Baby Boom Balance by DevEmil

[raw]
made by DevEmil for LD 42 (JAM)

Baby Boom Balance.png

About Baby Boom Balance

'Baby boom Balance' is a city builder with limited space!

The balancing of food, money and population is key. Upgrade the technology of birth control or make your populace more happy so the birth rate stays down.

Gameplay

Your folk needs houses to live in, but if they build too many, you will run out of space for food production and free time activity buildings.

Bring the rate of birth to a sustainable level, to set an end to the vicious consumption of space!

Screenshots

babyboom1.png babyboom3.png babyboom2.png

Our Jam

The team, consisting of @zmoa and me, now holding the name 'Green Acorn Studios', had its second game jam and generally its second game with LD42. You can follow us on twitter here: https://twitter.com/GreenAcornTM . @zmoa designed most of the art for the game with the program 'Marmoset Hexels 3'. After taking advantage of the Game Maker Promotion in the last jam, we now used Unity as our engine for the jam. Unfortunately, the time didn't suffice for decent sounds, but I made a little soundtrack on the piano. Although we had to leave a few features on the road, we are quite happy with the outcome and proud to present you: 'Baby Boom Balance'.

Ratings

Overall 528th 3.442⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 909th 2.904⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 403th 3.365⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 455th 3.673⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 446th 3.654⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 441th 3.173⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 301th 3.174⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 556th 3.167⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 26🗨️

Feedback

afendar
15. Aug 2018 · 15:26 UTC
A good little mechanics. Too bad the game did not have time to finish properly. The graphics are pretty cool and the music is simple but does the job anyway. Good work.
Ernest McCracken
15. Aug 2018 · 15:45 UTC
I'm digging the graphics!
AguaHervida
15. Aug 2018 · 17:12 UTC
Overall: The game is almost complete, but it bothers me a bit not being able to start it again, there is no title screen in the game, a menu or a pause. Despite that, the gameplay and mechanics are practically there, and it is quite intuitive despite not having a tutorial in game. The researches seem to be always in progress and never go from there unless the player buys another one and I could not see what they did once I had them in my possession. The game is kind of repetitive, the space where farms and parks are put could be changed a little every new game to make it less recurrent. It is also not very clear how to win or lose, but I have managed to reach both scenarios.

Fun: While I had fun playing it, it was not a big deal, I just felt like playing one old game from the internet, I just was distributing resources.

Innovation: I just saw a resource distribution game, I did not feel that space was something that really mattered in the game.

Theme: As I said in innovation, you do not feel the theme ‘running out of space’ involved in the game although it is a city and space and resources are managed, it does not feel like space plays an important role as the city gets smaller.

Graphics: I loved everything looks very good, it is a pity that because of the distance from the camera the player is not able to fully appreciate the art, fortunately you guys took some screenshots you guys or it would not have been the same. Having said that, the art of the game feels different than the than the one in the UI.

Audio: For it to be a single song, it does what it has to do, it also feels good and does not feel repetitive, too bad the time didn’t help in being able to have a wider repertoire.

Humor: Something else causes grace, such as the fact that the most expensive game is contraceptive methods and that evolving it makes a more civilized society, but it is not something that produces much laughter (at least for me).

Mood: Above all, music combined with art and play simply feels good, it is relaxing even when the game it is accelerated at its maximum, everything seems to fall in sync with the rest, it is a pity that you could not done it completely.

Without adding more, it is great that you guys have completed all this in just 72 hours and being just 2 people. Keep this up, for the next game try to make a more specific scope study so that you know that you can really complete the game in the given time. I hope to see you guys in the future.
🎤 DevEmil
15. Aug 2018 · 18:58 UTC
Dear @aguahervida (are you spanish? I speak spanish, haha :D )
Thank you for your detailed feedback, we appreciate it a lot!

Many things you talked about, we have considered, but just didn't have the time to implement. A title screen, a decent endscreen and a tutorial and free camera movement & zoom were among them. And we also barely had time to do any audio, which would have improved the quality of the game also quite a bit and not to mention all the polishing that the game could've used.
For the graphics, our artist @zmoa did his best to draw a nice background picture and made really good images for the buildings, however he had been busy for quite some time wherefore I had to do the UI graphics, which resulted in.. well... the disparity you mentioned.
I am sorry that you didn't like the humor of the game, but well, it's everyone's.

