Magmanimal Island by Battlerager

[raw]
made by Battlerager for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

Wonderful news: You have been chosen by the mighty volcano to rule this idyllic little island!

screenshot2.png

Please listen carefully now, because you certainly won't want to disappoint our volcano.

On the island, four communities live in a fragile harmony:

  • The brokers are resonsible for the wealth of our small realm. If they refuse to work, we will all go bankrupt!

  • The musicians play the soundtrack to our island life. Better make sure they don't get out of tune!

  • The builders keep the ground nice and level so we can walk around the island with peace of mind.

  • The meteorologists know everything about the weather. They keep our island from being flooded by stormy rain showers.

You are the new ruler over this island for the next two years, but to make decisions, you need the support of your people. This support comes in the form of cards.

Your deck consists of one card for each citizen currently living on the island.

To pick up a citizen and assign them a new position, you have to discard a card of the corresponding color.

From time to time, residents will want to speak with you about various concerns (you can tell by the exclamation mark above their heads). Don't keep them waiting, they won't like that!

You respond to their request by playing a card. Each card has one of three symbols:

  • Accept the request
  • Decline the request
  • Delay the request

Accepting or declining a request has certain consequences that will be shown to you beforehand. If you delay a request, there will be no consequences for now.

Without cards in your hand, you cannot respond to any requests.

Based on your actions, members of the four communities may arrive on the island or leave it, which in turn affects the selection of cards in your deck. Keep in mind that the numerically largest faction is also the most influential.

But don't worry: You don't have to do this responsible job alone! Add any inhabitant to your advisor cabinet by placing them on one of the empty advisor spots. Each job position grants certain bonuses, and the communities will love it when you put your trust in one of them. Needless to say, they also hate it when you decide to fire one of them!

Now you know everything you need to know in order to become an admired and successful ruler. Keep everyone happy, and you'll keep our volcano happy! If things should get hot and smoky once in a while, a living sacrifice might help... but I'm sure you won't let it come to that.

Good luck for the next two years. Let's hope you make it that long!

Content warning: This game includes some screen shaking effects.

Team * Battlerager: Code & Music & Writing & Design * Future Labs Unlimited: Code & Design & Writing * Lazymoth: Art

Change log * Fixed adding delay cards to the deck (October 5, 2021) * Fixed firing people through card effects (October 5, 2021)

screenshot1.png

Fullscreen recommended in HTML5 version

Ratings

Overall 765th 3.516⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Fun 962th 3.226⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 403th 3.629⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 662th 3.629⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 895th 3.452⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Audio 443th 3.565⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Humor 687th 3.017⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 803th 3.371⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Given 39🗳️ 40🗨️

Feedback

Pythorogus
05. Oct 2021 · 10:14 UTC
nice game :)
LDJam user 0
05. Oct 2021 · 10:19 UTC
What a cute game! It's very hard to balance what everyone wants making the game quite entertaining. The only problem I found is that the IU is hard to see. I would suggest increasing the frame size in itchio.
![photo_2021-10-05_12-13-57.jpg](///raw/a23/f2/z/46e7c.jpg)
pidge
05. Oct 2021 · 10:19 UTC
A cool premiseand overall fun game. Well done
dangerbleistift
05. Oct 2021 · 10:28 UTC
Fun game concept, but i was overwhelmed by the choices and information, so i did not really know what todo. Maybe slow down the learning curve a bit
Like the art and the music :)
Good Job :)
Yskuma
05. Oct 2021 · 10:30 UTC
Interesting game, I like that the cards are a limited resource and you've got to think carefully on how you want to use them.

You really need to get those advisor positions that give extra cards filled as soon as you can. I didn't realise that the advisor bonuses were different for each slot at first and ran out of cards quickly.
LCStark
05. Oct 2021 · 10:39 UTC
It takes a few moments to get used to all the rules and figure out how everything works, but once you do it's pretty fun. I like the idea of having to balance happiness of all factions, and citizen requests are a great mechanic. One thing I'd like to see added is the ability to speed up time - quite often I found myself without any cards to play and I had to wait until the timer ticked to the next month. All in all, it's a fun entry, well done!
Terabyte
05. Oct 2021 · 10:49 UTC
Good game! Nice job!
Biku
05. Oct 2021 · 10:55 UTC
I love resource managing games and that's not easy to do in a weekend. So congratulations! I had a lot of fun playing it! I just read the beggining of the second year after three tries but it's great! There are only two things: on the web version, if you play in small size is confusing with the background image and if you play in maximum it does not get to the maximum size of the screen. I think it must be more clear under what conditions the volcanoes explodes.
Future Labs Unlimited
05. Oct 2021 · 10:55 UTC
@all Many thanks for your feedback! :)

@Anonymous: You can play the game in fullscreen mode by clicking the blue button in the lower right corner. The UI doesn't work that well with the small embedded itch.io viewport (which can't be enlarged any further apparently), so it's recommended to either press the fullscreen button or play the downloadable Windows version.
Future Labs Unlimited
05. Oct 2021 · 11:01 UTC
@Biku: Have you tried the blue fullscreen button? That should maximize the game properly. There was another fullscreen button before placed by itch.io which should be gone now. Sorry for the confusion! :)

The volcano wants everybody to be happy, so it's becoming more and more unstable while large parts of the population are unhappy. It can only be soothed by sacrifing someone or by getting a "+ Volcano stability" effect in a request event.
Biku
05. Oct 2021 · 11:23 UTC
@future-labs-unlimited Yes. I tried that button but the game stay at the top left. Bigger than when its not full-screen but no getting the full size of the screen.

