The Gold'n Apples by kikiriki367
If you're posting a comment, feel free to post a screenshot of your ending village! It would mean a lot to me and it will make the comment section look a lot prettier! Thank you for playing! <3
A relaxing puzzle city builder. Really easy to learn but hard to master gameplay. Your task is to go around various islands of your kingdom, construct orchards and harvest apples.
I will be working on the game a bit in my spare time, adding more levels modes and any ideas i get from the players. So if you like the game feel free to join the discord server: https://discord.gg/3MSSzB24ZQ
For anyone looking for an extra challenge these are the top 5 scores so far! Can you do better than them?
1st Place is @no-whone with 699 Apples
2nd Place is @shit-lord with 635 Apples
3rd Place is @pazzi with 526 Apples
4th Place is @skosnowich with 504 Apples
5th Place is @ategon with 478 Apples
If you somehow do, post a picture with your final score!


Music by Gutto Ze: https://linktr.ee/icecavernstudio
Asset Pack Used: https://untiedgames.itch.io/world-map-pixel-art-tileset
*Game Link(HTML+Downloads): https://to-hardware.itch.io/the-gold-n-apples *
This is a cheat-sheet on how resources work! Hope it helps anyone whose playing! Good Luck and feel free to ask any questions! Placing a house surrounded by number of forests gives you apples:
1 Forests: +1 Apples
2 Forests: +3 Apples
3 Forests: +6 Apples
4 Forests: +10 Apples
5 Forests: +15 Apples
6 Forests: +21 Apples
7 Forests: +28 Apples
8 Forests: +36 Apples
Placing a market surrounded by number of houses gives you money and sells your apples:
1 Houses:-1 Apples, +1 Gold
2 Houses:-2 Apples, +3 Gold
3 Houses:-3 Apples, +6 Gold
4 Houses:-4 Apples, +10 Gold
5 Houses:-5 Apples, +15 Gold
6 Houses:-6 Apples, +21 Gold
7 Houses:-7 Apples, +28 Gold
8 Houses:-8 Apples, +36 Gold
So that is how you get more of the resources with less buildings! i hope this helps!
| Link | https://to-hardware.itch.io/the-gold-n-apples |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/the-gold-n-apple |
Ratings
| Overall | 337th | 3.595⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 306th | 3.532⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 156th | 3.702⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 405th | 3.714⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 515th | 2.612⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 355th | 3.532⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 107🗳️ | 175🗨️ |
The gameplay is simple, but fun and relaxing and it works well in your game :)
@mortith I'm really glad that you enjoyed it, i hope you didn't get stuck too early on though... :(
@szieberth-adam Your wish is my command, you can now download the game for windows if you want to!
While the mechanic it can become quite hard and you have to think in order to succeed.
Would have loved a way to reset only the current island. But overall great game!
@lagerbe Theres 4 islands in total so you were really close to finishing it! And if you do you get a cool view of all your islands! But still great job!!! :D
@automatonvx You got everything right. So the placement is important. The point is for you to think ahead, placing trees first so you get better houses. And you place houses to get apples, and to be able to put better markets. So they mis with each other... And yeah starting with a bad hand you should just restart, but in future islands you can just "Refresh" your shop by spending apples. Ultimately losing score a bit but still saving precious room! :D

Score: 202, Gold: 21.
Note that in windows, I can skip the tutorial and play through the game, but the second island on the tutorial does not count the coins thus I was unaple to proceed. Also, quit game button does not work but that is a small thing really. Good luck with it on the jam!
The bugs are fixed!(Leftover from the Html port) I love that you played it again and until the end!!!
And as promised my Islands. The first island is half empty cause I'm slow and didn't thought about farming it till I max out space, and traversed to the other Island as soon as I had enough money :P

My score was 264 apples and 38 gold:


And my final "great" build...

So the random deals were pretty brutal in the early game. You could even get so bad a luck that there is no way to pass the first island. And starting the whole thing again after a fail like that wasn't fun at all. Getting served a handful of only marketplaces at the start of an island was soul crushing.
The game should probably explain too that the apples and coin carry over so you shouldn't rush to the next island as soon as you can.
The visuals were pretty good. The white spot for the "picked up" building was a bit off putting and it was quite hard to remember where it was picked from when trying to return it. Could of really helped to have some sort of in place popup text/icon showing when you harvested apples or sold em for coin. Would have really made easing into the mechanic so much nicer.
Sometimes (or I think maybe even always) the hover effect didn't appear. Happened quite a few times at least on the one square off from left bottom corner on different islands too. And would have been cool to have the picked up building on the hover as kinda like a reminder preview of what you took. Messed up quite a few times because spent some time thinking and forgot what I had picked. And of course having undo functionality in a game like this would be a godsent.
The music was chill and fit the vibe of the game. Some sound effects would have been nice. They also would have helped giving feedback of gained apples or coin just like the visual effect I already mentioned.
Anyways, good job! 👍
@szieberth-adam Yeah the game at the ending turns into avoiding markets at all costs :D.
@bigwhiteshogun Youre not dumb at all! Its a simple mechanic but i dont know a single person that didnt get confused by it in some way :)) Even after playtesting it a fair bit i realized i needed an extra tutorial level or two.. But i feared of boring the players to death with the text screens! Also i was thinking of further making the game and maybe porting it for mobile(PS you can blay it on the phone already in browser!) as well since its built for it also, sooo you read my mind!
Yeah the UI is a bit tricky and all but making it this way saved an hour or two of my very limited time durring a busy weekend. But it is the first thing on the list to edit out!
Also thank you so much for your comment, it means a lot to me and it made my day, or even a week for sure! :heart:
@dekajoo Yeah i realized i need an extra tutorial level for that rule since every single person that played the game was surprisedby it hahahha
@skosnowich Yeah the soft lock is there to make sure to explain the importance of placement and building your island to the fullest. Since without those two core mechanics a lot of people would find it impossible to finish the game. :)) But ill see if i can think of some other better way to do it! ALSO its not that easy of a game, it is not extra challenging so that most people can finish it, but getting the high number of apples is for the people who do good. And you sir, and im not being nice, did amazingly well! I play tested the game with a few people and they would be on edge of finishing it when first playing. Soooo you should feel great about yourself! I think you did as well as i did when i played and i was testing the game for days!!! (Your castle island is also super cool!)
@antti-haavikko I will segment this comment so its more readable!
1.Yeah the random deals at the start are meant to be restarted. I was thinking of giving extra refreshes at the start to balance it out, but no matter how you spin it by not restarting you would start with a handicap. And for later stages the refresh button at a cost of apples is there to balance out the randomness a bit.
2. The tutorial islands make a point of that, and force you to actually fully build the first island to be able to finish the tutorial even! But i guess i should do it more clearer in some way :))
3. The other things you hit right on the nose with them! They are all there on my TO-DO list but sadly had to be cut because of the time constraints and a busy weekend!
Thank you for all the input and if you have any more please write it here! Im thinking of working a bit more on this game and any input on how to improve it, or what you would like to see is greatly appreciated! And ill see to maybe add them to a non LD version of the game :))
@harmadillo Yeah i know what you mean, sadly its would take a bit of time. And also i was thinking of rather restarting an island to make a few kingdoms like this each having its own checkpoint, so that ultimately you have dozens of islands in the ending shot. Forming a beautiful kingdom all together!
Placing a house surrounded by number of forests gives you apples:
1 Forests: +1 Apples
2 Forests: +3 Apples
3 Forests: +6 Apples
4 Forests: +10 Apples
5 Forests: +15 Apples
6 Forests: +21 Apples
7 Forests: +28 Apples
8 Forests: +36 Apples
Placing a market surrounded by number of houses gives you money and sells your apples:
1 Houses:-1 Apples, +1 Gold
2 Houses:-2 Apples, +3 Gold
3 Houses:-3 Apples, +6 Gold
4 Houses:-4 Apples, +10 Gold
5 Houses:-5 Apples, +15 Gold
6 Houses:-6 Apples, +21 Gold
7 Houses:-7 Apples, +28 Gold
8 Houses:-8 Apples, +36 Gold
So that is how you get more of the resources with less buildings! i hope this helps!

Keep on making games!
@ategon that one refresh sounds like an interesting idea... I might give it a spin and see how it feels.. Thanks for a good solution.
@slush Yeah for me it was a mix of a fair few things, and Loop hero was one of them! I love that you mentioned it :heart: As for the first level it comes down to balancing around and as it is now i think i will need to lower the difficulty for the first 2 islands just a bit... Thank you for persevering and getting through it.

Oh and of course not forcing a full restart would also fix the bad initial spawns as you could just quickly try again from the start of the island. Still wouldn't feel great by getting absolutely screwed by bad RNG.
PS Check the game description again, are you okay with it? :3
@antti-haavikko I think that the solution will be lowering the cost of moving on the first islands when you still dont have enough apples to reroll or like one player mentioned a free reroll per island.. Or like you said making sure there is 1 hut and forest at the beginning, which i already thought of but ultimately decided to skip on because of the last minute crunch time.. But Ill stay with the restart mechanic being in chunks of 4/5 islands having checkpoints in between. Again thank you a lot for your input ill try all these ideas out, and hopefully find a satisfying solution for when i post LD update the game. :heart:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1705767413
The tutorial was quite a mouthful to read, but delivered very well and was designed to have their values match perfectly. I also didn't encounter a single bug, so that's really nice.
Also, I beat Pazzi like I said I would... Ez W honestly (L Pazzi) 🤣🤣🤣 with 405 apples, I am the captain now.


All in all, wonderful submission... Well done!
@hell-homa Thank you for playing!
@bigwhiteshogun Thats soo cool, thank you a lot for that! And also guiding that streamer was a really nice move from you.. Its a shame my friend made the music a few months ago and not now seeing that a lot of people really like it.. It would be cool if it would also get rated :((
@bobo-oh If you mean the island with 3 houses already on it. It can be one of two things. You either rushed the first island and didnt place all 4 houses to get the apples you needed, or you didnt place the markets in an optimal position and sold the apples you had for a lower price than possible. If it was some other island, can you tell me which one so i can take a look if its a bug maybe?
@smeljey Yeah! After half way of making the game i realized its pretty similar... So i guess my mind pulled the inspiration from it. I hope i did it justice though since i Johnas is a pretty cool guy! :D.
@no-whone Okay okay... Are you sure you didnt encounter any bugs?!? Because how did you manage to get a score like that if not!!! Hahahah Well you can officially call your friend a noob now! And congratulations on a successful mutiny!
NO-WHONE (╯°Д°)╯︵/(.□ . \) PAZZI 1:0
@no-whone You, look at me, **I** am the captain now 👨✈️


@kikiriki367 , I think I've earned my rightful place once more ^~^

And @pazzi yes you are getting that well deserved first spot!
based on your high score table, i didn't do that great, but i didn't do that bad either. maybe i should have been optimizing for apples and focused less on getting gold in the final round.
chill hop bgm is an interesting choice, it's definitely nice to listen to, but feels pretty disjoint with both the pixel art style, the medieval setting, and the harvest theme. but it all more or less blended into a nice little experience :)

As I tried to chase that highscore once more, I noticed I had a problem with switching building-selection:
I think when you have a building selected, and you try to choose another building it should swap the selections not leave it with the old building. I got way too many misplaced buildings through this. Also maybe instead of a grey highlighting where you want to place a building, you could show a ghost of selected building. I have the feeling that you could put your selected building only back to the slot where it came from, would also be nice to put it back to any empty slot.
@pazzi I tip my hat to you, I surrender.. at least for now! 🧐 I tried several rounds but never even reached my own score again.

Also its not, iit never was a feature :)) itll only swap with white squares if the square was the same builiding as the one youre holding... It was an easy and fast hack to implement :))
Also, I gotta say- this is my favorite game (had a few early faves, but after reviewing 80, this one is most enjoyable- partially 'cause of the community lol) ^~^
Maybe I'll try again to beat you in the next days.

Also, I love the fact that it's playable on mobile... Makes it much more accessible and fun! You should definitely develop this further, it could become a very fun mobile game!
I would also love if this were a mobile game with a global leaderboard. Maybe a few more scenarios with seasons and regions too.
Yeah i absolutely love the little competition you made... I never thought of really adding a leaderboard until i saw your comments. And its really great!
For the restarting sadly theres no way around it.. I gave it a fair bit of thought and there is no balancing it... If i give any free refreshes at the start then it would also always be better to restart instead of using the free ones... And if i set the shop for the first hand to be set to a certain thing, then everyone would restart on the second hand to get that perfect one... So sadly this is it for now i think lol
There is no use in using the tutorial it is set that when you finish the tutorial you have 0 apples and gold, so there is no benefit in playing it apart from learning the game.
And for the RNG, while it is true that it plays a roll as much as in auto-battler games, skill is important as well. Like look at your islands, especially the castle one, they all have some sort of pattern at this point. You all made your strategies and ways of getting those scores. I mean just compare it to the picture i posted in the game description. Look how more organized your islands are! So dont undermine your skill guys and good job!!!
PS the playable on mobile part i discovered completely by accident xD I mean i meant to port it for mobile also but the HTML version surprised me! hahahaha
Pazzi ︵No-whone︵ Skosnowich
(/ .□.)\ ︵╰(゜Д゜)╯︵ /(.□. \)
Also i was thinking of asking you to make an island of your own after all this is done :)) like it would be cool! But i need a bit of time for playing other peoples games and my exams, before i come back to the game :))
honestly though, I don't really care about the score too much- more like I wanna play more of this game! A new group of islands to experiment with and play perhaps? xD
PS: I think this game is very balanced- easy to play, relatively hard to score extrmemely high.

