STUDY LADY (cookie mix) by PeachTreeOath



Description
What is more inevitable than spilling milk? Go on a journey of discovery as you learn about hope and free will. It's also an idle game.
How to Play
- Buy upgrades to generate money only when they’re on screen (try to spread out what you buy).
- The world will keep looping until you buy the "World x" upgrade.
- This will unlock further worlds with more upgrades.
- The game finishes once you've completed World 3.
Dev Notes
The idea behind this game was an "incremental music video". This one definitely stretched our art and cutscene development abilities.
The music is not ours though (I wish!). It can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/pinkneontokyo/bigwave-aquamarine-pntss0001
| Link | https://peachtreeoath.itch.io/study-lady-cookie-mix |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/study-lady-cookie-mix |
Ratings
| Overall | 303th | 3.836⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 716th | 3.359⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 294th | 3.695⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1232th | 3.023⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 96th | 4.462⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 146th | 3.969⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 127th | 4.127⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 112🗨️ |
I would like to place it as a background music player when I am doing my daily task but the current music in game are a bit over-excited :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
However! it do fit the art and animation in game very well
And it will be nice if I can tune the volume in game
Overall good job
Something that really stuck out to me was the ability to click on something before a certain animation happens and you can get the better crystal amount. I loved that. The gameplay turned into twitch gameplay for me -- "I gotta tap on this before that cat appears to get more crystals!"
UI design was also fantastic. The quality is top notch and I had a clear idea what my next upgrade cost and what it will do.
It took me a second to realize how the worlds interacted with each other. However, even an idle game layman (like myself) can figure it out and there is a deeper strategy to it. It took me a long time to finish all 3 worlds but I saw that it can be in a much quicker time.
To sum it up:
- Fantastic art
- Groovy track
- Amazing animation
- Deep strategy
- Twitch click gameplay
- Interesting connection between the worlds with the crystals
Great job! 10/10 for the choice of J A M S
On the downside, soon after the game start you understand that most of the places are unprofitable and you should upgrade only good ones. So, most of the time I waited for cycle to go to the right point.
The art is ridiculously cute. The mechanics are nice, I like that you kinda have to see which things you should invest in seeing it's not linear.
I wish you had a radio or something so that you could change the music, because listening to that on a loop for 40 minutes is honestly a bit much. I have to admit it's not really my style either and so I muted the game halfway and had to put my own music in the background.
I think the theme is a bit of a stretch, looks more like something from LD47 Stuck In A Loop, but then again this game is pretty random in general x)
Also I think the loop gets a bit frustrating when you're farther into the game because half of the scenes are basically useless then.
Overall, nice job!
i won't spoil the ending for everyone else here, but i love the W. S. Maugham quote, really ties it all together. though, honestly, it was pretty disappointing to be hit with a solid color background and some text as the reward for finishing the game, after spending so much time looking at all of the pretty art and animation. i was expecting like a snapshot or something of the girl with her cat and her finished homework, or something to bring the visual story around to a conclusion.
i think you did well in tuning all the numbers. i felt like it was satisfying to figure out the "puzzle" of effective resource allocation.
It was really serene listening to the future funk and watching all the different animation iterations. i felt satisfied with fine tuning this "machine", figuring out where's best to spend resources. it also would have been nice to display the total number of loops it took to reach the end, if anything to compare against other players, or different runs, to see what strategy is more efficient.
i can't say it felt entirely on theme, i think i see what you're going for with the girl and the cat trying to prevent the milk from falling, but it definitely felt a lot more "LD46 - Stuck in a Loop" than delay the inevitable.
but still, it was really fun and cute! especially seeing the evolution of the various world objects through each world. meow!
Good job!
I feel like I usually have more detailed comments but it really did what it set out to do and it was just long enough for the content and the narrative progress in it all.
- Amazing and cute visuals
- Great song choice
- I don't like getting milk in my face on loop
- The gameplay was pretty fun - but I wanted a new song!!!
The way the scene changes and shifts the source of income .. how do I explain it? It created pockets of waiting, pockets of rushing, and where those pockets were would shift throughout the game. It would test my memory, since I would plan to buy specific investments and not want to overspend, but also not leave idle capital and miss opportunities.
Early game I wanted to plan my investments mostly around diversification so that I would have a steady stream of income. I don't know if that was even efficient, but it was somehow intolerable to not have the number going up during each scene and I was compelled to fix that!
Later, the game introduced multiple currencies, and different investments (why do I keep calling them that, everyone else calls them upgrades) would allow you to switch between currencies in different directions. At this point the planning got more complex and the loop was so long that I really felt like I didn't want to miss the plan and have to wait for it to come around again, and yet still I would sometimes find myself short for having made an impulse purchase!
The game veered into frustration, which was fine. It certainly never went too far. Interestingly, it was sometimes frustrating to have to sit around and wait, and other times frustrating to have something fly past, and where those were changed over time.
