Sinister Urbanism by SudoCat

[raw]
made by SudoCat for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

logo transparent.png After 6 apocalypses we, the myriad people, crawl from our pocket dimeonsional tomb-bunkers, survey the wreckage of a world that once was, and ready ourselves to build new city-shield-bodies to protect us from against what terrors lurk out in vast.

A rapid city building game set in a scarred and strange world. Join the growing coucil of eccentric agents as a pair of dancing skeletons trapped in a CRT monitor. councillors.png You are dealt a hand of buildings, you select a plot, select a building, and wait. Every 10 seconds your foothold grows. As does that of your fellow councillors and as do their ambitions.

Grow the city sufficiently to sustain its health and protect its citizens from the unmoored-terrors beyond.

_Content warnings for mentions of or references to; Blood, Drugs, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Smoking, Hell, Insects, The Apocalypse, Snakes, Violence, Light Body Horror, _

Made in Godot

Programming by Lizzie Davison & Robin Neal (twitter.com/_sudocat)

3D Models assembled by Lizzie Davison using Asset Forge AssetForge.io

Music and Sound by Robert Nuttall (instagram.com/ganymedespage)

Art and Writing by Christopher Neal-Knight (twitter.com/cdpnhyphenk)

Additional assets from kenney.nl ♥


The hotfix patch was created post-jam end, but features some major quality of life improvements. The text should be much more legible across the game now, and the district size was reduced to increase the speed of gameplay, hopefully allowing more players to reach the next district. Some minor bugs and crashes have also been resolved.

We hope to keep updating this build over the next three weeks to try to capture our original vision for the project. A big thank you to everyone who gave our weird lil thing a go.

-- web build working but uhh the tiny window makes it pretty unplayable 😭

Trying to use the embedded web player? I advise either checking the download, or if you'd rather avoid a download, you can visit the embed directly

Ratings

Overall 844th 3.25⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 956th 2.942⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 676th 3.212⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 676th 3.558⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 159th 4.25⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 336th 3.563⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 651th 2.708⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 346th 3.7⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 25🗳️ 28🗨️

Feedback

🎤 SudoCat
03. Oct 2022 · 22:50 UTC
the panic to get this uploaded in time was intense.

there's an inordinate list of things we wanted to do. still lots placeholder ui. never got a gritty vibe to the 3D we wanted either.

hopefully we'll update over the coming weeks with more VIBE and FLARE

--

our attempts to fix everything in the last hour results in more and more bugs. we'll have to do a bug fix update tomorrow, but that feels a bit like cheating.
Eugene An
04. Oct 2022 · 00:33 UTC
Loved the visual style, definitely a game I'd love to see develop further!
alexander epton
04. Oct 2022 · 00:38 UTC
ui was clipped off screen for me on laptop. couldn't really see how / what to do
Brandsma
04. Oct 2022 · 00:40 UTC
Great art for the game indeed. Would have loved to see what it would become with some extra time of development.
Krasimir Balchev
04. Oct 2022 · 00:43 UTC
I can't emphasise how much the artwork vibed with me. Music was jam as well. Maybe it was on my sad but the text was quite small and hard to read because of the font. I wasn't sure what the point of the game itself was, maybe I just didn't play long enough to reach it
NiceKot
04. Oct 2022 · 01:00 UTC
I like the aesthetics, settings and overall art style. Mixing a card game and city builder was also an interesting gameplay mechanic.

However I struggled somewhat with understanding of how actually different city blocks work and what I have to do.
MegaFuze
04. Oct 2022 · 01:11 UTC
There is something about the artwork that I like a lot, just the creativity of the character designs. Playing as a skeleton stuck in a crt tv sounds absurd yet cool. It took a while to figure out how the game worked and I gotta say it was pretty fun. I did however crash when a rival district had built something in the last remaining tile. Overall I think this game is pretty well made with some bugs aside of course.
🎤 SudoCat
04. Oct 2022 · 15:07 UTC
Thanks a bunch for all the feedback, its very exciting to have even a handful of folks play the weird thing we made. Stoked to hear the art vibed with many of you - if you like the style, then give @cdpnk a follow on the socials to see more of the fun worlds and characters he creates.

It was definitely a big ol' rush to get the art and text assets in at the last minute, which ended up with a lot of illegible text and a lack of clarity in card descriptions. We're working towards fixing these key problems, which should hopefully make the game a whole lot more playable.

The game also plays a lot slower than intended, due to accidentally making the grids too big (whoops). We're working on reducing the size so that rounds progress faster - it certainly shouldn't take 5 minutes to complete the first district!
figadei
04. Oct 2022 · 17:18 UTC
We had a very similar idea but then went into a completely different direction so it's very nice to see it completed. I absolutely adored the visual style, although I found the font is too small and really hard to read, but the colors and the designs are stunning gj!
Rayne
04. Oct 2022 · 17:36 UTC
Amazing style!
Lemare
04. Oct 2022 · 19:58 UTC
I liked it. It's similar to the Catan board game, which is fun. The music gets a little repetitive after a while, but definitely worth checking out!
MsPlanlos
04. Oct 2022 · 22:04 UTC
I enjoyed the artstyle but sadly I could not read some of the text like the one on the board itself or the purple text on purple background. :(
Don Fouts
04. Oct 2022 · 22:08 UTC
I think my game crashed at the end when all the tiles filled up. The music continued playing but I wasn't able to click around or inspect anything. I also had a hard time reading some of the text, but this could be an issue with the laptop I'm viewing it on. This seems like it was an ambitious game idea and could pan out to be pretty awesome if you continue working on it after the jam. Overall nice work and congrats on the entry!
Jonathan Vinesar
05. Oct 2022 · 01:37 UTC
I wish I could try a completed version of this game! Sadly, a lot of the rough edges put me off and made it hard for me to enjoy it. There weren't any clear indicators during the game that showed me how well I was doing or if my ideas were working, and I just had to hope things were working out for 5 mins of gameplay or so.

That being said, I really enjoyed the art and music! It was definitely a vibe
dippitydoop
05. Oct 2022 · 01:39 UTC
The style is beautiful and I really enjoyed just clicking around! Had no idea what I was doing, but I enjoyed doing it anyways! It did crash when all the tiles were filled, so I'm not sure if I won or lost or what, but it was a good time!
Aidturith
05. Oct 2022 · 18:33 UTC
The game looks lovely, but on the embedded version I could barely read anything.
Here's a screencap on brave browser : https://imgur.com/a/7lQl3C2

On the other hand the download version has a kind of zoomed-in resolution with borders being cropped away (multiscreen setup): https://imgur.com/a/q9FB6IQ
🎤 SudoCat
05. Oct 2022 · 20:58 UTC
Thanks again to everyone for the latest batch of feedback! You've helped pull us beyond the 20 rating threshold (how exciting!). We're aiming to polish some of those rough edges over the week, and get a post-jam version up at the weekend with a few quality of life improvements. If you did experience a crash at the end of the first district and want to see what else is there to be found, the crashes _should_ be fixed in the hotfix version linked in the description - if you do encounter them, any further details (such as councillors present, or simply a screenshot of the crashed state so we can see what buildings are present) would be super appreciated, as we've been unable to replicate the issue when testing.

@lemare so glad someone got the Catan inspiration! ❤

@aidturith oh jeeez those are bad 😬 might i ask what resolution the browser window is at? we absolutely did not plan for anything below 1920x1080 (which was a bad idea for sure). The downloaded version however... I truly do not know how it did that. I run on an ultrawide 3440x1440 with an additional monitor and could not replicate it, despite scaling the window from covering both screens, down to less than 480x320, and although illegible, it maintained the correct aspect ratio without cropping. Do you perhaps have windows scaling enabled or something else that could be throwing it off? 🤔🤔
Chase of Bass
06. Oct 2022 · 04:32 UTC
The music and art style in this is pretty cool! Great way to use the theme too -nice job on this! :D
Aidturith
06. Oct 2022 · 18:42 UTC
@sudocat Both of my screens are in 1920*1080, with system default (windows 11) and browser default font size, no zoom.
They are stacked on top of the other.
cannibalgirl
06. Oct 2022 · 20:16 UTC
the vibes with calamity intro were immense

the advisors to choose were rad (i picked the skateboarder as obv it/she/he/this has the highest competence in urban development)

then the building started
and I had no idea what I was doing UwU

but it was a pleasure to my eyes and my ears
i hope that the underlying brain behind this city simulation
will be developed and pushed trough
as the vessel is in already very good shape
looking forward to building some sinister urban tissue
and fighting the dangers beyond
nardandas
06. Oct 2022 · 22:49 UTC
The vibe was super great, the music fit well, the art was wild, great job! I liked the tile placement, I liked building a little city, but I often lost the round and I wasn't sure exactly how mine performed so much worse. Any points indicator would be great, just for some feedback. I also hit a point where the "next district" button wouldn't work without any feedback. I really enjoyed the game though, and if this stuff was fixed I'd definitely play more.
ViperWR
10. Oct 2022 · 12:17 UTC
Love the vibe with the music and art style, would love to see the updates!
1Kirik3
20. Oct 2022 · 18:55 UTC
Game looks really amazing but i have bugs with display so i can't fully have fun.