Of course the game has many flaws and shortcomings, but for the fact, that this has been our second game we ever made and we used unity for the first time, we are actually quite happy with the outcome.
Thanks again for your long text and see you hopefully!
Maxim Dovgosheya
16. Aug 2018 · 08:26 UTC
Nice gpraphics!
khofez
20. Aug 2018 · 16:24 UTC
Great game!
ZuhairGhias
20. Aug 2018 · 16:31 UTC
Great Idea. The mechanics need more tweaking.
🎤 DevEmil
20. Aug 2018 · 16:57 UTC
@maxim-dovgosheya @khofez @zuhairghias thanks for your feedback, we appreciate it and are glad you liked it!
folex70
20. Aug 2018 · 17:01 UTC
congratulations for this work. good game!
Adam Saudagar
20. Aug 2018 · 17:25 UTC
Good take on the theme, the game was good, but took a little time figuring out what things did what, you should have wrote what each building does exactly... But overall fun game

Good job!!!
Ely Shaffir
20. Aug 2018 · 17:30 UTC
Great idea, original. missing some content but it's ludum dare so pretty good. shame it lasted so little, i liked it!
AwesomeAlliterationAlliance
20. Aug 2018 · 20:00 UTC
I really like the idea of this entry! the game feels almost finished, the graphics and the audio are great. A little bit of information about how the things you build affect the game would be very nice to have. I wasn't sure what the farms and the parks did. I build many of them because i thought my people needed food and fun, but suddenly I went gameover. I didn't quite understand what made the people unhappy and I could not change the taxe.
With a bit more polishing this could be really great, keep it up!
🎤 DevEmil
20. Aug 2018 · 20:06 UTC
@folex70 @adam-saudagar @ely-shaffir Thanks for your feedback, glad you liked our game!

@awesomealliterationalliance Nice name, haha! Yeah, the game definetely lacks a tutorial, it was on our to-do list, but we literally finished on the last minutes. Parks increase people's happiness and farms produce food.
When your people don't have any food, they become unhappy and each farm only provides food for like 6 people. This is why you have to build a lot of farms at first! Taxes also make your people unhappy and when they are already unhappy, you cannot set any taxes, because they would lower the happiness to a negative value.

The game could defnitely be improved a lot, maybe we are gonna do that some day, but we are happy anyways, that by the end of the jam, we brought it to a playable state.
AwesomeAlliterationAlliance
20. Aug 2018 · 20:15 UTC
@devemil I'ts an unwritten rule that we have to play any game with an alliteration that we can find. So your alliteration has been approved. :D
Thanks for the information, I will give it another try!
🎤 DevEmil
20. Aug 2018 · 20:23 UTC
@awesomealliterationalliance Hahaha, that's awesome! I knew that alliterations are catchy! :DDD
AnastasiaTS
20. Aug 2018 · 20:40 UTC
I've tried to play it, but my computer won't launch the game. Windows says it can not be executed on my PC. Am I the only one having this issue ?
🎤 DevEmil
20. Aug 2018 · 20:43 UTC
@anastasiats hmm apparently yes. Do you have a windows?
AnastasiaTS
20. Aug 2018 · 20:46 UTC
@devemil Yes, I have Windows 10. I don't see why it does not work, other games launch without any problem
erikiene
20. Aug 2018 · 21:31 UTC
Pretty cool game! As other comments have already pointed out, it could do with a bit of polish in terms of making all functionality work (tax slider not functioning?) and maybe a little more intuitive feedback system to let the player know why the game ended when it ended. Other than that - really dig the visuals, the audio fit the setting and a great take on the theme. Good work, people!
Maksime
20. Aug 2018 · 21:36 UTC
The game could definitely use a title screen / pause menu / restart button on game over.

And a tutorial should be there too, if not in the game because you ran out of time, at least in the description of your game here :slight_smile:

I played for like 5 minutes, placing farms and parks randomly, watching the happiness bar go from "neutral" to "suicidal" without knowing what I did wrong.

Place more parks ? Nope.
More farms ? Nope.

And the defeat reason is not very obvious, I had no idea I was about to loose when I did.

On the other hand, the graphics are simple but effective, works very well with the game.

The music is simple, yes, but relaxing enough to fit your game.

Overall it's not bad, it just needs some polishing here and there.

Add this to a new version I can try! :slight_smile:
Wizard
21. Aug 2018 · 21:20 UTC
Pretty interesting concept. The gameplay was good and I really dig the graphics. However I didn't really understand how some of the mechanics work, The taxes for example would not increase. A tutorial or some tooltips would go a long way to helping with this. Also a minor thing but it would be nice to move the camera a bit. Overall a pretty good game with nice graphics and aesthetics and a nice bit of piano for good measure.