LudumData

Sunny-Life Waste Disposal by joe40001

[raw]
made by joe40001 for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

Short Synopsis:

(Full Story Explained in Game)
Sunny-Life Waste Disposal was hired for a contract of 1 million units. As a Sunny-Life Waste Disposal Employee, you are required to assist.

Title2.png

Controls:

  • Arrows: Move
  • Space: Interact
    • Gather Garbage = Hold Space In front of (center) of garbage pile
    • Fix Crane = Hold Space In front of Crane while having "repair garbage" in inventory
    • Deposit Garbage = Press Space in front of Crane without having "repair garbage" in inventory

Mechanics:

  • Mega-Crane
    • The Mega Crane will deposit 10k garbage every ~10 seconds. This is reduced with lowered efficiency.
  • Repairs
    • To repair the crane you must have a garbage with a repair icon and the matching problem symbol in your inventory.
  • Deposits
    • The value of black/gold garbage bags is shown on the icon
    • The value of the regular garbage deposited doubles based on the number of duplicates of a type:
      • 1 Of a Type: Each worth 1
      • 2 Of a Type: Each worth 2
      • 3 Of a Type: Each worth 4
      • 4 Of a Type: Each worth 8
      • ...(Up to 16 of a Type)
    • Also, for every complete set of 8 different types you get a bonus of 100k
  • Win Condition
    • You win the game when 1,000,000 units of garbage are collected.

For Reviewing:

  • When rating audio, rate everything but the intro music, that is creative commons (not made by us). The main game song was made by us.

Notes:

  • The "Recommended Version" has added (bottom of the screen) input prompts and an added a win screen. Because they were not in the Jam Build you should ignore these for the purposes of scoring.
  • The "Web Version" is the same as the recommended version, however some people experience considerable performance slowdowns (particularly on chrome). If it is slow/laggy, we recommend playing on firefox or downloading the windows build directly.

Credits:

Design, Programming: joe40001
Design, Art, Music, Supplemental Programming: tomb_ladma

Screenshots:

Screenshots.jpg

Jam Version https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vl9QZv7tXpDdW5zl2szRx5x4Nja0XHrm/view
Recommended Version (Read Notes) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uKyXSfJSkb9hOTh33Aasab22r5sKvhGd/view
Web Version (Read Notes) https://joe40001.itch.io/sunny-life-waste-disposal
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/sunny-life-waste-disposal

Ratings

Overall 795th 3.456⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Fun 815th 3.265⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 491th 3.5⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Theme 945th 3.426⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 683th 3.662⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Audio 305th 3.735⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Humor 380th 3.5⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Mood 463th 3.697⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Given 34🗳️ 42🗨️

Feedback

Baconinvader
06. Apr 2022 · 11:59 UTC
Really liked the graphics and the scale of the game but couldn't figure out how to play? I couldn't find any garbage to pick up so I wasn't able to repair the crane... maybe I was just missing something?
Okamit
06. Apr 2022 · 19:53 UTC
Interesting game! A bit buggy a you say and could need more polish, and more clear controls.
But i like the mood and graphics, the hand-drawn aesthetics are really nice, and would look very good with a bit more polish (especially the ground which has aliasing). I liked the feeling of the camera zoom-out at the big escavator.

Good job!
Cookiezz
18. Apr 2022 · 09:45 UTC
Liked the theme and gameplay, some more polish and it would feel great. The audio was fitting and helped the scene.
BoroBoro
18. Apr 2022 · 13:09 UTC
Liked the game, although the crane should have been more volatile I think as I had little trouble getting to the 1 million (but thats just a nitpicck). Otherwise its great!
🎤 joe40001
18. Apr 2022 · 13:28 UTC
@BoroBoro Thanks for the feedback. Yes there are probably some balance tweaks we should do, but hopefully you were able to use the duplicate/combo mechanics to reach the ending in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks very much for playing. *Sunny-Life Thumbs Up*
olafstromberg
18. Apr 2022 · 13:42 UTC
The art was interesting and it was a well executed game. Got to about 500,000 before it became boring, so maybe make it a little more difficult. Very nice effort though
potkirland
18. Apr 2022 · 14:27 UTC
- i think the mechanic doesnt let us get in to flow.
- i think you can make it so we dont have to hit a 5 second spot on repair. i would say make it faster like 1 second or even half a second.
- the art being so abstract made it really difficult to both understand what is going on and to communicate my ideas even with myself. maybe have them easier to eye and also a bit more identifiable.

thanks for sharing your game with us. i actually find the the artstyle fitting with the garbage theme only the items we interact with would help if they were more identifiable. all in all had fun playing it
🎤 joe40001
18. Apr 2022 · 14:40 UTC
@olafstromberg Thank you for the feedback. I think we needed to communicate the combo mechanic better in the game. With good combo play you can win fairly quickly, so I apologize that the rules made that unclear.

Thank you very much for plaything though. :)
knexator
18. Apr 2022 · 18:12 UTC
Fun game! I specially liked the 5-second repair minigame and the crane's dramatic zoom. The intro is fun but it could use a skip button.
MachWerx
18. Apr 2022 · 19:06 UTC
I liked the amount of depth in this game. As @potkirland mentioned, it's hard to get into the flow when there's a few seconds of leadup to the first piece and the garbage piles are of limited size. Also, it took me a couple plays to understand that the only piles we could interact with were the ones in the frontmost layer. It feels like the separation between "repair" and "deposit" doesn't really add much to the game. Also, the 5 second timer / delay on repair felt unneeded. Feels like just matching the repair types is enough. But the game was compelling enough that I played it a few times until I got to the goal!
Roka Josh
18. Apr 2022 · 19:07 UTC
Fun game, I agree with others that it gets a little dull after a while. I think a 'Motherlode' style upgrade system could work really well with this game, so you should definitely continue to work on it. Great job!
🎤 joe40001
19. Apr 2022 · 02:03 UTC
@knexator You can skip the intro by pressing enter. I wanted this feature too, but wasn't sure where to communicate it where it wouldn't be distracting to most people on their first playthrough.
🎤 joe40001
19. Apr 2022 · 02:38 UTC
@machwerx Thanks for the feedback. It might not be clear but the repair minigame determines a "repair efficiency" and unless you are 100% every time that means the crane will continue to degrade in efficiency (which increases explosion rate). The intention was a "ticking clock" element. I had wanted to do a more fun minigame but there wasn't time.

