Kingdom By The Sea by Jesse Freeman

[raw]
made by Jesse Freeman for LD34 (JAM)
In Kingdom By The Sea you are the ruler of a small island. It鈥檚 your job to grow that island and its people by expanding your territory, developing the land and increasing your riches.

~ How to play ~

1. You start with a house and some resources (people, gold, wood and food)

2. Click on a tile to develop it. Developing it will turn it into farms, clear the land or mines.

3. Once developed it will produce additional resources for your kingdom.

4. The game is over in 20-30 years (depending on how long you randomly live for) or when all of your people die.

5. At the end you get a score based on how good of a leader you were.

~ Upgrade key ~

- grass - > cleared land -> farm (1 food)
- forest (2 wood) -> tree (1 wood) -> stump -> grass -> cleared land -> farm (1 food)
- hill -> mine (2 gold)
- hut (1 food) -> house (1 food +1 gold) -> mansion (1 food +2 gold)-> palace (1 food +3 gold) -> castle (1 food +4 gold)

people = -1 food & 1 gold per turn
new person every 5 food surplus

Don't forget, it costs people to build farms, mines and upgrade to your castle.

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.53 315
Audio(Jam) 3.50 240
Fun(Jam) 3.28 411
Graphics(Jam) 3.91 262
Humor(Jam) 2.09 780
Innovation(Jam) 3.25 437
Mood(Jam) 2.89 760
Theme(Jam) 3.44 720

Feedback

alvaromartin
15. Dec 2015 路 02:22 UTC
Hi, really cool game, I like the graphics a lot. I wish the dialogs could be quickly dismissed at any time.
馃帳 Jesse Freeman
15. Dec 2015 路 03:33 UTC
Good point. I'll probably do that when I clean up the game over the next few weeks. Thanks for the feedback!
ehgoodenough
15. Dec 2015 路 03:38 UTC
I love it! I think the procedural generation is awesome!!
MikeTsunami
15. Dec 2015 路 04:56 UTC
Nice work Jesse! You were a big inspiration in getting me to participate in LD34 with your Lynda.com tutorials. Thanks for everything you do. Hope you make a tutorial in making a game like this. =)
馃帳 Jesse Freeman
15. Dec 2015 路 15:30 UTC
Mike, glad you liked my Lynda courses and I was thinking of turning something like this into a book. Probably too complex for videos but I love making strategy games like this. Good luck with your own game, I'll be sure to check it out!
Warboys
16. Dec 2015 路 14:26 UTC
Hey Jesse, we met at the Berlin Talk & Play and talked about Warrior of Dragons quite a bit. You sure do like the deadly RNG don't ya? :P

First game I got two plagues in 4 turns and died after getting my first farm. In my second game I spawned with only a forest next to me, but thankfully no plagues, so I survived the 4-5 turns it takes to develop my only piece of land into a farm. I languish with one villager for a few more turns, get my second farm, then I get a plague twice in a row and it's GG.

ARGGGH!
馃帳 Jesse Freeman
16. Dec 2015 路 16:38 UTC
Warboys, nice to see you again and thanks for playing. I noticed that plagues come up way too often. Also I have to tweak the way people work when building and having a surplus of food so you can grow quicker. Thanks for the feedback!
Bocodillo
16. Dec 2015 路 17:03 UTC
A little difficult maybe but otherwise a fantastic, fun game with a great aesthetic.
Indie L
16. Dec 2015 路 17:05 UTC
Remember me the gameboy graphics. Very cool game!
nopogo
16. Dec 2015 路 17:09 UTC
Very cool game. Really liked the art style and randomness of the events. Only thing I would add is skippable dialogue because some text keeps recurring.
remiv
16. Dec 2015 路 17:18 UTC
Nice game, cool graphics.
BeardyBard
16. Dec 2015 路 17:21 UTC
Damned be the plague!
Very cool microstrategy. Solid and cool.
Also liked random world generation :)
It's always a cool feature!
馃帳 Jesse Freeman
16. Dec 2015 路 17:21 UTC
nopogo & bocodillo I have it on my list to make it a bit easier and you can skip the dialogs so that goes by faster. Thanks.

Indie L thanks for the feedback on the art. 2DHeroes did it and I just re-used it from my last LD game ;)
Karatorian
16. Dec 2015 路 17:30 UTC
At first it seems really hard to get anything done, especially if your population gets reduced to one by plague early on. It's a little unclear exactly how population growth works. Overall, pretty good.
Jan Peter (jpdev)
16. Dec 2015 路 17:32 UTC
You captured the gameboy feeling very good, also with the music.
What I didn't get was how you could tell land had been developed. (I only got, that you could develop the same tile multiple times after playing once and then reading the instructions later ;) )

One game random was really mean to me, in the first 3 rounds (I think) everyone died of random events.

Overall a freh idea, good job :)
angela
16. Dec 2015 路 17:38 UTC
Hey, this was really fun! Has a good balance, and I like the way the maps generate procedurally. There was a good balance too - never got a map without a gold mine.
Consider adding a button to make dialog boxes disappear, and maybe adding a way for us to prevent pirates and plagues. Like, build walls or hospitals? Just suggestions - overall I really like it!
Sir Magic
16. Dec 2015 路 17:42 UTC
Loved the concept! Made it simple without losing difficulty, That's hard to do nowadays.
Noah Ratcliff
17. Dec 2015 路 02:06 UTC
Pretty great look and sound. However, I felt like the game was a little too slowly paced, and tedious at times. Overall pretty good!
Xanjos
17. Dec 2015 路 17:21 UTC
A bit on the slow side in terms of pace but I like the mechanics and loved the GameBoy style retro design.
newbeings
18. Dec 2015 路 19:08 UTC
Came to this through your email newsletter. Nice work!

I agree about dismissing dialogs more quickly - maybe click anywhere to dismiss. I'd also appreciate a hover state when picking tiles.
komilll
18. Dec 2015 路 20:11 UTC
Thanks for a great game. I think that messages should be clickable to skip them and should dissapear faster but overall that's a good job.
EvanEGibbs
19. Dec 2015 路 03:46 UTC
Cool little game! It took me a little bit to figure out what all of the variables were on the left hand side. I think maybe some pictures or a hover over tutorial would have been nice. Also there was a corner on my map that I couldn't get to at one point. :P

Nice job though! :)
FireTwin
22. Dec 2015 路 23:59 UTC
Wow, it feels like such a polished little strategy game for Ludum Dare. Really well done! I couldn't figure out how the food and population growth tied together, but was very addictive!
Didi
25. Dec 2015 路 00:56 UTC
nice jesse
NightShadow0
04. Jan 2016 路 01:18 UTC
I like the concept, but the systems weren't apparent to me at all (it might be worth mentioning that i'm not much of a strategy game player). I don't really know what was producing what resources, so i didn't see any point to developing anything other than for exploration's sake, and lost interest once the island was fully revealed. Love the aesthetic though, and it's a solid entry, just didn't grab me personally.
GeorgeBroussard
04. Jan 2016 路 17:05 UTC
Great effort. Lot of things to do. Almost got a C64 MULE vibe from it. Solid across the board.