Radio Nation by pro4

[raw]
made by pro4 for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

RadioNation.gif

Gameplay

Radio Nation is a minimalistic city-building puzzle game, where you try to grow your city while maximizing the city's coverage with radio signals.

Houses give points worth the amount of radio signal reception they are receiving. Placing a house next to other houses also gives you extra point bonuses. Every 100 points you will level up and receive additional buildings. Keep in mind that radio stations cannot emit signals onto each other, but they can overlap multiple signals on top of houses to significantly increase the houses point value!

As some have mentioned, exploring with land rewards a little too much on the point approach. The intended way to play the game is by having houses as dense as possible.

Developer best score: 8542

Controls

Controls use keyboard and mouse.

  • WASD: Move Camera
  • Left Click: Place building
  • Shift: Assisted snap while building
  • Scroll Wheel/Q/E: Rotate building

Credits

  • Profour: Programmer, Artist, SFX, Game Design

Attribution

Radio Nation was created in the span of 2 days for Ludum Dare 59 using Godot 4.7-dev5, Blender 5.0.1, Aseprite, and Audacity. All code, artwork, and game design were created during the game jam. No AI was used in the making of this game or any related content.

Ratings

Overall 538th 3.423⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 491th 3.288⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 428th 3.385⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 372th 3.846⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 654th 3.173⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 636th 3.26⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 19🗳️ 32🗨️

Feedback

Trav
Apr 20th · 19:46 UTC
Cool game, love it. I got to 1033/1100 before running out of buildings to place. I would definitely play a bigger version of this.
WeGlove
Apr 20th · 20:49 UTC
Reminds me a lof of Dorfromantik, this is a very well realized games on all fronts!
Blue Pin Studio
Apr 22nd · 03:50 UTC
It was pretty straight forward, I thought i could keep playing forever. Everything i did rewarded me points and everytime i placed something i got more stuff to place. I like the jam entry but it could benefit from being fleshed out a bit more in the game design department
Grummelchen
Apr 22nd · 09:55 UTC
This reminds me a lot of islanders, the theme approach is clever. I don't really get why the map needs to gradually expand. In my opinion it, would be cooler if you could just place normally on a larger map. Also might benefit from more building types. Lots of potential for an islanders type game, really like it!
Axodo
Apr 22nd · 10:53 UTC
I really enjoy the concept, but I got to admit two things kinda ruined the experience for me =(

The first one is that the games seems to be hungry for resources, it was fine at the beginning, but as I played, it dropped to about 5FPS, making it hard to enjoy.

The second one, is that at first I played the game as intended, but then I realized it was way more efficient to become an explorer. As you earn 10 points per tile revealed, and the game seems to have an infinite (or at least very huge) playground, you can put something on a new tile to reveal 3 new tiles, earning 30 points, and keep going, sometimes placing a signal to get extra points. You will earn buildings faster than you spend them, and you can keep going on and on. I stopped at 10 000 points, and had still more than 50 houses left in my inventory. So I must admit the process became pretty repetitive, and not really fun.


That being said, if you intend to keep working on this game after the jam, I think the problem can easily be solved. One way would be to reduce points from new tiles, or give more points to the signal system. But what I'd recommend would be to set limits in the playground. You can make them look natural with mountains or forest that take up the whole tile. That way, the player would have a finite space to work with, leading to more strategy. That also would reduce the resources needed, as the game would have to handle less tiles. I would definitely enjoy that game.

Because I don't want you to think the game is a failure or anything! As I said, I really enjoy the concept. The animations when discovering tiles are also great, and add to the good pressure of hoping the tiles you will uncover will suit your plan, as well as the buildings you get. I don't want to sound harsh, I'm just trying to write a constructive criticism. Because I think you have very nice foundations, and with just a few tweaks, your game would genuinely become great! :)
VenomousMouse
Apr 22nd · 11:18 UTC
Such a nice and cozy game. I like it!
Lehmy
Apr 22nd · 11:25 UTC
Nice spin on the theme and great little entry, I would have loved some more interaction or difficulties in the gameplay since I felt like I could do whatever and still get new buildings to continue.
BoroBoro
Apr 22nd · 11:36 UTC
I felt like I could play this forever if laptop didn't start protesting...
It was a lot of fun, though it was a bit easy to figure out how to not run out of buildings. Great entry!
vydra
Apr 22nd · 20:10 UTC
I forgot myself in this game for an hour! It is awesome!
Ternarycat
Apr 23rd · 07:30 UTC
Thank you, may score not so big as developer, but i really enjoy!
goodwayman
Apr 23rd · 14:24 UTC
Good game. I wish the game explained itself a little bit - what's the aim, what do the buildings do, etc. overall, good game with lots of potential.
Tomas Poblete
Apr 24th · 01:14 UTC
I ended up getting lost in the game and expanding the city without even noticing. I love the concept and would really like to see more of it! The game is pretty demanding on resources; the HTML5 version has some slight jittering at first (since it doesn't support multiple threads). I didn't run into any problems with the desktop version.
Wouter52
Apr 25th · 17:00 UTC
Fun game as long as it runs. Somehow I ran out of buildings. Is that intended? I also would suggest to make middle-clicking the mouse an option to move the camera and to make right-click rotate the building. Maybe make snap assist default until shift is pressed? This control scheme feels more like other games with similar features to me
daniel
Apr 25th · 22:15 UTC
Not super intuitive for me at first, but once I got into the groove I really got into it. Building placement was a bit finicky and could maybe benefit from some more indicators, but that's a pretty common issue with similar games. Fun gameplay! ![2026-04-25_15-14.png](///raw/817/z/72b9c.png)
Le Don
May 01st · 11:15 UTC
This is a good game! But I needed a second run to truly understand how it was intended to work. I started exploring more of the map, but not to get more points - I thought I was supposed to place only one building per hexatile. After I checked the gif on this page again I realized what I was supposed to do, but I am still not sure what those numbers when selecting a building to build were supposed to mean. Placing buildings could also be difficult, as I wasn't always sure what exactly blocked the new building. Also at around 900 points the game got quite laggy. But still, this is a good game!
LDJam user 430734
May 08th · 02:31 UTC
this game was actually really fun!
LDJam user 233659
May 08th · 05:25 UTC
It took me a couple of plays to really "get" Radio Nation. I read absolutely nothing before playing except for the controls, little did I know what was on the other side of the unassuming Godot loading screen was a puzzle game with a *vicious* hook. Seriously, I played this for a couple of hours, like, this game while it is going is super fun. It's just a shame it kinda stops when your buildings are out. I wish I could remove em to make room or just move 'em to get better signal.

I enjoy Radio Nation, conceptually its very easy to hop into and actually playing and expanding outward is really fun.