Not sure exactly how to play it, i tried to balance all the things i took but i still lost.
Looks interesting either way, best of luck!

Such a great game! Got the idea somewhere from 3rd session (need to manage resources versus King).
Also love the deep metaphor of confrontation of government and religion where ordinary people just consumable material.

Wow solid idea. Innovation 5/5 for sure.

That was a nice twist. I love the 'collecting' angle, ha ha poor villagers. It took me a few times to figure the strategy out. I was taking and not giving back :D Good job!

I like the concept, but wasn't too sure if I was playing correctly. Kept losing while trying to balance things.

"Oh no, they can't live without 🌚!"

The King is having fun again. But this time, we're not playing the king...

Very unusual concept, and a good lesson on greed. It was difficult to win without causing both sides to lose.

I'm glad that we can easily restart a level. Audio would be nice, it would certainly add to the game. However, I like the art style. Overall, very creative.

Very interesting concept, but it seems like my behavior doesn't change anything for the Bot. It doesn't matter if I take as much as possible in the beginning and then return stuff when there was just one left or if I just wait for the last seconds and then quickly take what's left. Are the Bots actions depending on what you do or what is in the middle or is it just random?

@quasilyte it not always about fun!

@grid96 just random with greed weights depending on a wave

Very nice game! I found it strangely evocative, so I'll include some more detailed items below. Don't take them too seriously, I'm just writing down my thoughts in case you find them entertaining or interesting 😅

I got 3 outcomes the king winning, the high priest winning, and greed ruining things for everyone. I like it when games have multiple endings, even when there is only one "winning" outcome. It at least gives an illusion of narrative interactivity and player agency.

I think the main trading game is very engaging, giving players an intuitive risk/reward dilemma. However, to play the game "optimally", the player has to spend 90% of the time looking at the enemy hand. I'm not sure there is a way to "solve" this, or if it is even a problem at all. It just reminds me of some MMO experiences where instead of looking at all the characters etc, players stare at their cool-down timers.

Potentially controversial, but I think your use of randomness was the right choice, and very clever. In a commercially released game, players can expect a more sophisticated AI, with complex algorithms etc. In a game jam where we have ~48 hours, using "smoke and mirrors" tactics is the right choice IMO. Even though the AI choices seem to be random, my brain kept assigning meaning to the moves like "this king really likes his chickens" or "he is bluffing!"

Something else that I like about your game is the narrative design. Even though the game doesn't have a "story", there is narrative and drama delivered by the setup and gameplay. There are also the right kinds of blank spaces there for the player to fill with their own imagination. I think a lot of good fiction tends to leave room for mystery and fan speculation. The tricky part is knowing what to leave out without making the audience feel frustrated. In the context of your game, I'm imagining cosmic horrors and supernatural forces secretly fighting over the world. This may or may not be what you had in mind as the author, but that usually doesn't matter in the few minutes players get to interact with a game here.

TLDR: Cool game, I liked it! 👍

It took me a while to understand that I have to give something back to avoid the king ruining the game for both.
It would be interesting to know how the AI works because most of the time I was just wondering whether it is all random or if there is some strategy that can be anticipated but I didn't manage to grasp it.
Although the graphics is simple, it delivers the idea of the game. I couldn't hear any music or sounds, I guess you just did not manage to put them in. It would have been nice to have them. Even simple sounds add a lot.

I love your game!

It's an interesting concept and quite well conceived in such a short time.

There's a lot of different ways you could improve and/or expand this.


:fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire:

You asked to use my imagination. I can feel the heat of the purging flames very vividly!

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Never stop jamming!

Nice Idea, very goot take on Collector!

The last round is quite tough with the resources flying so quickly.

Like others I was also wondering if it is just random or if there is any predictable behavior. One thing i figured, if you let the king snatch too much early on, you cannot come back.

This is an interesting design. Feels like ultimately you're just trying to buffer enough resources that the king can't make a dumb decision and kill you, though maybe the AI has some deeper logic I haven't found yet.

It'd be interesting to have some insight into the king's desires, or ways to predict what the king might want to a degree (eg, "the king wants something living" would narrow it to just humans/birds, so you would know flowers and coins are safe to be a bit greedy on until his mood changes). Not sure this would change my strategy much towards the later stages though since they scale with speed. Maybe instead scale by the amount of resources the king takes?

Either way, cool implementation. Nice work!

Sometimes the king would just take 5 of the same thing in a row, so if I wasn't paying enough attention and only had a single one of that resource, I'd still lose.

I LOVE the programmer artwork, makes me happy to see it! I wish you had enough time to add some sounds, but other than that it's a great entry!

It's a neat concept! I enjoyed the "medieval high frequency trading" premise and the mechanics felt good overall. However I think it is somewhat challenging to win because you have to react very quickly to the computer's "trades" which makes losing something that happens in a quick shift of the game. IMO if there were some more continuous/gradual loss (maybe "popular opinion" health bars that go down whenever one of you causes a resource shortage?) I think it would make it even more engaging and make losing feel more fair when it happens. Nice work, and thank you for sharing this neat game!

Cool idea, I liked the art you went with. Everything worked well, I just wish there was a bit of juice or audio in it to give it a bit more life. Overall well done! :smile:

Interesting idea! At first I didn't understand what was happening when I lost, so maybe it would be good to communicate it a bit better what happened. Apart from that it was a fun little experience!