crashed I had so many people I wasn't even paying attention to the food meter anymore. The food processors (bing!) were just another building that I had to keep close to 100% uptime on production runs. It made me feel like a monster, but then that feeling deepened and I realized that the alien in the sky had just made this business as usual. Shoving someone into a food processor to feed the beast in the sky was now Tuesday.


A few things, good and bad:

I don't like have fussy the game is on registering inputs on grabbing followers and assigning them. It never felt smooth.

The sound effects were fantastic and were my favorite part of the game outside of the experience of running a human slaughter house.

I wish there was a round cycle on the screen to show how many times the alien has fed.

The guy saying "You need me where?" started to sound like "You need me rare" as time went on which was hilariously dark to me.

I'm not sure if having the player move a person around instead of an RTS mouse interface is the best decision. I do mean this precisely as I'm saying it though: I'm not sure. It might be better how it is but it's worth bringing up.

Lastly I thought another twisted moment was when I started prioritizing stressed people to go into the food processors. They were just done working and needed to relax--then off into the machine to become paste. The game was really successful in making the scenario so messed up.

@thisismyjam Thanks for playing and for the really thought out review! I agree with your thoughts - given more time a more streamlined tutorial/onboarding with a more limited set of buildings would probably be the first thing I add.

I loved the fact that as you noticed, it made the 'sacrificing' routine! That was an intentional part of my design - hence the 'oppressive' font aesthetic and the 'march' like music.

The inputs as you said are a bit touch and go. I was thinking of adding a 'glow'/'border' if someone is selected/near enough to be called, but lack of time, etc.

The controls were actually a deliberate decision of mine - I wanted to add the frantic feeling of having to move around and trying to do all these things at once very directly, as if you're some sort of dictator whipping slaves to their death and just using them mercilessly :laughing:

Thanks for again for playing! It looks like I was able to convey the main mood that I wanted to bring out and the franticness of it! If I release a post-compo version I'll definitely include what you mentioned, as I believe they are valid points.

Nice game

I like the idea of running around and physically telling people what to do. That being said, their timers are waay too short, so you're just constantly babysitting them.

I like the pixel art. really hard though...

litle bit confusing but after i got it, nice game

So very nice for a game made in just two days! I would have really liked to see the cavalry kill that alien :wink:

This game is really fun, probably the longest game a have played in this jam. I think I have make a perpetual human meat production machine while like this.
Hearing the people saying "Aye aye" then run into the grinder and screaming is cool.
The sound effect and the 8bit Bgm is also great. I love this game.

First of, the sound effects were really well made. The grinder will give me nightmares :p

The gameplay was a bit confusing to me because I didn't understand how to attract new people into my camp and yet I needed food so I sacrificed all the workers but no more came. Some sort of tutorial would be very nice to have as you stated in the description.

The controls were interesting because instead of a traditional RTS game you actually played in the game as a character and you felt more responsible when killing people for food than you would have if you had implemented the standard box selection system.

Well made game with a lot of content. :smile: