A Year by BjornStahl

[raw]
made by BjornStahl for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

A Year is a text based colony builder where you are stuck in a time loop that spans a year. The goal is to grow your settlement and armed forces strong enough to defeat the person responsible for the time loop and thus breaking it.

Edit - With the balance right now it is very difficult to get out of a negative food supply, better start over.

Screenshot_003.png

Features

  • If the year reaches it's end or the population reaches 0 the year starts over and plays out exactly the same.
  • Manage your population, decide how many settlers should be farmers, artisans, builders and soldiers.
  • Change the focus of your workers, have the artisans make more arms instead of tools and make you soldiers more professional and more expensive.
  • Events will occur every week, both to your gain and your loss.
  • Choices has to made, save some slaves, attack an outpost or trade with a merchant.
  • Grow you army, defend against bandits and battle entire armies.

Use the sliders to change your resource production, more farmers give more food, more artisans more tools/arms etc.

Everything except the sound is made by me.

Ratings

Overall 1349th 3.077⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1291th 2.88⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1223th 2.92⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1302th 3.038⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1448th 2.479⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1193th 1.977⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1138th 3.074⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 25🗨️

Feedback

🎤 BjornStahl
05. Oct 2020 · 19:36 UTC
Just had a thought, since this is a text based game and I didn't make the font, should I have opted out of graphics?
melvinng
05. Oct 2020 · 21:50 UTC
Interesting concept, but I personally find the gameplay mechanics quite confusing. Reached negative food and not sure how to return from there onwards haha. Overall good game!
Profugo Barbatus
05. Oct 2020 · 23:40 UTC
Its not clear how to manage your resources and what the costs are for them. I managed to get negative everything, and it broke. Food loss events gave me food, etc.
🎤 BjornStahl
06. Oct 2020 · 14:26 UTC
@melvinng @profugo-barbatus Yeah it's a bit difficult to get out of negative food unfortunately. I'll have to change the production balance later after the vote is done.
DanyVk
06. Oct 2020 · 19:25 UTC
Wow, congrats. Nice game
BEK
07. Oct 2020 · 07:26 UTC
prettty good game needs to be more simpler
OddSocks
07. Oct 2020 · 17:09 UTC
Nice game. I managed to get a good ratio on the sliders and started doing pretty well. Tis a good LD entry. Congrats :raised_hands:
Antrimplato
07. Oct 2020 · 17:11 UTC
interesting, but too difficult
nablaz
07. Oct 2020 · 17:33 UTC
I had fun playing and no problem whatsoever with the mechanics... I actually thought it was simple to grasp and won pretty easily! If anything, I would suggest to add some music in the background to help in setting the mood. Overall it was a pleasant experience, good job!
Jetyh
07. Oct 2020 · 17:39 UTC
I really enjoyed playing through and I was surprised by the apparent depth to the mechanics and overall game. Maybe some buttons to allow for small adjustments to the sliders would be helpful but overall, a good game.
Ale
11. Oct 2020 · 14:31 UTC
This was very polished and well made, but it was really difficult. I was doing alright in the beginning, gaining some pop at a decent rate, but then everything just went into the red and I couldn't figure out how to claw my way out of that hole. Maybe adding a pause button to let you think about your decisions would make the game easier. As it is, there are a lot of sliders to think about, not to mention figuring out what they're even supposed to do. Some in-game descriptions/tool-tips the describe the functions of the sliders would go a long way!

Still, this was a nice little idle game. If you polish it up a bit more, I think it could become really addicting!
Arad HamidSamiee
13. Oct 2020 · 13:44 UTC
soothing soundtrack, the game was a bit hard for me. felt nostalgic
VPhyre
16. Oct 2020 · 20:20 UTC
A very creative and strategic game. You can spend hours playing. It is a very fun game. The sound is immersive, and the texts are very understandable. I would like to see an expanded version of that game. Good job.
lilkrit
19. Oct 2020 · 15:28 UTC
Nice game. Very deep mechanics for a jam game :)
Savvy Community
19. Oct 2020 · 15:56 UTC
Hey there! Playing your game was very pleasant and fun, I liked the RNG and managed to secure a win against the Queen pretty easily! Gets you hungry for mooOOoooore ;). Of course it seems a bit complicated at the beginning, but the nice other comments lead me to keep playing, and since you can get your town back on its feet pretty quickly, you get a clue on how things work without needing tutorial or introduction.. It reminds me a bit of a game we made during a jam last year, feel free to try it out: https://savvy-community.itch.io/what-we-do-with-consequences (and try our entry for this one as well)!
Congrats!