I'm very glad you were able to get to the end. :)
Jvdwijk
19. Apr 2022 · 08:52 UTC
This was an interesting game! Some things I noticed:

Liked the intro, was quite funny to listen too!

It was nice to see your score and health on the top, but it might be nice to also see your goal of 1M somewhere as incentive to keep going.

The garbage collecting minigame is a bit slow, which makes picking the right options not really a challenge, by speeding this up a little you'd add a bit of challenge while collecting while also speeding up the game a tiny bit!

Either way, nice entry!
SleepyStudios
19. Apr 2022 · 14:23 UTC
I really liked the dystopian atmosphere of the game. The grungey graphics paired with the smiley face logo made it feel a little cyberpunky. The main gameplay of collecting garbage made sense but aside from the red icon (which I just assumed meant "bad, do not collect") the other icons were just a bit of a mystery. It would've been good to have some sort of in-game visual tutorial on them. Overall though nice work!
JOZGames
19. Apr 2022 · 16:30 UTC
Nice game, would just give more info in what to do, and the controls, but the mecanic of repareing the crane was well done.
Fionnabhair
20. Apr 2022 · 00:34 UTC
Hahaha, that was great. That intro is a great way to hook people in. I would have appreciated some explanation of what the icons meant, but the game wasn't so punishing that you lacked the time to figure it out. I really liked the artwork style and how that contributed to the dystopian feel. Here I am, a happy red wagon with an arm, and piles of trash so overwhelming they're not even in focus.
tomb_ladma
20. Apr 2022 · 02:20 UTC
Thanks everyone for the sweet, sweet feedback.

Joe put in a lot of the heavy game engineering lifting and I made most of the art. We collaborated on the song.

I'm super proud of Joe for taking the dynamic that we thought of so far in so short of a time.

@fionnabhair "Here I am, a happy red wagon with an arm, and piles of trash so overwhelming they’re not even in focus." You have captured my dream for this game :D
Fatsheep
20. Apr 2022 · 04:18 UTC
Fun little game! Absolutely loved the big ass crane making lots of noise and just moving in background, really added a lot to the feel. Music and sound also absolute bangers. Feel like a lot of the combo mechanics could have been explained better in game though
LDJam user 288502
21. Apr 2022 · 06:22 UTC
Fascinating game, it took me a while to understand what was going on, but it is pretty fun!

I played the Jam version first, and then the Recommended version.

Most problems that I saw in the Jam original were fixed in the newer version.

The only problem that I saw specific to the the newer version was that sometimes it would kick me off the gathering mode, and I was only able to gather again without problems in another pile.

If that is intentional, it would be good to indicate somewhere to the player that the pile is depleted, and to come back later after trying another one.

I think that some visual indication that repeat items multiply would also be great, the game is too slow if you don't know that you can do that.
Link270
21. Apr 2022 · 07:05 UTC
Super interesting game. I liked the mechanics, though it would be nice if there was a bit more going on. I.E. when you fix something it could be for different time periods, or maybe some different mechanics randomly, etc. The art was rad. It looked so purposeful, which made it really impress me and feel really nice all together. The audio was also really nice and felt right in the mood. Well done!!
Tanner Shelton
21. Apr 2022 · 07:15 UTC
I liked this a lot more then I was expecting to. I played it until the end. I think if it were a bit more obvious on what would provide a better end result (More profit) it would make more sense. But I did enjoy it, the art was whimsical, and with polish, it could be really amazing.
🎤 joe40001
21. Apr 2022 · 12:05 UTC
@jamtempisto Thanks for the feedback. It might not be super obvious but the piles shrink as you gather from them. When it kicks you out that means it has temporarily shrank to nothing. But all 3 main piles regrow with time.

Yes, my biggest regret though is that there is no info showing the multiplier effect.

Really awesome feedback. Thanks so much for playing our game.
LDJam user 288502
21. Apr 2022 · 15:43 UTC
What surprised me was how sudden it was, if there were still some lines available, how can the pile be empty? =P

I think that if the lines started coming all empty when the pile gets depleted, it would convey better what was happening.

You could include the multiplier in the game lore: repeat items get packaged together and sent to Sunny-Life Refurbishing System TM, where after a through inspection (that may or may not happen) they're resold as brand new...
Igor KinGamer
21. Apr 2022 · 15:52 UTC
Funny game! hahaha I admit I didn't have patience to read the description here in the LD page at all before playing. Anyway, I understood everything after some time and enjoyed playing it till the end. It's a complete experience, well done!
vivyhasadream
21. Apr 2022 · 16:03 UTC
a very interesting take on the topic!
the hold spacebar controlling confuses me for a sec, then I understood how it works.
the game is well executed. good job!
🎤 joe40001
21. Apr 2022 · 16:25 UTC
@jamtempisto Good point, I like how you are thinking from the point of view of the internal logic of the universe. :)

I also like your suggestions for explaining the multiplier. It's clear you really understood the game's universe/tone which makes me happy because it means we hopefully didn't do a half bad job communicating that haha.