The Collection Machine by gamesplusjames

Place objects from the belt in the trays provided and sell them to earn money. Make sure and sell the right things though!
Mistakes will be punished with deductions from your wages. Who needs to feed their family anyway really?
The game ends if you somehow run out of money, but you wouldn't let that happen, right? Right!?




| Link | https://gamesplusjames.itch.io/the-collection-machine |
| Link | https://gamesplusjames.itch.io/the-collection-machine |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/the-collection-machine |
Ratings
| Overall | 397th | 3.5⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 469th | 3.229⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 303th | 3.389⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 174th | 4.029⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 497th | 3.431⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 512th | 2.691⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 528th | 3.333⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
@irfynnh Thanks, hopefully not too much of an injury :D There was a bug where only the first audio track would play which I did a quick little fix for now!
Sometimes I put dangerous objects into the machine myself because the disposal is next to the machine. Maybe the disposal area and penalties should switch(Idk maybe this design choice is intended to make player focus but I basically hit my own foot with dangerous objects :D)
Starting to spawn items in the start of the day may have a little delay so I can inspect what should I collect today.(About 2-3 sec is enough)
Graphics are good, some item colors are very similar and difficult to recognize sometimes
These are just random thoughts about my experience; overall, I liked it and it was fun! Congrats!!!
Made it to the day 6 then I ate a lot of food lol
As I am late to the game many of my thoughts have already been echoed here, esp. by @yarkin. Allow me to say though, that the gameplay is surprisingly compelling and I feel like it could be expanded in all sorts of interesting ways. I really did like the tension between the bright colors and the creeping sense of doom across the implied narrative. I'm a sucker for games with skeuomorphic design, and this is no exception. Great work!
Game got really hectic on some days. Some days it was pretty easy. I found a life hack of just not paying rent, electricity or heat and then just paying one tick of food and entertainment which made it a lot easier to go on forever. One thing I wish we got was the required materials showing up before the conveyer starts and then if you need to peek at it later it can work as it does- I'm always terrified a bomb will go off while I peek at what is needed :laughing:
I noticed a few comments about the similar colors being hard, and while the colors chosen didn't impact me, there are some tones that I can't tell apart so adding unique texture / patterns on each type would have made it more playable to people with varying degrees of color blindness. Tough to do all of that during a jam tho!
I enjoyed the loop and wish there was a like pay off debt type of goal for a "winning" state. I did notice the prices kept going up so I figure eventually my hack of not paying any bills would catch up to me and I wouldn't be able to afford food anymore. Great game overall though, definitely enjoyed it!