LudumData

Deep Sea Tycoon by Udo2

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made by Udo2 for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

screen1.png

Deep Sea Tycoon is a very simple, complete, open-ended tycoon simulator in the style of the 80s.

I made it from scratch, except for the illustrations which are based on free unsplash.com stock images. I took the music from one of my earlier LDs, so I'm opting out of the Audio category. This is an HTML-only game, no canvas, no WebGL.

Controls: - [Space] to pause/resume the simulation - [m] to toggle the music - mouse

When you vote, please also leave a comment :smiley:

Tools Used - Text editor (Geany on Ubuntu) - Gimp for graphics editing - My HTML game starter code: https://github.com/Udo/canvas-game-starter - Logic Pro X for music

Post-LD Changelog: - fixed a bug that would prevent the management team from being re-acquired - added a status screen for the management team - fixed a floating point formatting bug in assets view - fixed a bug that would cause long asset lists to scroll to the top every second - fixed a bug that allowed drilling new wells when the platform is on fire

Disclaimer: This is technically my second game for LD 48. I made the first one for the Compo, and half-way through I began to wish I had chosen Deep Sea Tycoon as my concept. I had a free day on Monday, so I made DS Tycoon because I felt motivated. I hope it isn't against the rules to make 2 games (if it is, please let me know).

Stock Photo Credits - https://unsplash.com/photos/OxhaiWcfT_o - https://unsplash.com/photos/rSpMla5RItA - https://unsplash.com/photos/6xeDIZgoPaw - https://unsplash.com/photos/uJhgEXPqSPk - https://unsplash.com/photos/5684tm9pat8 - https://unsplash.com/photos/djb1whucfBY - https://unsplash.com/photos/guADzpF9pDI

Link http://dev.openfu.com/ld/ld48-2/game/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-sea-tycoon

Ratings

Overall 638th 3.674⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 390th 3.717⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 578th 3.5⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 710th 3.804⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1000th 3.614⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 270th 3.619⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 588th 3.727⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 10🗨️

Feedback

Osterzone
27. Apr 2021 · 15:04 UTC
OKay, I have 1.5 billion dollars now and it doesn't look like you can get anything new after the big rig so I guess I'm done. Great game, the style is really cohesive. There's an exploit where you can buy a management team, sell some assets at the increased price and then sell the management team again on the same day for cost price. Also you can always tell when the oil price has peaked because it stays the same for a tick before falling. Also did you mean for the maintainence crew costto be $0.1M for the big rig?
🎤 Udo2
27. Apr 2021 · 15:13 UTC
Thank you @osterzone! Sorry it's open-ended like that I just ran out of time... the frustrating thing is it's not hard to add content to the game now that everything is in place. I really feel I should have gone with this idea instead of what I did for the Compo - two days instead of one would have added some real depth here.

Yes, I agree that the management team is exploitable, you probably shouldn't be allowed to sell them straight away. The idea behind the maintenance crew is that it's too expensive for the crappy starter rig but really good for the big rig. However, you're probably right that keeping the price the same was not the brightest idea :laughing:

Thank you for trying it out! <3
StyledSnail
27. Apr 2021 · 22:45 UTC
would definitely play a full idle game based on this
🎤 Udo2
28. Apr 2021 · 09:33 UTC
@styledsnail thank you, good to know! I think I'll be getting a post-LD version going :slight_smile:
mauriciomunky
28. Apr 2021 · 21:20 UTC
I love the concept and love tycoon games, but I couldn't get the hang of it. I go into debt really fast, and no way out of it :(
But this is a good idea for a game, and with some other screens, graphics, stats, could be a really good management game!
🎤 Udo2
28. Apr 2021 · 22:39 UTC
@mauriciomunky thank you for your feedback! Yes, it's easy to go into a debt spiral (like in real life). A credit system would probably help in these cases, that's definitely something I'm going to add to the post-Jam version.

