Awesome graphics! Great little cutscene at the beginning. The gameplay was a little confusing. Would've liked a small tutorial level.

I liked the visuals, the gameplay was just like chess as described. The lack of instruction was a tiny bit offputting, but being extremely like chess helped offset that. The little cinematics were super cute, and enjoyable. The random storm mechanic seems really underhanded and cheap especially at higher difficulties since there's no real way to play against it imo. The sound effects were SUPER loud compared to the music and made me turn down the volume as far down as I could get it. Great job on the game though, having all my penguins attack a single enemy and completely destroy them felt really satisfying!

Tested on MacOS (Sierra) and the .jar ran just fine.

Loved the beginning cutscene, but was also slightly confused about the goal at first. It seemed like a rescue mission, but after rewatching I see its an argument between purple and black penguins for the castle (Escaping the castle, and we are preventing them from escaping it?). Would have liked a 'replay cutscene' option. Why does the castle eat penguins, why are there lawn mowers? *shrg* I like randomness so I'll go with humor points there. Slightly at a loss about which part applies to the running out of power theme?

Agree with the point about a tutorial mission. I thought my units were the ones on the left at first, causing me to think the game was unresponsive for a few seconds. When I figured out which units were mine, and saw the green squares denoting possible movement action became intuitive. Played on medium difficulty and the lawn mower only rained on 2 of my units during the entire game, so barely noticed the lawn mowers despite playing "Mower Storms" :)

The potential for strategy here is nice, but I did not play test that far. I don't think I lost any units playing on medium, so was not too worried about strategy unfortunately.

The audio is a bit harsh when multiple penguins are attacking per turn.

I really liked the different penguin sprites for each type, the fit each type's namesake and they are distinguishable-enough while not distracting. If strategy is important though I would consider making them slightly more distinguishable at a glance. (Tank has a bigger helmet, ranged maybe a larger slingshot)

The UI is a bit clunky in that it is hard to click the buttons sometimes. Example, "Return to Main Menu" button seems hard to click during gameplay.

It was awesome playing your game, thanks for participating!

@boboman As noted in the description above, we're defining "power" as "military power", which is being weakened by bad weather. Ever tried fighting during a storm?

Amazing game! The game is easy to understand, but there's some fun strategy going on in there! The lawnmowers and fear didn't affect the game much on medium though - didn't even realise what fear is for :)

Was not expecting turn-based strategy games in this jam, but I very much like this one. The hover over statistic display is a nice touch, makes it easy to understand what each piece is/does and how much health is remaining. Overall well put together with the cutscenes / music. I also took most of the attack animations for granted, those really add to the effect as well. Nice work!

Good concept , and nice work !

I finished the game, but i don't understand the mechanics. I think i won, because i killed every enemy penguin, but i only randomly placed my guys. The intro was really cool, an intro for the gameplay would have been great.

The game seems quite complete, so you've done a good job of finishing on time. I'm sure the strategy part is thought through, but i simply did not understand it.

I couldn't really figure out how the game worked :s I did really like the cutscene tho. Definitely the best game involving lawnmowers I've ever seen

As a lover of both turned based strategy games and chess , there's a lot of ideas in this game I like. However, the AI isn't great, which hampers the experience quite a bit. I understand that it's really hard to make good AI in general, especially in this timeframe, but it almost seemed like the AI was just making random moves. I pretty quickly found that moving tanks forward with ranged behind works pretty well, and the AI was completely unresponsive to the tactic. Still, pretty fun and funny.

A really funny game ! With more complex mechanics that it seemed ! Enjoyed it even if a little short. Good work.

Confusing but pretty fun. I think the cutscene was a little too fast to understand (although everyone else seems to have gotten it). Inclusion of lawnmowers was very enjoyable. When I think about Ludum Dare, I think about how there aren't enough lawmower related games. So thank you for this.

I followed the web link but there's no web version there, only the download. Unfortunately, the download isn't working either. I'll have to come back later to check on this.

@shaolin-dave , I guess I didn't really understand what the box meant by "Web". I didn't build a web version but the download page should still work. It works for me.

Wow so impressive with cut-scenes as well :D Really liked this game, but I had no idea what I was doing other than finding forming a solid line was the best attack. I think this could be developed into a peer 2 peer mobile game for sure. Nice work. Though I did not see one lawn mower in the main game :D

Fun game to play with cute cutscenes but the UI was a bit wonky and it took a while before you figured out exactly what to do. A tutorial stage would have been very nice. Though it was very nice to see the diffrent difficulties so you could start on the easier ones and then move upwards. Nice work!

A little fun game to play I really this turn by turn fight system so a great game where I had fun to play ! Good job !

I lik,ed the cute birds, albeit the game seemed a little random

I ran just fine and I even won "Soft" :)

Loved the graphics and the overall style/absurdity. But the game could have used a tutorial as other people mentioned, I kept sending black penguins back to the castle but didn't even find out how to attack with the assassins.

That cutscene is the stuff of legends.

PURPLE? PENGUINS? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, I can't seem to start the game. :( I can get past the cutscene and can even change the difficulty, but when it comes to clicking the Play or Credits buttons, neither work. I have the latest version of Java, too.

Audio is really aggressive on the ear
The game has potential but was quit confusing. Hard to tell difference between different penguins. I ended up moving all my penguins randomly to the left and win.
I would say make the rules simpler and more elegant.

Haha, this game was hilarious! It perfectly captures the struggle penguin soldiers face on a daily basis. The lawnmowers are a perfect metaphor for the effects of humans on the environment, adding in unpredictable variables that the penguin armies can't fully predict or work around.

Or something. Seriously, lawnmowers raining from clouds is great. I didn't mind that I got hit so many times (like every other turn!) because it was just too amusing.

I enjoyed the different units. Once I got a feel for their movement ranges, I was able to use good tactics to destroy the opposition (on Medium). It was satisfying.

Music's really simple but very cute. Some of the sound effects were a bit too loud.

I had fun. Thanks!

@random-storykeeper, What kind of system are you using? I beleive that the game should work on all systems but I wasn't able to test for any unix systems yet. Mac and Windows should run it just fine.

@random-storykeeper and @dracominer There've been other complaints about this, as well. The problem isn't Java, it's the clunky UI (no offense, dracominer, I know you worked hard on that). If the button doesn't work, click it again in a slightly different spot. Best spots are slightly off-center.

Quite enjoyable game. Not sure I'm a great fun of lawnmower storms, but I dig the tactical part a lot. Really liked the intro (although I'm not sure what exactly happened there :D ).

I think the problem with clicking is that it registers your mouse as being above where it actually is? So you have to click below things to actually click on them, which makes the 'back to main menu' button impossible to click. Outside of that, though, really good presentation on the game, the UI was really helpful. The opening, too, helps to give the game a coherent theming art-wise.

Standing ovation for your game!
The intro is crazy good, and the music fits so well XD
After 3 games, I understood nothing of the mechanics, but I place my soldiers in a "kind of logical" way and it works, so seems fine to me :D
The paint-like graphics give a strong identity to the game, and that's no easy thing to do! Well played ;)

On of my favorite entries in this Jam

The intro of the game is a really good idea and is really cute. However a little tutorial would have been appreciated because I didn't understand all the game mechanics, I just moved forward the penguins randomly and I won. The art is very cool though.

Very unusual game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYbvh0qo8Vs