Always cool to see a strategy game. I suspect the possible moves being random each turn makes it much more a game of luck than skill, though. I liked the simulated mouse moves of the computer opponent, making it clear how it was applying the same game rules as the player.

Thank you @nathmate! There's definitely an abundance of luck compared to other strategy games, I agree. I tried to focus on designing unique and synergistic plans that forced players to make on-the-fly decisions about what they were being offered, instead of stressing them out with choice paralysis. Hopefully by gamifying this genre, I didn't take away what makes it feel so rewarding to play!

Cool game, I see how much work you put in. At first, I didn't understand who I was playing for, blue or red. When red was moving, I thought it was a tutorial and followed him. Only after three turns, when he had already expanded, did I realize something was wrong. It's a really cool game. I especially liked the battle animation. Wow.

Cool game! Really liked the overall aesthetic, the colors work really well. Also liked the music, especially since it felt very thematic withe the phone noises. The game itself was fun too, and it felt easy to understand the overall mechanics. Some things i noticed in no particular order:
- The AI making moves by moving its own cursor is a really nice touch and made it easy to follow what the ai did on its move; although if the game was longer the animation would have probably started to fell too slow for me, tough i did win before it really became an issue for me
- Having limited options is interesting and lead to some fun moments, but also felt bad at times: i especially got unlucky with not getting any options to move my units for a long time, which lead to me not really being able to make any interesting decisions in the early game, maybe some sort of system were options are pick from categories would help (or always having a basic move option maybe?)
- The Y2K move felt very powerful and hard to plan around since you never know when your opponent is going to be offered it, making me very reluctant to use clamshells, especially since they didn't feel that powerful compared to the risk; my instinct is that the game would have been better off without it, but maybe clamshells would lack a counter then, hard to say (maybe a less powerful version, or one where you need to sacrifice something additional in exchange?)
- The roaming option also felt a lot stringer then a lot of the other moves, though maybe not to the point of being overpowered; but i still think it could probably use a downside to make it a more nuanced choice.

Making statements about balancing is ofcourse hard without lots of plaything various changes, but aside from the things mentioned above i felt you did a really good job. Would have been interesting to play against a more powerful ai opponent to see how that feels (but making a very strong ai is a bit out of scope for a jam ofc.). Great game overall, i had a fun time!

Thank you so much @p1x3lc0w for the insightful notes!
- After lots of playtesting, the speed of the computer-controlled cursor started to really get on my nerves, but I wanted to play it safe and make sure new players were able to keep up with its decisions. Adding a way to change the cursor speed in the settings might be a good solution.
- Taking away some of the chaos of the random choices would help the game's longevity for sure. Maybe this game works better as a deckbuilder of sorts, allowing players to design their own pool of options? It's definitely worth exploring other modes of play.
- Both Y2K and Roaming are "rare" plans, which means they show up less often than the rest. But yeah, the fact that you never know when they might show up means you have to plan around them, which can be pretty annoying (especially against an opponent that often makes illogical decisions). I tried to design these powerful plans with weaknesses. Y2K is weak if you want to train clamshells yourself, Roaming is weak if you're surrounded by your own claimed tiles, TARDIS is weak if the opponent's armies are protected by towers or phone booths, etc. But those "downsides" are pretty niche and therefore irrelevant. The ramifications of these powerful plans are definitely worth keeping in mind for balance.

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all this out! Glad you enjoyed my game.

The art style is very pleasing, the gameplay is very innovative, and it is worth learning from.

Really fun! Felt really nice and freeing to play with how random it was in a way: I didn't have to think as much. The burners were so expensive and then just died aaaaaaaaaa

amazing game :sparkles:

Very nice graphics, nice slow gameplay. Cool impact from the game and the mood. Not all effects have a visual display, which caused difficulties (or I just didn't understand: )). This is a unique strategy game. The amount of content and effort put in is striking.

Thank you very much, I've been stuck on it!

P.S. Thank you for the design of the page

Nice & interesting enrty, like the core idea of the game, but i don't like that actions are randomizing and your planning can be delayed by waiting nessesary move.

I think the idea behind this game is really great. Such a cool idea to make a strategy game. I really like the music and the art works really well for what it is.

As I couldn't play this with someone in local play, I think it suffered playing against the AI which didn't make much sense. Additionally, I had completely wiped them about but had to keep playing for a few more minutes just moving until I covered the map. Maybe an early win condition if you remove all their troops?

Overall, I really liked this and would love to see it expanded on. :)

https://youtu.be/xFit955jdvk

No audio because, even though I recorded a full commentary, OBS said "not today". What a bother because the music is what immediately stands out; love how it hops between time signature, samples an android sounds, and how polished it is overall. The visuals are pretty clean too, and the combat animation is just perfect.

It's hard to gauge a hotseat game without convincing another human to play it long enough for both of us to get good. Based on vibes alone I really like it though. The random moveset is novel but might be a balancing nightmare; in particular, a well-timed TARDIS can probably flip a game upside down if it works the way I think it does. Thinking about it, I want this to be a board game with cute 3D-printed cell towers and a deck of action cards. First time I ever wanted a physical copy of a Ludum Dare game.

Smh about naming the game word-for-word after the theme. So uncreative.

