I also had ideas about the "Harvester" entity and dying world but I would never be able to make them into a real game. But you did it solo and the result is impressive!

I didn't manage to have a successful run yet, but I'm impressed by the quality of the game and how you thought everything out.

Very solid, much respect!

Really cool and very atmospheric! Understanding all of the menus and mechanics took a few tries :sweat_smile:

The building and unit commands are a bit clunky but the atmosphere is great.

Great graphics and sound. Would be nice if there was more of a tutorial just outlining what we're suppose to be doing.

This was a lot to take in. But I can see the love and effort you have put into all the graphics, ui, mechanics and elements. It sure is impressive! The graphics and atmosphere was overwhelmingly fitting! The writing gets an A+!
This could have used a tutorial tho.

+ Cool setting. Together with the music, it made me feel gloomy but in an atmospheric way. Somehow got a little Berserk & WC3 vibes.
+ Once accidentally clicked on some stuff outside of the game and it redirected me to another website. When going back though it restarted at the point where i left. Awesome feature!
- Tutorial would be nice, esp about the fighting. The rest is easy to find out oneself but i got screwed a few times in the beginning. Also about the type of refugees which join.
- No fullscreen (or i was too dumb to see it^^)

Flat-out, love this game and concept. Sound needs a bit of balancing as some of it can be grating and far louder than it should be, but the only thing stopping this from being knocked out of the park is the UX, building and repairing walls can be a chore and reorganizing defense positions when expanding is tedious and error-prone.
You've done a fantastic job, definitely my favorite game in the jam thus-far.

Very impressed by the UI, and can't believe you have something so well done in this short of a time. I love how you can hover the mouse to see details, zoom in and out, and move around the camera. I feel kinda dumb, because I wasn't able to really figure out how to play. I tried clicking on characters, assigning houses, but I still couldn't figure it out - I say that's on me. In the future a little tutorial would go a long way. I feel like there's something really solid here! Well done :)

great graphics, UI, sound, and very impressive how much stuff you've crammed into the game!

Five people left? I thought there where just four! The three orcs left behind because they could defend themselves, and one leftover Amberman. I searched the map carefully. Did it count _me_? Surely ... ah, there...

I had forgotten a dog. Unforgivable, I know. The little rascal was hiding their pixels on those of the marketplace-table. It was fitting, I thought. The first ones I saved ... Well, I hoped. Better than this world anyway. Anyway, of the first ones I saved, just about half of them where dogs as well. The others, the first-comers.

I had hoped for some closure. There was the salving music, and the curt message that they where in a better place, and then ... 'continue?'. An interesting place to encounter a question mark, even though it is, indeed, a question. Like 'end?' I thought. Maybe.

I've always wanted to create a world where you evacuate, and dwindle, rather than grow, grow, expand, exterminate. Others have already done so. In fact, this is one of those, in a sense. Maybe there _would_ be a hard endgame, where you have to struggle to maintain your previously expanding empire, now hollowed out from the inside, rather than attacked from without (or as the case may be, in addition to).

So I persevered. Of course I was still slightly lazy. Rather than the strict 'you don't try to skip the arrival phase' I held to previously, I now found it more fitting to just skip as quickly to the end as I could. Assigning (consigning?) more and more of my wards to the uncertain Other.

There the dog went. There the turn went. The attack phase started. The _last_ attack phase. The Harvesters' minions, crept slowly to the temple, all the while destroying. (Perhaps I should have mad use of the fact that they all always seems to plan a path to the temple).

Eventually, they came upon the temple itself (for the second time -- or third, if you count the world I lost). The last time was last turn, when the orcs had still defended it, and, if the Other permits, lived to tell the tale. As I knew they would. A heroic last stand seems kind of like an orcs bread an butter, right? In a manner of speaking anyway.

Then, the temple of Alesh was no more. The monsters had overrun it. Just as well, my people save in the Other.

A turtle languidly sauntered towards the pile of monsters now in the middle. A true land of bones and ash now. But we had overcome.

And then, before I had time to wonder if I truly _had_ done the right thing, before I could remember that the instructions said to _wait_ instead...

... my browser crashed for the second time.

---

I ran into the maximum char length. I'll have to make a second post for the actual review.

If there was ever a 'classic Joror game' this is it. Turn based, cultists, context sensitive help, gods, running a small civilization, context sensitive help, making choices, a little humor when it comes to the writing, and context sensitive help.

The initial impression is very claustrophobic, which I think fits the overall mood of the game well. This seems a side-effect of how little you have in the early game (which is a good thing!)

Despite all the on-screen hints, I had some difficulties initially, but now that I have a clearer head, it all seems simple enough. It did feel a little overwhelming though. Each system in and of itself is simple, and when you know the ropes there are no truly _complicated_ matters to decide on, but that doesn't take a way a lot of the front-loadedness of this.

People that choose to play games like this won't have that much difficulty with that though, and this actually happens with a lot of your games. There is definitely also something to say for the joy of discovery!

I did really get into it, and was motivated to get at least some sort of ending (or one-and-a-half, as you can see in the story.) The economy is (mostly! I'll get to that) balanced enough to not only get you through the two hours(!) that this can take to play it, but it also _definitely_ has that 'one more turn' pull.

Though part of the reason it has that, is because the fact that you really need your first coin (just after the beginning) or your first _five_ arcane (roughly the middle, depending on luck). That part sort-of feels like waiting. The 'system' is up and running. Your villagers all handle the corners for the mobs (and are close-by enough that you can re-assign). That isn't really helped by how clunky the combat parts of the game are :sweat_smile: It must've been really hard to balance everything this well, but I wager combat was the last thing to either get done or receive polish.

Really well done. You kept to your strengths, and build something that looks a bit simple on the outside, but _is a completely playable, intricate game with multiple layers of strategic decisions, able to entertain for literal hours_.

Some smaller points:

- For food +- refers to the raw income, not how much is left in actuality in the next season. But for tools, they are -1'd with the number of forges you have.
- What do the adjectives (scaly, lonely furious) do? are they just flavor? (I found the differences between orcs/humans/dogs/shrooms to be flavorful, but they had little game impact.)
- 'Housing effects each season' lists happiness as hope ... how do those interact, if at all? Maybe hope plays more into the 'waiting' ending that's hinted at.
- Confirmation (that something happened) by moving is good, but won't work that well if they're at work and you assign them a home.
- One thing about combat: can't easily see what positions are already defended.
- Defenders are in the attackers column as well (at one point I was wondering why the horde coming for me looked suspiciously like my village...)
- The squid enemy has no description -- unless it's supposed to be ominous?

@remco Thank you for the detailed story and review, loved it! :heart:

There lots of bits of half-finished unpolished systems in there, and you've noted most of them!

The official game end is indeed crafting the Gate. The 'continue' is there for what you did, to evacuate everyone. I didn't get to make an extra ending for saving all residents, alas - so your story is complete.

The economy being dependent on receiving one coin to get started was accidental, and I kept it when I found it. Sort of a 'your refugees are important!' message. Tho I probably should have guaranteed getting it somehow by season X.

Combat was indeed hard to balance, I think I only got one playthrough for balancing. My suspicion is that it is a bit too easy, but that should be ok for a LD game. (I would like a bit more escalation depending on wealth of the outpost perhaps)

On your smaller points:
- The food total should actually account for your residents eating, I prob have a bug there
- The adjectives are flavor! (tho I could do more with them)
- Hope as a stat for Residents was kind of a leftover of a previous idea. I was going to have global effects that attack hope, and enemies that do hope dmg instead of health dmg. Perhaps have Residents with zero hope refuse to work. In the end it is only a secondary health bar for bad housing atm.
- The moving visualization is a bit jank - lots of small bugs in it alas
- I had some ideas for better combat visualization (show all other protected places?) but didn't get to it
- Enemy with no description! That is a bug :frowning:

Always good to get your precise and detailed reviews :pray: May Alesh bless you.

Overall the game has a nice core game loop to keep you going (enjoy being able to manage a bunch of different resources at the same time, very rimworld esque). my main issue stems from managing so many different people, it becomes sort of a chore near the end game!

I'd say it was fun to play though, but could present the player with more interesting choices (as it lacked a bit of depth). The end loop turned out to be a bit easy once you get there, not presenting too many interesting choices.

Artwork was reminiscent of the early FF games which I enjoyed, and I appreciated the thought going into the sound design.

Also discovered a bug! Markets would auto-assign a villager, which ended up giving me infinite money (as I didn't actually need a villager to be assigned to the market!)

Great work, keep it up!

this is really awesome with great depth of gameplay. the resolution scaling was a bit strange for me so the text appeared really small.

Very impressive and polished, definitely one to bookmark and come back later!

Really cool take on a city builder, with a great atmosphere. The art and flavor text are very evocative and the curve of building the city was a lot of fun. Fantastic game, very impressive.

Wow, the complexity in this game was overwhelming in the beginning of the game, even with the tutorial. Your name had a familiar ring in my head, so I looked you up. You damn Paradox devs with your overly complex games. :laughing: (Actually, I really love Paradox games.)

Great entry with much polish, astonishing for 3 days! Liked the general gameplay once you got a hang of it. I didn't like the micro management of the warriors during the defending, because they only attacked what was riiiight next to them. Maybe if you could just move them around with right mouse button it would've been more pleasant.

Really liked this game! Great complexity and has a ton of potential for long term play (gave me rimworld vibes). Accidentally placed buildings and walls where I didn't intend to a few times, so a "destroy" function would be nice. Overall, great job!

What an amazing entry! Very impressive what one person can do over a weekend :smile: I really hope you keep going with this game as it has so much potential. I managed to make it 16 seasons before dying. Keep on making games!

Absolutely fantastic!! The sheer magnitude of this game blew me away. There's so much here, so much to explore, and after about half an hour of playing, I have no doubt that I could keep playing for hours more. (Which I fully intend to, at some point when I have more time.) This has a great core loop, lots of interesting micromanagement mechanics, and on the whole really captivated me in a way no other game I've seen in this jam has.

Played the updated version. Really liked the music and graphics, They complimented the small narration in the opening particularly well, got that whole "ooh I'm going to like this game" vibe for the get go

The UI and tutorial are really well thought. Graphics are really clean so it's easy to understand what's going on. Overall, really nice entry!

I will refrain from giving a rating due to a technical issue that made it difficult for me to play, but I wanted to leave some feedback nevertheless.
The interface is absolutely tiny on my 4k screen, I have to lean in to read things and it's very uncomfortable, I couldn't stick with it, sorry.

I could tell there was a lot to the game based on how much the tutorial tried to cover, though for the sake of good pacing, it's better to explain one thing, have the player perform the action, then explain the next thing etc, otherwise it can be overwhelming for the player. (I realise that's much harder to fit into one weekend of development)

I really liked the aesthetics and overall mood, it felt very inspired and yet, familiar.

Really impressive and atmospheric, pretty great entry!