Tiny Colonies by PhyscoKillerMonkey
You have been tasked with colonising a barren planet. Arriving with limited resources you must build and reap the land to survive.

Play the game online and view the source at the Pico-8 BBS




| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tiny-colonies |
Ratings
| Overall | 258th | 3.583⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 334th | 3.25⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 411th | 3.08⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 15th | 4.4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 147th | 4.16⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 427th | 2.682⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 607th | 1.947⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 318th | 3.348⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 7🗳️ | 8🗨️ |
Mostly, I just found myself waiting a lot to generate the right amount of resources so that I could construct more things. Ultimately, the time for waiting was just too long that it wasn’t fun after I started off following the guide. That being said, I do like how this game interprets the theme, and it’s pretty cool how you can see this small planet from a distance away, with your character walking only around the outermost perimeters you can see. If there was anything this game could have improved on for the future, it would be the balancing of how you generate resources vs. the cost of placing them down.
In terms of gameplay, we didn't find the concept so original or intriguing, but we enjoyed watching the trees grow and the workers run around very much! Thanks for making this game!
This is muh planet :D
Is the wee person's hunger tied to how much they've walked? cus i had a couple of planets that had a sawmill at 15:00, a house at 12:00, and a farm at 09:00. And the people just kept going between the farm and house :/
@izunah Yeah destroying buildings was one of the things on my to-do list but I just ran out of time.
@swamphen I'm afraid the 'ai' of the workers is very primative, the order that you place the buildings sometimes takes priority of which get workers and thus you can get stuck with them not working the farms. It's something I'd want to fix in the future.
@radmccool Nice! Thats actually more than I managed in the most recent version of the game ;). Peoples hunger and sleep is tied to how far they walk, it was intended to be a mechanic to get you to plan your city better but because of the workers poor 'ai' it just ends up with them walking back and forth like you said. Yet another thing I'd try and fix when I get back to working on this game after my exams :D
Love the graphics and the core mechanic
Edit: Got it! :P
It felt a little too slow for me, but maybe I just didn't have enough time at the moment.
In-game tutorial would be nice, but it's ok even with the tutorial image.
I wish the planet was a bit larger and that more different things could be built, but I guess 72 hours is not large enough timeframe for my wishes :)
Well done!
There were some elements of the game that possibly weren't explained by your tutorial. Like is there a maximum number of workers per saw mill/farm, or do you just need one of each. Do the workers themselves make food? them seem to. My workers love making food so much that it was all they wanted to do and stopped chopping trees altogether.
It was fun nonetheless and I like working out the quirks of games like this (unless they're game breaking quirks :wink: )
Nice job!
If you'd like to check out our game it's over here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/e-at.
Cheers!
The presentation of the game is great. The booting up screen is a nice touch given the art style you went with, and the player is immediately shown all there is to see. No clunky interfaces, no going through menus. Minimalistic to the core. I love it.
Since I'm the art guy on our team, I'm more inclined to analize what other people did with their games, as to see if I can learn something. Here, I keep praising the minimalistic approach that you took, but I have to further applaud that it's not minimal to the point that it's up to the player to imagine what is what. The buildings have clear distinction on what each one is, and the slow spread of trees and grass is satisfactory to see. It's great that you managed to achieve balance in keeping it simple, but not absurdly simple unless the project called for it. Good job!
Now, the game itself is somewhat rough. I had to restart 4 times to actually get stuff done (and this is with instructions outside of the game). Even on the runs where I was getting enough income to get more stuff done, I ended up at one point having no progress at all. I left it open for a decent amount of time, and only got a bit of gold, so there's so much idling. Don't get me wrong. For the time limit, this is impressive, and has a lot of potential to grow. But right now, it's not very fun. It could benefit from an in-game reset button, or an alternate mode that removed the cost of stuff. In the future, if you do decide to expand the game, it'd be fantastic to see what kind of buildings and interactions you can add to the game.
So, basically, I loved the experimental and graphical aspects of the game. There's a lot that can be done to it, and I'd really would like to see what it can become in the future. If you have a Twitter account, do share it around. We, [Whales and Games](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), have been following the people of the games we've commented on, since we'd like to see what their developers come up with in the future. Keep up the good work! :whale:
I like this stuff