Island Management by Pete
Introduction
We are running out of time! We can't save our island! The world is changing; and it's happening quick. The weather is getting hotter and the ocean is rising. Make the most of the time we have on our small island. Create happiness, but also delay the pollution for as long as possible.
How to play
The game is mouse controlled. You click a card in your hand to select it and then click on a tile on the table to play the card to that tile. Right clicking deselects any card selected.
Playing cards
The game is played in rounds, and every time you press roll you end the round. The round start with you drawing 4 new cards. These cards can be played by selecting them and placing them on a tile on the table. Each tile can hold one card. Any card you place on top of a tile that already have a card will discard the card already there. The cards comes from 3 different groups housing (green), commercial (blue), and industrial (yellow). Housing and commercial buildings generates happiness together according to what the effect says on the card. The goal is to generate as much happiness as possible, before the world is too polluted. Pollution is created every turn from the power consumed not produced. You can minimize the generation of pollution by generating your own power by using industrial buildings. Each person consumes 1 power, and any power not generated by you needs to be imported and generates 4 pollution each. Power cannot be saved between rounds and producing more power than you use does nothing. Each round, a base 5 pollution is added from the world around you.
Roll
After playing all the card you want you press "Roll". This will discard any card remaining in your hand. Now a number of dice are rolled. In the first round a single set of dice are rolled. Each time you reach 50 pollution a new set of dice are added. Each dice represent disasters. The more pollution there is, the more disasters happen. Each dice pair is color coded, and the sum of the dice will destroy the card on a tile with that number. The most common combination (7) it a lucky one that don't destroy anything.
End game
The game ends when you reach 250 pollution. The small island is not longer habitable. Your final score is how much happiness you were able to create before the island met its demise.
| Link | https://noobworld.dk/games/ludumdare50/export1/web/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/island-management |
Ratings
| Overall | 1219th | 3.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1230th | 2.792⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 223th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 479th | 3.833⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1099th | 3⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1102th | 2.045⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1308th | 2.522⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
Thanks for giving it a go. Without instructions I can understand it can be quite hard to understand what is happening. Hopefully the institution on this page can help you now if you want to give it an other go.
I'm not sure if it's just me, but your HTML5 game link doesn't load the game for me anymore. Which is too bad, because I'd like to try the game with the rules in mind now.
Either way, I've increased my rating of this game, because I now understand what you were going for.
EDIT: Never mind, it's loaded successfully for me now! I guess my laptop is just slow. :)
Showing the current population and power production / demand would probably make the game more self-explanatory.
The main thing it's missing right now is some kind of 'what will happen' indicator so that I don't have to keep track of my power generation/consumption in my head. Without seeing those (as well as maybe a preview of the effects of placing a card), it feels like too much math for me to figure out what's actually a better arrangement. More cards would be great too, of course, but it's a game jam so what can ya do.
Energy consumption/production balance seems interesting, but please make the game more transparent to players.
I missed a little engagement, though: there were no attempts of humor in the text (or I didn't notice?) and absolutely no audio or soundtrack, so atmosphere was not really a thing. At least for me, these tiny things can make a lot of difference on having me engaged in a game/story, and playing for a longer time. On the other hand -- I find it super hard balancing things and coming up with the variables/resources when developing this type of game, so congrats for having something playable in such a short time.
I hope you make to your 20 ratings! In any case, if you don't, don't let this discourage you: there's always LD 51, and you got a lot of nice feedback in the comments already. Good luck! :blush:
Overall well done!
I think with some more indications (like "power consumed / produced power") and little animation that explain card destruction (like dices going to card before they disapear ?) it would be way more understandable !
Also, we don't have informations about the limit of pollution and if the happiness score is high or not. I mean, for example I did 250 happiness max, but don't know if it's a good score !
Anyway, card mecanics and dices rolls are clean and cool !