Yeah hahaha. I think I got that one after dying two times. I had great fun :)
FromTheChasm
05. Oct 2021 · 12:04 UTC
I loved the concept. The island didn't last long under my care. I like how they were milling around, and the music changed, as things got worse. I couldn't find the delay card. What'd be cool detail if they all had random names.
Future Labs Unlimited
05. Oct 2021 · 15:16 UTC
@Biku Strange, maybe it depends on the browser? Happy you enjoyed the game despite the UI probably getting in the way half of the time. :D

@fromthechasm The delay cards are quite rare and you don't have any in your starting deck. There's a good chance you'll get some when more people enter the island and you receive new cards. Thanks for playing! :)
Préda
06. Oct 2021 · 16:50 UTC
Took me 10 days to entirely destroy the island. And I'm proud of it
nardandas
07. Oct 2021 · 00:17 UTC
Really interesting games! I liked the little bits of story along with the resource management! I made it quite a few months, but I found it kind of annoying that there were so few cards. Often I was forced into making a certain decision because I only had an up or a down card. I think a feeewww more cards would be nice to allow a little more player expression.
arturogcdev
07. Oct 2021 · 22:22 UTC
Good simulation game! Its very hard mantain the hapinness of the 4 tribes, but is cool that every tribe makes something different! Loved this game :)
LDJam user 0
09. Oct 2021 · 14:53 UTC
I usually don't play card games, but this was a fun game to play. Great Job!
Raphiell
09. Oct 2021 · 15:17 UTC
Amusing game, but very difficult. It was also hard to tell exactly what was making the volcano mad. I also felt like I wasn't getting enough cards to deal with all the issues I was running into. Besides that, I had fun!

Well done!
Lucas Thomaz
09. Oct 2021 · 15:52 UTC
the game is cute, but i couldn't play because the layout is broken when i see some request, i don't see where to click to accept or refuse.
Future Labs Unlimited
10. Oct 2021 · 16:46 UTC
Thanks to everyone for playing and commenting! :)

@lucas-thomaz You don't have to click a button but to drag a card (either accept, decline or delay) into the card slot that should be shown at the bottom of the menu. If the slot is hidden by another element you are probably playing at a low resolution. Unfortunately we didn't have the time to properly adjust our GUI to different resolutions, so it's recommended to play in fullscreen mode at the highest resolution possible.
ELVEVERX
12. Oct 2021 · 11:16 UTC
Fantastic unique art style with engaging background music. I really felt the art and sound set a nice tone for the game. The mechanics took a bit to get used too but worked really well.
Yaroslav Gozak
12. Oct 2021 · 18:50 UTC
So I didn't understand how to delay the requests and kept trying to feed cards as best as possible. Unfortunately my rabbits died pretty quick and I didn't manage to get them back to the island. Which in turn led to the eruption :)
I liked sound design of the game, embient sound is not good, each action is supported by some kind of sound which makes interaction pleasant
Unstability of card deck highlights jam's theme. Good idea, I like it
LDJam user 0
16. Oct 2021 · 14:01 UTC
really nice ,the art style of island is very cute.
Roka Josh
16. Oct 2021 · 14:18 UTC
Suprisingly complex and fun game. Really liked the art style and music as well, great job!
FireSlash
16. Oct 2021 · 20:01 UTC
Super interesting design here.

The art is cute, and I love the little touches like the audio pitching down as things go south.

Nice work!
Cookie_CHR
16. Oct 2021 · 20:45 UTC
Nice game of strategy, but I always ran out of cards
ryjcio
16. Oct 2021 · 20:54 UTC
Hi man, I cannot give you rating because of the bug. I cannot play properly because I don't see anything :( Pls bugfix this so I can rate your game.

![bug.png](///raw/f8c/2/z/482e9.png)
Voodoo51
17. Oct 2021 · 12:09 UTC
I really like the idea. Pretty cool game :D
Future Labs Unlimited
17. Oct 2021 · 14:06 UTC
Many thanks for playing and commenting to all of you! :)

@ryjcio The game doesn't work that well in the small itch.io viewport. You can enter fullscreen mode by clicking the blue button in the lower right corner (or by downloading the Windows version).
Glaikunt
20. Oct 2021 · 13:17 UTC
Amazing game! The art & music are awesome. It's complicated to begin with. Makes sense as you play through though. I loved the music speeding up & slowing down as well as the animation as the volcano erupts :smile: great entry!
vivyhasadream
21. Oct 2021 · 17:50 UTC
interesting concept.
it's funny that the music will change pitch and speed when you do some actions.