One thing that could have destroyed this game entirely was the fact that it looped one song over and over. Fortunately, you chose very well and this was not a problem at all. Song was a total banger.
The art was great. Super-charming. Loved the absurdity of getting bonked on the head by the milk, and then it's spinning wildly and bounces off the floor, all without spilling. And the cat has a gall to look all shocked when we darn well saw his paw start it all.
It was awesome that in addition to the usual monetary rewards, each upgrade started as ???? and when you first bought it, it added new art to the music video. Such a great touch that tied the whole thing together.
Very well done! Tons of uniqueness and charm about this one.
I wish that the 3rd world was a bit more interesting; once I got there it felt like the majority of my time was spent waiting around. I understand that this sort of progression is common in idle games, but...still. It was kind of cool to go through the entire progression, but at the same time having to wait for all 3 worlds to go around made things feel a little tedious. I would have loved to simply have a fresh restart and be introduced to a new progression system with each world rather than having two worlds which stayed on despite being mostly irrelevant in the greater scheme.
Is future funk-type music picking up these days? I've also been experimenting with some of those stylings and ideas in my own productions recently; perhaps it's just a coincidence.
I was going to come back and write a ton about how amazing this is, but @pkenney already did the typing so just +1 to that review lol.
The thorough breakdown of the experience helps so much! This game has had a wide variety of reactions since it's fairly unusual, so something like that helps me break down what exactly was causing some of those responses.
The music was really well chosen, because it did not get annoying. Even after listening to it for I don't know how many iterations it was still nice to bob my head to it. Of course the art was absolutely amazing too and very funny! Especially that cat, haha
My only complaint is that it took way too long to get through the game for my liking (although I did do it!). It also took longer and longer, because to make any progress in world 3 I had to wait through world 1 and 2 as well. Maybe I just did not buy my point generators properly, or this is just not my type of game, but that was my experience nontheless. Even though I really enjoyed the first and second world, so if it ended after the second world I think I would have been very satisfied. But again, that is just my opinion, so do with it what you want :)
All-in-all an amazing experience of a game! A great submission to the jam. I had a great time playing it, and thanks a lot for making this :D
Good job making the game!
I'll say for a jam entry the 3rd stage started to lose me, as I wanted to get to the end but the build up was, while proper for a clicker, a bit slow for a jam.
The art direction was superb, and it was REALLY fun 'unlocking' more of them. Probably just wish they'd change more at different level thresholds to keep things interesting, but its a minor gripe. The game succeeds grandly at what its trying to do.
I love the concept and the style of this game. I think you really nailed the idea of an "evolving music video." This is definitely one of the most unique ways I've seen an idle game play out. I love how you guys got so much mileage out of the same re-skinned animations, too. Very clever!
A couple things to note: I do think that it does scale a liiiiittle too slowly, and I think that's mostly due to the first scene becoming more and more irrelevant as the game progresses (and to a lesser extent the second scene). During my last 10 minutes or so with the game, I found myself just picking up my phone and browsing Twitter while I waited for the first scene to complete, which normally for an idle game I think is totally fine. However, for THIS idle game, you need to be paying attention in order to make sure you don't miss your timed marks, so I think the concept of the game is a bit at odds with itself in these instances.
Also, I like how you give players an idea of the reward they're currently spending their currency on before they unlock it, but it would also be nice if somehow you could communicate the RATE at which they get the reward as well. There were some rewards that only trigger once per scene, and others that trigger once every half second or so, and I never really knew what each one was going to be (or maybe that was the point, for surprise?)
Anyhoo, sorry if a lot of this sounds critical. I usually just tend to write a lot more for the games I really like, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't play this entry longer than any other entry so far.
Really really nice job with this!
Speed of game: too slow and people get bored. Too fast and people are clicking wildly, not even noticing any of the art. You made a great point about how since its design is so different, it ends up not coming across as an idle game, and demands your attention differently.
Communicating rate: Absolutely correct that the value of each generator is obscured by a) each one ticking a different amount of times and b) you can't see them all at once to compare them easily like in a normal idle game. This one I also debated but then decided to leave it as a small "skill" for the player to develop in figuring out the optimization puzzle.
Not saying any of my decisions were the correct one, but those were some of the unusual consequences of deviating from the genre conventions and you broke down your viewpoint on them well.
I enjoyed the graphics and the animations, and the different styles in the different levels.
AFter completing, I finally took the time to have a look at what actually was happening: a lot!
Overal, great entry! :)
It might be nice to make a smooth infinite loop of the song. The silence in between felt a bit weird. Also it reminded me how much time I am wasting with it.
I say waste but it was not a waste of time playing this. I had fun.
Thank you, its great!
Mixing an idle game with super nice animations and switching scenes like that is a very good idea and work well, good job 🥛
Well, I think you pretty much defined Innovation! I've never seen anything like this and I could keep playing it forever. Everything about this is polished and solid, sometime I'll have to give it another go and try to make it to the end.