The Smuggler's Map by Phanelly

[raw]
made by Phanelly for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Title.png Ships.png For quite a while the archipelago has been blockaded by the Marine due to an high rate of piracy, and all resources entering its waters are thightly regulated. There is certainly much money to be made by someone daring enough to sail from isle to isle bringing these much sought goods to the people, but this brave smuggler would have to contend againts pirates and the Marine itself... and some say that the waters of the archipelago are stalked by terrible monsters, or even worse...

Leviatan1.png

In this game, you play a foolhardy bootlegger set on getting rich or die trying, gathering and then delivering specific resources from port to port in a procedurally generated archipelago. The more delivery you make, the richer you become, and the fatter the bounty on your head will grow, as the Marine does not take kindly unlawful activities. As you get richer and the bounty on your head increases, the difficulty will ramp up, earning you even more rewards, and attracting even more danger. For how long can you keep it up? SnakeFull.png

Set sail in this hand-drawn archipelago; Brave the waters! Evade the dangers! Get rich!KrakenFull.png

Ratings

Overall 287th 3.85⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 466th 3.567⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 79th 4.083⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 20th 4.55⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 33th 4.65⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Humor 724th 2.857⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 82th 4.233⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Given 16🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

icch_howw
01. May 2023 · 21:16 UTC
What a very unique game idea, the art style is beautiful and extremely consistent! I do however feel like the UI readability did suffer a little due to this consistency. Initially I didn't even realize the right side of the UI was a legend, I thought it was just aesthetic scribbles ^^'
This is of course nitpicking on the highest order and after I understood the UI everything made sense and felt right. Good job and keep up the good work!
tinykidtoo
01. May 2023 · 21:18 UTC
I really like the art, its a nice vibe. The music, sound effects, and art really make it a fun experience. I found the pirates to be just enough of a problem to keep it interesting. Altough one killed me when it spawned from the sea. :(
HedronCrab
01. May 2023 · 21:18 UTC
Amasing game! Sounds and visuals are awesome. Strange bug with movement when the ship goes off the rout
Thereza Cristina Alves Brito
01. May 2023 · 21:19 UTC
very beautiful and fun
jkyd
02. May 2023 · 07:21 UTC
I really like the theme and the drawing-of-the-ship-route mechanic was very fun! While pretty to look at, I found the icons a little hard to understand/read -- especially with the background image not scaling to 100% width on full screen. Awesome job overall!
Macibacsi56
02. May 2023 · 07:27 UTC
Very special and good game. I like the atmosphere, the music and the graphics are amazing. Congratulations :)
Hoeleboele
02. May 2023 · 07:32 UTC
Wow very cool art style! gameplay is fun enough wanted to see all the beasty drawings so I kept playing.
LDJam user 73887
02. May 2023 · 08:10 UTC
Uh wow, very nice one! Love the old map graphics, every UI element fits the style very well. Using the dotted paths on the map which you can control by the mouse is such a great idea, you made an awesome mechanic out of that known graphical element.

Great job, congrats mate!
Stefan Funke
02. May 2023 · 08:13 UTC
Got the one million :laughing: Very cool game. Was a lot of fun!

A few minor nitpicks:
- In the second half of the game (After I had around 400.000 score) no more pirates or navy would appear. Nessie was just chilling in the middle of the map. I just had to plot my course around her.
- Reading the legend on the right was a bit annoying. Maybe remove it completely and add the "source"-island to the requests. Something like: island A -> treasure map -> island B
- The island shapes could be a bit more distinct, to recognize them with one glance. (Halfmoon- and Bridge-island were good examples :thumbsup: )

All in all a very good game. Nice graphics. Fitting music! Good job! :)

![the-smugglers-map.JPG](///raw/0fb/54/z/5a7aa.jpg)
🎤 Phanelly
02. May 2023 · 08:29 UTC
@jkyd Thank you for the heads up on the screen scaling, I'll look into that. Also thank you for the feedback on the readability, after the jam we'll have to rethink that! On the same category, thank you @icch-howw for the feedback!

@hedroncrab you are right about the boat drifting away, it was such an annoying bug! Luckily I managed to fix it like one hour after your comment, luckily soon enough before the end of the jam ahah!

