Apple Juice Tycoon by felixreeve

[raw]
made by felixreeve for LD34 (JAM)
Make money by buying apples and making juice!
Employ conveniently named characters!
Keep them fed and quenched!
Train them to be the very best!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download and unzip the package from GITHUB and open the PLAY.html file to play!

Hold the hotkeys at the bottom to select actions.
Hold one button and press a second to use the action:
eg to get Quentin to start making juice, hold J (for juice) and press Q (for Quentin).

TIPS:
Make sure to train your employees! This will reduce how much you need to feed them and give them drinks! When they reach level 8 they will no longer need you to give them drinks!

You need money to buy apples, you need apples to make juice and you need to sell juice to make money! So keep doing those things to build resources! As long as your employees get enough to eat and drink then you should be able to get more money and train them to cope better on less food and drink!

INFO:
Written in javascript using allegro.js

Ratings

Coolness 46% 1507
Overall(Jam) 2.71 983
Fun(Jam) 2.58 935
Graphics(Jam) 2.08 995
Humor(Jam) 2.90 367
Innovation(Jam) 2.88 689
Theme(Jam) 3.21 848

Feedback

scriptorum
16. Dec 2015 · 16:47 UTC
"Quentin has died from thirst." Damn. This is a cut-throat apple juice business!

BTW, you can deploy your files to pages.github.com so people won't have to download your repo to play.
Stuntddude
16. Dec 2015 · 16:55 UTC
This game is pretty hilarious conceptually, and I'm generally a fan of idle games, but there's just *too* much micromanagement going on here. It's hard to grow your business when you spend 90% of your time just trying to keep poor Quentin alive! In addition, the keyboard controls are unwieldy (a proper GUI would be a huge improvement), and it's unclear how some of the mechanics work. For example, when I assign an employee to eat or drink, do they keep going for a set period of time, or until their bar is full, or until I assign them a new task, or what? At what interval does it deplete resources? When I interrupt their eating or drinking to assign them a new task, do they immediately pick up the task, or wait some predefined amount of time before doing it, or wait until they're done eating or drinking, or what? These things are obvious to you, because you programmed the game, but they're completely opaque to anyone else, and I certainly never figured them out myself because I was too busy frantically trying to micro-manage everything else to stop for long enough to pay close attention and experiment with the mechanics.

I really don't dislike this game as much as it sounds like, but it does need a real GUI and some adjustments to the mechanics to make it more fun.
LastResortGames
16. Dec 2015 · 17:51 UTC
A bit more involved than it appeared. Great Job.
vicious_br
17. Dec 2015 · 00:46 UTC
Ow, congratulation for your game!
I would like to take this opportunity to ask a favor. You already rated my game, but I was not allowed "innovation rating." Please could you assess this item now? Take the opportunity to play with some corrections. Very thanks:http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=36629
tantumgames
17. Dec 2015 · 13:19 UTC
Fun game, I liked it
Budi
17. Dec 2015 · 13:45 UTC
I really loved the concept. I can see it as quite good strategy game.

It would be nice to have a better controls (using mouse) and the opportunity to play the game directly in browser with one click (nowadays it's not really hard to host it somewhere)
BubuIIC
17. Dec 2015 · 15:14 UTC
Fun little game! Not quite an idle game. I like how you progressively can manage the more high level decisions and less your employees immediate needs.
I think I found a bug though. Employing someone with the name [ seems to have crashed the game (everything turn white).
Roffe
18. Dec 2015 · 11:19 UTC
Quite simple at first, but after some employments it gets really stressful. Very nice little game. Good job :)
Dreyan
18. Dec 2015 · 11:31 UTC
Game is definitely more complex than it appears. Some of the controls felt unnatural, and for me personally that aspect of the game wasn't too enjoyable. However, very nice use of the theme and I was happily surprised by how much I could grow/optimize my little juice business ^^
Knowledge
18. Dec 2015 · 18:48 UTC
Cool game but a bit boring to me.
lawendt
19. Dec 2015 · 11:39 UTC
Guess you got me playing for more than 20 minutes. Love these tycoon games. Controls are pretty simple and offered proper feedback. Without music is better than having an annoying looping music. Keep up the good work!
f7f5
22. Dec 2015 · 21:37 UTC
It's cool how everything - food, drink, goods - come from a single raw material.

However once you build a small (so you can manage the feeding) team that gets into cruise speed making money, the game seems to lack a clear goal, direction or challenge.
eruiz00
26. Dec 2015 · 14:12 UTC
nice idea and good making. Well done!
hadesfury
27. Dec 2015 · 22:25 UTC
controls are a little hard ... but good idea ... need a little more ergonomy
loxo
28. Dec 2015 · 21:57 UTC
Nice game concept, but it's really hard to keep all employees alive ;) I had troubles with the controls, it would be nice if they would work independently from the order of the keys pressed (first the employee and then the task/ first the task and then the employee). Some animations and sound effects would be nice.