Love the idea and colour scheme. Stands out from pretty much everything else I've seen :)

It's kind of difficult to gauge what affects aspects in what ways. The overall presentation is very clean though.

The graphics are amazing! I really liked to see the consequences of my choices to be drawn on a map! Wonderful artwork, kudos !

I really love the graphics and the animations on the card flips!

Man I absolutely love the aesthetics of this game. The colors and fonts fit perfectly, layout it great, and seeing how the empire progresses over time is so cool. Great work!

Unless this is just a whole type of game that I've never been aware of, this game to me was very new and unique. I found it confusing at times, especially to begin with, but once I began to understand what was going on it was quite enjoyable. Overall definitely a solid submission.

Very slick design and great storytelling. It felt like the stage in a colony sim game where everything starts collapsing combined with King of Dragon Pass.

Great game! I loved the graphics, and I also love choice / text adventure games :smile: Great job! Could've used some sound effects though

Amazing game. I really love your unique take on the theme. Definitely enjoyed playing it and was wishing for more. From the art to the writing, very good game!

The map is really well done. I still would have liked to have the text and the choices better highlighted and overall a bit more juiciness on the UI... Nice job

This is such an incredibly cool game.
I loved the narrative of an empire crumbling, and the cadence of its decline felt really tasteful; it gave me the space and enough choices to feel like I really was delaying the inevitable. The map is gorgeous, and the valences/colour parameters are such a great way to display the effects that the player has.
I would have loved some music or SFX, but golly the writing more than makes up for it.
Very well done!

I loved this! The writing is really evocative, and while the layout is a bit rough, the colors, fonts, and gorgeous map makes it visually compelling--the visualization of aspects is so good. I loved the way that not only did you see your empire fall, but saw others grow in its place, and that eventually those empires began to have more and more agency in your event cards--I didn't really expect it to become that prominent a theme in the writing and I really liked that. The way the acts were split was also really satisfying.

I do wish, mechanically, it was easier to understand the success/failure of your actions. Game designers sometimes talk about the importance of feedback loops: how hard is it / how long does it take to understand what I did well vs. poorly and improve? I realize in a game where loss is guaranteed, that only matters so much, but I still think I would have felt more satisfied if I understood what I gained by making my choice and not the other, or what I avoided by not choosing the other one. I also wish the aspects took longer in change color after making choices--I could barely track my eyes across from the event to see it in time, and given the map was so gorgeous (and it was important to understanding consequences) I really wanted to.

Overall a really evocatively written and visually beautiful game that perfectly uses the theme, with a couple rough interface elements and some gameplay design issues that are understandable in a short jam, but if developed on could take it from something definitely good to absolutely great! Please keep playing with large scale story games like this, I'd love to play something from y'all in the future!

@jess-from-online Thank you for such detailed feedback! I am already having a lot of ideas for ways to slow down and emphasize how the map updates to close that feedback loop more and earlier. I'm glad you enjoyed the experience! We may update this one, and will definitely keep iterating on this idea in the future :)

Great LD entry! As someone with a background in cartography, I simply love the art style of the map. I'm also impressed by the number of different events. I would like to know at least vaguely what city will be hit by my decision and how much. So more feedback on what each option would do would be great. Anyway, awesome job!

I really liked this! I think it demonstrates the theme extremely well and also looks very beautiful. Using the language of trees and how they change season really made the mechanics take an extra step to stand out. Theres a lot of possible poetry to be found in this kind of game, and I love the way you used color and map graphics to capture the sense of constantly changing socio-political geography, and that no matter how hard you try you can't always make the right choices out of a situation. It plays smoothly too. Really I can't understate how visually satisfying it is to look at!

This game is so much my jam! The simple visuals fit the game perfectly and the UI was very clear, although the text box on the left could have been a bit smaller or the font bigger, as the text next filled more than a quarter of the area.

Really fun! I'm actually working on a game similar to this and it was great to see how someone else would make it.

Such a cool concept and a great execution.

I think the fact that the consequences of your choices aren't very apparent or "gamified" with stats is one of the strongest features of the game. The choices, to the player at least, don't boil down to a simple game of numbers. The feedback is shown well enough already to make consquences clear, but not enough to make min-maxing the game very viable. As there's no way to know which is the "better" choice, the player has to choose based on morality and judgement of outcome alone.

The level of polish here is outstanding. The UI is clear, cohesive and good looking. The animations add a lot to the game feel, but are snappy enough to not hinder the pacing. Some sound effects and music would go a long way.

The game is engaging and thought-provoking, and has a lot of potential to be expanded into a full game. The foundation is all there, it just needs some more scenarios and choices. A randomly generated map also seems plausible, and would add a lot of replay value.

Im just giving the games I found most memorable another look. this sure was one of em. concept and look really worked for me

This is a beautiful game, well done! One of my favourite takes on the theme, with a perfect length and frame for a jam game, a peaceful matter-of-fact passing of history.

I loved the way the analogy between the parts of an empire and the leaves of an autumn tree is driven home by all the event texts as well as the visuals. Very strong concept. I think the two most obvious improvement areas for a post-jam version would be adding some fitting background music, and improving the way the effects of a choice are applied to the map - currently it is very hard to see what exactly happened due to your choice, because it is immediate, and happens on the map while you're looking away from it (at the buttons).

I think adding a delay and an animation here could be really helpful in creating some immersion, giving the player a sense of control, as well as forcing them to notice and register the changes. Maybe some added narrative text could really drive home the point of what's happening due to the player's choice. (I was facing a somewhat similar problem in my submission, and I spent a considerable amount of time creating a delayed wave effect to update the map when the player clicks the End turn button.)

(Edit: I can see now that I'm not the first one to bring up this aspect, and you're already planning to address it. Excellent news!)

With these two improvements, I think this would be a rather complete game with a powerful and memorable theme. I hope to see a post-jam version!