@stefan-funke thank you for the meaningful feedback. Weird about the ships not spawning anymore! I wonder what caused it. I like your idea about the redesign of the legend, we well think about it when we redesign it. And thank you for the feedback on the island shapes, such a good idea <3 Also I see you reached 1 milion, I hope you found it funny.
LDJam user 303052
02. May 2023 · 09:35 UTC
Very cool and funny game!
I really love ship control mechanic^^

It was fun to run away from pirates but i don't understand how to destroy them. After playing 6 minutes session I was being chased by 4th pirates ships. Iw was scary😱
Overall i really love tha game. It's really good project!

Awesome graphics
My respect to the artists❤️
LDJam user 300143
02. May 2023 · 09:37 UTC
i think that this is the best game!!! love all cathegorics
Artano
02. May 2023 · 09:49 UTC
Such a good work! I reeeeeally love the art, pirate maps, old fashioned monsters, I love this aesthetic! the gameplay is simple but addictive, you can play it for a very long time! I noticed two small problems: perhaps you should have made the legend and list of deliveries more explicit, to make them more visible. And sometimes the ship can get stuck in the island, it can be dangerous if you are being chased by enemies. Anyway I really enjoy the gameplay, great job! <3
Edoardo Talamini
02. May 2023 · 09:57 UTC
Thank you all for all the positive comments, critics,and feedbacks. I had a lot of fun drawing the asset for this game (especially the monsters) so I'm very glad that they have been liked by so many!

@hoeleboele I will rub this in my programmer's face for a while :eyes:

@jkyd Yes maybe I went a bit too on the pretty side instead of he readable one :sweat_smile:

@stefan-funke Congratulation! I hope you had a good laugh! And yeah after all monsters spawned I'm afraid enemy boats do not survive for long . Sorry to hear that the Snake decided to chill out in the middle of the map lol. Thanks for the great feedback anyway :thumbsup:

I cannot respond to everyone but know that all your comments are very appreciated and cherished!
unkilledshadow135_Alex
02. May 2023 · 11:25 UTC
I'm really impressed!!! However, there is a little bug on one of the island (didn't screenshot it for first time):
![изображение_2023-05-02_142350965.png](///raw/864/94/z/5a8fb.png)

Also, i think it would be very helpful if I could change the font in settings because it's little hard to read

But everything else is great! I like the graphics and mechanics!
Luxiffre
02. May 2023 · 14:06 UTC
Neat and pretty little game with some interesting potential for further features! I can see how this could be a cool concept to expand on.

Some constructive criticism:
- It usually struggled trying to identify which island has the resource that I currently need. Although there is a legend, the fact that everything is the same colour made it somewhat frustrating to pattern-match the islands on the right to those on the left. To solve that problem you could use some sort of colour-coding (e.g. give each resource a colour and apply that colour to parts of the island that offers the resource) or provide a tooltip that displays when one hovers over an island or clicks it and that displays the resource.
- Since the pirate ships' speed is similar to that of the ship one controls, the point at which it becomes nearly impossible to deliver resources is reached rather quickly. The problem here isn't that it makes the game difficult - it that it makes it feel *unfair* (at least to me). I'd love if the speed of one's ship increased with each new pirate ship that spawns (or if it already does, to make the increase stronger). That way, beating the game would feel more like a test of my skills, not of my patience.
Edoardo Talamini
02. May 2023 · 14:14 UTC
@luxiffre yes I can see why the legend could be a bit *too* diegetic. All enemy ships are slower than the player one, but we know that they like to gang up on a port, and while possibile to bait them away, it's easier said than done when there are like four of them.

Thanks for the feedback!
LDJam user 345969
02. May 2023 · 14:37 UTC
This is really good! The game looks absolutely beautiful and the music is :100:! I am STILL in love with The Wellerman so full marks there from me! :grin:

I had a pretty difficult time reading the legend at first; I feel like some colors would have been a more helpful guide. That said, the player has plenty of time to figure things out before the pirates arrive. This did make the game a bit of a struggle, though.

The idea of using a quill to draw out the path the boat will take is pure genius! I never would have thought of it and it is very creative. Unfortunately, I also think it's the major thing that's keeping this game from being more fun. I had a hard time controlling things using the track pad, which led to me being sunk by pirates :(. I suspect that just clicking and dragging to have the boat move in the current direction of the cursor would be easier for the player to control. Or maybe a compromise would be to slow down the pirate ships in order to compensate.
AmunOnra
02. May 2023 · 17:13 UTC
Great game. Loved the artstyle, ambience and the quill as mouse cursors is so cool. Navigating the ship worked very intuitively and was pretty flawless at all time. I think the interaction between the different enemy types also adds a lot to the mood and feel of the game, though it offers the player a little to much room to sit out overcrowded situations by just staying out of the conflict zones and wait till enemies eliminate each other themselves.

