The New Kid by Saurabh
Make friends and explore the interconnection of the small world that is your new high school. Try to diversify your subject affinity to have the best chance of making as many friends as you can! See if you can get more than 25 friends for 3 stars!
Download: https://shrub.itch.io/the-new-kid
Web GL (play fullscreen and scaled): https://shrub.itch.io/the-new-kid-webgl-version
If it doesn't work on Chrome try Edge.
Edit: Like an idiot I forgot to upload the game data, fixed now.
Edit: Lag fixes
Screenshots:

| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-new-kid |
Ratings
| Overall | 593th | 3⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 586th | 2.789⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 84th | 3.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 364th | 3.474⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 687th | 2.368⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 278th | 3.222⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 483th | 2.313⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 501th | 3⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
Trying to diversify my subject affinity was the last thing on my mind. I made 8 art student friends easily with near 100% chance every time after the first few. The only issue was simply running out of art lovers, so I had to lower my standards for a few scientists.
The mechanic is overly simple and taken that there is no personality to anyone or any dialog between people, befriending them turns to be a very drab process indeed. You should have allocated time to making/finding some audio-visuals to fit the theme.
Once I reached about 12 friends (in the WebGL version) increasingly terrible lag started cropping up. I'd be interested in knowing what exactly is going on in the graphics drawing routine. It is just a dozen balls and lines on the screen after all.
It functions and the idea is fine. Have a :school:
Thanks for the feedback!
We changed mechanics of the game away from dialogue to a more strategy based game half way through as we didn't think we'd be able to make it in time, so this was more of a last ditch effort.
As for the lag, it's do with lots of for loops and line renderers in the update rather than start method and something i really need to get around to fixing soon!
But this is a good effort given the time constraints. Would enjoy seeing it developed further.
The setup (making friends at first few weeks of school) fits the game very well, and I like the simple clean UI. The 'friends' could be given more personality, but I understand this would take time.
I like the gameplay, but it felt like I was simply gambling at times - I simply clicked on the dot with the highest percentage most of the time, as this felt like the most logical way forward. If there was more strategy to the game, I would find it a lot more engaging.
I also noticed a bug where there were two separate social groups in one level (though this may be intentional, I'm not sure - see image)
The song is pretty cool and the graphics serve their purpose well. Nice work.
Looking forward for post-jam version.
Nice little game. I kinda wish there was more info to base your decision making on, rather than just a percentage chance of the circle becoming your friend, but I still enjoyed clicking away and making little round buddies.
Good work.
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Please check out our submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus
Thanks! :smile: