FARTOPOLIS by aerloth

PLAY ON ITCH.IO / browser+windows - https://aerloth.itch.io/fartopolis
WINDOWS DOWNLOAD - https://labs.xaoscollective.com/ld49/fartopolis-win64-latest.zip
BROWSER VERSION WEBGL2.0 - https://labs.xaoscollective.com/ld49/
FARTOPOLIS
The apocalypse has come, the city is flooding and your unstable building is now your last hope of survival.
Help the drowning people by letting them go on your building, but beware, as they will disturb the balance....
When you collect enough people (20), the rescue helicopter will come when you call it from the helipad.
Everyone that moves on the building influences the balance and where you are going!
HOW TO PLAY
←↑↓→ or WSAD - move the fart guy
SPACE - fart to make people move around
SUPERFART (DASH-FART) - go in the arrow zone and press SPACE to do a fast move with the whole building
RESCUE - press SPACE in the helicopter pad when it activates
AVOID crashing into other buildings and COLLECT rescue boats with the drowning people!
Thank you for playing and leaving some feedback!
MADE BY aerloth & satolas in 72hrs for Ludum Dare 49 - "Unstable"
SCREENSHOTS






Ratings
| Overall | 556th | 3.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 465th | 3.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 88th | 4.045⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 227th | 4.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 568th | 3.795⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 285th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 245th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 362th | 3.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
https://youtu.be/QZxtnpxwT_M?t=1577
Yes. I laughed at farts. A lot.
Normally, I would be a bit hesitant to deal with an unusual control scheme as, "use a seesaw to navigate left or right," as they tend to not be as reactive in a obstacle dodging game. I did, however, quite enjoy this game for its balancing act (pun not intended) of making dodging manageable despite the slow handling of the tower our titular character is on. Not only that, but the game mechanic even provided some much needed sensitivity in changing the horizontal velocity of the tower. Of course, the crude graphics, audio, and humor all worked in the game's silly tone. Pretty cool stuff.
That said, there were some flaws I've noticed with the game. The biggest one is that the movement of citizens being farted on aren't exactly predictable. It would be nice if they consistently moved to the other side, rather than dealing with the fact that they could move up and down, thus not affecting the balance of the tower whatsoever. I also thought the screen shakes are a little overwhelming, and they sometimes triggered for no discernible reason. A constant bug I seem to deal with during the stream playthrough was how I kept getting stuck on the arrow pads. It'd be nice if those pads were less "sticky."
Still, this was a neat game that really challenged my original assumptions. Glad to see it come out much better than I would have imagined.
Note taken for all the flaws mentioned - all valid concerns that should've been addressed.
Fun fact: citizens actually have no smart "AI" - they just choose the target box at random, which we have thought will not work at all, but was just enough to make the gameplay interesting to our surprise. A proper "choose a slot on the opposite side" would certainly make it more predictable.
We found it strangely funny that some of them would even stay in the room with the fart. Do they enjoy it for some reason?
Screen shakes and "ghost collisions" come from a fact that sometimes, buildings collide on their own (sometimes even off-screen) and we don't have a separate, less impactful effect on that.
We were also surprised that in the end it all worked and allowed you to control the tower somewhat!
Fart on!
@dogez we find that behavior intended and normal, glad to hear that our invention is working :D
@kuro that screenshotted quote is deeply philosophical and resonated deeply with me
@geckoo1337 thank you! And thanks for playing and taking some time to write kind words!