Hell yeah, I conquered the map, shame I didn't have anybody to play against either, but I would have conquered them as well, I controlled enough phone booths to put a 90s kingpin to shame.

Very fun game! Incredibly charming presentation with the cell phones fighting by hopping against each other, plus the absolute banger of a phone soundtrack, I still have it on in the background while writing this, it's great. There are a lot of loving details in this, I think that's where a lot of the charm comes from, like the aforementioned battle animations or the implementation of the CPU player where you see what it's doing. There's also a great variety in the different options to pick, that's really awesome, lots of gameplay options and strategies here, either zerg rush, or build up your phone booths and build a dynamic army to take over. Very cool game, great job!

When I download and unzip the Windows package, the contents look like they're for a web build. How can I play this game?

Same problem here! @decadedecaf You might have forgotten to check the "played in browser" box.
I'll keep this tab open and come back later :)

Pretty fun game! Loved the music as well, really fitting. I played against AI, which is indeed very dumb, as it was stacking clamshells and then Y2K'd itself :'D

So I can't judge the actual gameplay against an equal level opponent, but my guess is that there's a little too much RNG in the action selection. Maybe it would be interesting if the cards were split up in two groups, one focused on growth and the other on action/movement, and you'd get to pick one from each group per round or something. Or have at least one card be from each group. I don't know.

Overall though, very solid and polished game. I also appreciate showing the AI moves with the cursor, makes things really easy to follow and almost feels like a real opponent that way. Very nice addition.

Good stuff!

Sorry @pincushion and @purrseus! Yesterday, I tried to export a web build using GameMaker's HTML5 target, but I ran into a known issue with one of the engine's built-in probability functions. Then, I used the itch page to test out GameMaker's "GX.games" target, because I was told it had better stability than HTML5. In the process, I must've accidentally replaced the Windows build with that web build. Sorry! The download for Windows should be fixed now.

I love the idea to split the plans into groups @frib. It solves a similar problem to the "always have a basic movement action available" idea that another commenter had. Perhaps the first option is always focused on growth, the second option is always focused on movement, and the third option could be literally anything. There's a lot to experiment with there.

Thank you for commenting, and I appreciate that you went through so much trouble to run my game in the first place!

The music is *so* good, so fun, and right on theme too. The phone fights are fun to watch, though it wasn't immediately obvious which ones were mine. I see the coloured bar now, but I think it could be clearer. I played against the ai, yeah it's kinda dumb, but it gives a good impression of the gameplay. Seeing their cursor gives the feeling that I'm actually playing against somebody.

I really like how the phone theming fit into the game in general. All around a great compo.

One more mention for the music. Seriously, it's really good.

Aaand another mention for the music! :open_hands:

I liked it. Playing against the AI (no human opponent in reach) was kinda nice actually. That the AI has its own cursor is a solution I have not encountered before. It made it really transparent what actually happened. The gameplay was smooth, but very RNG dependant. Maybe a bit too much for longevity. Sometimes I was offered the same plan twice for example. But of course I realize how hard it is to balance such things and just leaning into the RNG can be alright for a short jam game (last jam our team stood before the exact same task and we, too, decided to just go with it 🙂‍↕️). I had fun overpowering my opponent with what I was handed :smirk_cat:

The animations are snuuuper cute by the way!!

I'm glad I waited for the reupload :)

That song was awesome! I liked how the AI actually used the same interface you did, great way to show what it was doing. I wasn't sure if my action choices were based on something or just from a random pool, but I was able to win my match with the AI :D. Great job!

Lovely job! THese aren't my kinds of games usually but this was short sweet and satisfying! The kind of game that's really confusing for a few minutes but you pick up its intuitive mechanics very quickly. Love the silly battle animations, and as everyone said the AI using its own cursor is a really great touch! I'd have loved a bit more time to tell what the AI was choosing, and some more units overall, but what you have here is a solid rexperience with absolutely awesome music.

This was a really neat little strategy game! I agree with a lot of the comments that I wish there was a little less randomness in what plans you were offered, but regardless it was a lot of fun! The presentation was totally top notch too, simple but very effective. Here's my whole playthrough with more thoughts.

https://youtu.be/Os9e496EJMo

I also bestow upon you the **Exploding Phone Booth** award! This one always did seem a little out of place...


My face lit up when I realized this was like the UFO 50 game Avianos!! I love Avianos, so it's going to be very difficult not to compare this game to that game too much in my commentary, but I'll try my best.

The cellphone-music is very clever and is just chaotic enough without being too annoying with all the chimes. I like what you did with the themeing, and the 2D side-view battles are very dynamic and feel fun to watch without taking too long. Having the clamshells act like birds and the burners act like missiles was clever, as was the naming of all of the different "plans".

The AI, as you say, is not very good at the game, but I won't hold that against the entry too much. It's nice to have a way to play single player, and the visualization of the cursor was a nice touch. The random selection of choices is a little frustrating sometimes- I think it would be nice to have always-avaliable "staple" options like moving units. But, that may be a design choice to force strategic choices.

Overall, very ambitious entry which I think sticks the landing. I could easily see this being expanded with distinct "carriers" that have their own abilities, different "regions", etc. if you wanted to. Nice work!