As I said before, the frustrating thing for me about this game is that it's really easy to add new systems and content to it now that the foundation stands, but sadly I ran out of time to do it.
mauriciomunky
28. Apr 2021 · 22:50 UTC
@udo2 that’s totally okay! Finishing the base system already is an important accomplishment on a game jam and a good test of concept for longer projects.
Robotex
29. Apr 2021 · 10:18 UTC
It was fun at start but then became boring. I like graphics and sound but you should add more content and mechanics on release
🎤 Udo2
29. Apr 2021 · 14:53 UTC
@robotex I know. Thank you for trying it out :)
morcado
05. May 2021 · 22:39 UTC
its fun and good looking, but you can add some feedback when days passes or you get come income. good job
Halberd
08. May 2021 · 12:14 UTC
Really fun! Wasn't sure what to do after the big rig but it was great fun getting there, the atmosphere and mood were really well done as well. Good job, and I'm excited to see the post-jam version!
YaBoyCJ
08. May 2021 · 12:41 UTC
I just love the artstyle, come check out my game as well if you can! :)
Tadej
08. May 2021 · 14:17 UTC
Relly fun game, I'd play more of this. Well done :)

Couple of minor ux things that I was mssing:
- Would be nice if there were some icons next to the assets.
- The ability to sort assets, or at least have non-fucntioning rigs at the top.
- Market price could be shown in the top bar.
🎤 Udo2
08. May 2021 · 15:47 UTC
Thank you @tadej, I agree with all your points! :slight_smile:
kuro
13. May 2021 · 15:50 UTC
Hey @udo2

I just played your game. In fact I spent way more time with it than I wanted to. The premise seems simple enough, but it is surprisingly well balanced, so it kept me going for a while.

![rigs.png](///raw/416/z/42650.png)

Anyway, I have gotten filthy rich, so I'm retiring now.

Thx for the game. Was fun to play .)
bozmak
16. May 2021 · 00:00 UTC
very nice! really enjoyed the look and feel. i went into debt three times. very cohesive style - tunes would be nice? cheers
🎤 Udo2
16. May 2021 · 09:06 UTC
@kuro <3 thank you!

@bozmak :smile: by tunes do you mean music (because there is! I recycled a song from a previous LD!) or tuning the rules? Tuning the style? :laughing:
Neon
16. May 2021 · 22:12 UTC
Fantastic graphics! Really enjoyed the interface. As for the mechanics, clearly the crew costs way too much to be worth it: at least I noticed much greater earnings with apparently self-operating oil rigs :smile: Even after trying to build up some income, hiring people to each rig was too expensive, and I went into debt. A fun little investment game, though drilling for oil seems a little crude in 2021 :wink:
🎤 Udo2
17. May 2021 · 07:28 UTC
@neon thank you. The crew intentionally costs too much for the crappy oil rigs, but as you can afford better platforms, they become really great. :laughing: They're only maintenance crews, so all they do is slow the decay of the equipment. I should probably have made that clearer in the UI.
Vladadamm
17. May 2021 · 20:48 UTC
That's a quite complete tycoon game, especially considering you did it in only 24h after doing compo. You managed to implement all the bases of management/tycoon games and have it in a playable state which is impressive.

There's a lot that could be improved obviously (one can manage only so much in 24h), as the UI overall :
- Most tabs would benefit from being 'full screen' rather than a small window in the middle as there's lots of infos that need to be displayed, especially in Assets.
- We can't scroll in Accounting and if tables there gets too big we can only see part of it.
- Not being able to see things you can't purchase at the moment in Acquisitions sucks as you can't plan ahead if you should save money for the next big thing to come. Some graph there could also be nice.
- Managing platforms isn't very practical as you have to click on one to perform the basic actions and know whether it is going well or not (how much oil does it bring ? where's the drilling at ? is there crew on it ? etc...). I know there's the blue check icon that shows whether it's mining oil or not, but that's not quite enough imo.

There's also some balancing issues as in debt being too unforgiving (some credit system could fix that), or having to pay to stop a rental contract once the state of the platform is too low (shouldn't contracts be on some fixed duration ? or maybe with a monthly/yearly renewal and no selling of them).

But well, again having a lot of issues is normal such a game would require a lot more polishing and features that wouldn't be possible to implement in so short time.
Peace Of Cake Games
18. May 2021 · 13:43 UTC
All right, it would appear I'm terrible at oil mining. 😆 At the start of the game everything was being measured in hundredth decimals, so I thought I could exploit the system and buy sports cars for 0.01 and sell them for 0.03. Then my stupid brain took a second look at the prices when my supply of money went down a little bit and I realized why I shouldn't play mining simulators when I've only been awake for around 30 minutes. 🤣

This is a pretty solid mining simulator! The fact that you managed to make this *and* another game is really impressive. Great job!