Like others commented, the cognitive link to do for the player between supplied and demanded wares being visually placed on different sides of the screen was also the hardest part for me in the game.
LDJam user 314356
02. May 2023 · 20:12 UTC
I really liked the graphics, setting and the mood! Totally my thing. I guess I wasn't the only one who was preparing for Cartography theme, huh :D All sprites are very nice, the only downside is the path line, but it's easy to fix.

The gameplay and controls are not interesting and polished, but I believe it could be improved with more time :)
Kopako
03. May 2023 · 00:07 UTC
Very promising concept. I found the controls to be a bit fiddly, but otherwise it's super polished and has a nice difficulty with dodging everything. Nice game overall :)
Foraland
03. May 2023 · 03:52 UTC
Excellent atmosphere!
Excellent music!
Excellent environment and creatures!
DGSpitzer
03. May 2023 · 03:56 UTC
Very impressive art style! The way of gameplay is quite innovative!
noskro
03. May 2023 · 18:36 UTC
Wow. This is such an amazing game. I did work on a game that felt very similar in gameplay and graphics. But it's been somewhere hidden on my hard drive for some time now. Maybe I have to stea... er prirate some ideas from this game for it.

I agree with some comment that the legend on the side is a bit tricky to navigate or read. But just showing the island liek "go there", "go here" would probably make the game too simple. Not sure how to solve that issue. But I still had a lot of fun. Even with dying a lot on my first 5 runs or so
Edoardo Talamini
03. May 2023 · 21:03 UTC
I am so happy to see so much appreciation for the style and the gameplay! Thank you all, truly.

@frabjous-studios , @amunonra , @noskro I promise to design a better UI next time LOL (And Noskro, do not pirate too much or the Marine will come, or even worse.... :eyes: :laughing: )
Waterflow
04. May 2023 · 05:09 UTC
I've made good trades, but that pirates were crazy - they're just going for me and every time got into the whirlpool. Are they crazy or just brave warriors to pursue the pirate greatest deed? Pretty funny and especially liked the famous pirate theme!
ping78
04. May 2023 · 12:13 UTC
Cool and fun game. I like that islands and what they produce look similar. I'm a bit jealous of your paper texture.

Minor nitpicks:
- Since my patience is `null`, ships felt slow.
- Triggers are way bigger than the sprites

Overall very good game. Well done!
SneakyFox
07. May 2023 · 16:27 UTC
Nice idea, fun game!

Very hard to go away from pirates, and select your ship feels a little bit bug, bacause I can't micro dodge when someone close. It always rotates to some direction that I don't need.
Also I liked the idea to draw your path, it's nice

Graphics and sounds are great
🎤 Phanelly
08. May 2023 · 07:10 UTC
@waterflow as the programmer of the team which consequently programmed all the AIs, yes, the pirates are definitely crazy and this is not a bug.

@ping78 yes, the dock triggers are way bigger in order to make things easier for the player. If instead you're referring to enemies' triggers, I thought I was precise and fair with those. Let me know which one you think feels weird

@sneakyfox yes you're right: micro movements are very difficult because if you click anywhere else than the exact center that's gonna be the first destination of the path. I should have fixed that but I had much other stuff to fix first ahah.

@noskro yarr harr
Jupiter_Hadley
08. May 2023 · 07:58 UTC
Very well thought out game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 53 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. https://youtu.be/d5bLQmuzzPs
Edoardo Talamini
08. May 2023 · 16:27 UTC
@jupiter-hadley hope you had fun! :)
ping78
08. May 2023 · 18:37 UTC
Dock triggers are quite big in my game too, for the same reason. (if you can call distance check a trigger)
I was referring to enemy/player triggers. Seeing that distance between the sprites, did not feel correct.

![tsm.png](///raw/704/z/5b9bd.png)
Cleoh
11. May 2023 · 03:20 UTC
I like the graphics, the pirate songs and the gameplay! I think it feels realy cool to draw the path in real time to avoid ennemies, and the progression from pirates to navy to monsters feels great, especially because they interact with each other.