@shp Nuuuu! Well i guess you will just have to play 1 more time and see if you can get a spot! :D.
Since nobody's worthy enough to dethrone me yet... I'm just gonna spill the beans, here's a recording of how I do it. (I made quite some mistakes here but it should still get the point across)
Essentially the 1st round is basically for gathering 40+ apples, and 36+ gold. 2nd round should be focused on gathering apples only. 3rd round is for gathering a lot of gold, and optimally a lot of apples as well. Then the last round is where you create a strip forest, and a 2 parallel lines of houses, and leave some room for waste merchants. Because mathematically, the pattern that yields the most apples is the 6 trees one where both ends are connected to form more 6 tree houses.
https://youtu.be/5hH9QlwfUnc
I had a similar strategy like you when i played and i got to around 480, but 580 is wow... Truth is when i was making the game at first i thought the max would be around 400, so im glad you that youve shown me otherwise! Liked and subscribed he he... PS did you speed up the video, or are you just that fast?
@ginxel Yeah They are great, and if you like them you can check them out i left a link in the description to the person that made them! They made a lot of different assets at cheap prices too :))
@no-whone @pazzi @skosnowich @ategon @bigwhiteshogun @szieberth-adam
Hey so i dont want to promise much, but theres a chance that ill work on the game a bit more. Fixing the UI, adding new regions, new mechanics etc... But it will take a bit of time. I wanted to create a discord channel in case i stick to it. Truth is the reason im thinking of continuing on making it is because of your comments and interest you shown! So apart from you being there i would enjoy picking your brains on thoughts that come to my mind or hearing what you might like to be added! In any case thank you a lot for your support! :heart:
So in case you are interested here is the link: https://discord.gg/3MSSzB24ZQ


@big-cyckos ahahha yeah i saw the houses as scared smilies as well, and still cant unsee it! Im glad im not the only one... And for the rain, its becaus eits raining in my heart, knowing i made the game and that i cant even get 3rd place on my scoreboard! :cry:
Thank you for youre input, ill experiment with the undo button. And if you really liked the game feel free to join the discord channel where ill try and make updates and talk to you about what you want to se get added! :))
Other then that great work!!
My friend, the game Dev, didn't want to post my 2nd place score until i made an acc so here you go. Waiting for the update game Dev :)
art and music are nice, concept too. great work!
@shit-lord did you hear when Pantela tells a joke?
@tweekstudios You must be the first person to not only be able to stomach it, but also like the UI! Thanks, but seriously whats wrong with you?! :DDD.
@flyingkaida If you mean Civilization as in the game than im extra blushing right now! I was a fan of the game since the first release.. Just try to hit more trees/houses at the same time when you place your buildings. And if thats not enough No-Whone has posted a video+guide in the comments how to get his high score, so theres some extra help! PS hes better at the game than me also so he knows what hes doing. lol
@amarokczukay Thank you good sir!
@arron-fowler thank you for playing!
@hayricakir yeah, i tried to explain the game through the tutorial, but it was done in a rush so it only did half the work it needed to :))
@lizelive you actually do, if you beat the game once you will unlock the "creative mode" in which you can place anything you wish! :)) It was a post jam addition thoe so i would ask you to not take it into account when youre grading the game, but if you want to have a bit of a relaxing building session go for it!
@eloraju oh my the number of times i heard that ahahahah... Well actually 6/6 of my friends who tried the game out also were confused and thought its a bug that you dont get the resources after! lol So youre deffinetly not the first and it gave me an insight that i need to make an extra tutorial island. Yeah the randomness can suck a bit, but passing it shouldn't be much trouble once you get use to the game. And if you just want to build, there is that "Creative mode" afterwards! :)))
@shimmerscale I hope you've beaten it, and if you did you deserve the Crown of Champions! wink wink tft wink, if that is where you got your name from...
@dgspitzer Well it turns out i sent you too many hearts also! :heart: