LudumData

Don Trickle the Taxmaster by Wakobu

[raw]
made by Wakobu for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

Felon Zuckerbezos, the richest person in history...

Too long has he stood atop the pile, thinking he's untouchable. "Trickle-down economics", they say. Yeah right. Time for Don Trickle, tax collection master, hero of the people, employee of the Internal Revenue Service and red underwear enthusiast, to show them what that really means.

It's time to redistribute some wealth.

fade title-Sheet840.png

In "Don Trickle the TaxMaster", you play as a plucky tax collector fighting for a noble cause : reducing this (entirely fictional) billionaire's fortune to zero by hitting him really hard with your briefcase.

sscreenshot 1.png

But Felon won't go down easy. It'll take many rounds of tireless fighting for you to whittle his wealth down, combo by combo, until he literally disintegrates in hell.

sscreenshot 2.png

Each financial year lasts 60 seconds. Between each of them, you'll have an opportunity to check the evolving newspaper, and pick some upgrades (beware, the enemy will also get stronger each year!).

Claim the #1 spot in the Forbz top three, and take Zuckerbezos down!

Controls:

Arrow keys/WASD to move (double press to dash when unlocked),

Enter/left click to attack,

Space to jump,

"Bullet time" activates when avoiding projectiles.

Fonts used: Palatino Linotype, Linux libertine, Thick head, Gentium.

Postjam version changes (2025/10/11)

  • Rework main menu
  • Rework "Bubbble Barrier" attack
  • Add "Bubble Swarm" attack
  • Add Parry mechanic
  • Allow cancelation of signature animation
  • Add many bitcoin upgrades, making it viable to win the game
Jam https://antbrl.itch.io/don-trickle
Postjam https://antbrl.itch.io/don-trickle-postjam
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/don-trickle-vs-the-richs

Ratings

Overall 487th 3.389⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 241th 3.593⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 381th 3.268⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 219th 3.946⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 488th 3.464⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 383th 3.185⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 45th 4.111⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 467th 3.442⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 28🗳️ 38🗨️

Feedback

Orlov Nikolay
Oct 07th · 10:41 UTC
I really liked it, thank you very much.
Pfannkuchen
Oct 07th · 11:29 UTC
This is so fun!!! Didn't play silksong for three days and I needed some boss fighting! Everything is comprehensive and well explained, the fight is fun, though it's hard to dodge sometimes because of the controls. I wish they were more "reactive", fast, perhaps. Thank you!
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 07th · 11:35 UTC
@pfannkuchen Thank you for playing! We agree, the control and the game would highly benefit from slight balancing.
lvselh
Oct 07th · 11:41 UTC
Fun game! liked to play
dendi_life
Oct 07th · 11:54 UTC
this is a crazy original idea, I love it
Cambryx
Oct 07th · 12:35 UTC
Awesome game! Really fun and funny boss battle! It ended a bit abruptly. But I guess the combo multipliers are just awesomely overpowered. In the end it felt a bit like avoiding the attacks is not very important as long as I can get the combo multiplier up as far as possible when I get close to him.
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 07th · 12:59 UTC
@cambryx Thank you for playing! You are right, the multiplier is the only viable way to win at the moment :sweat_smile:
Yatsu
Oct 07th · 13:28 UTC
Funny art, interesting mechanics, but for me the progression is too long for so much content. In the end, I'm not sure how much I need to play to complete it. And on day 2, the sound started to lag
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 07th · 14:52 UTC
@yatsu Thank you for playing and for your feedback! To beat the game you have to get all the money from the boss (red coin indicator). Combos are your friends :smile:

Thank you for this bug repory, we did not have such problem before
basic_eagles
Oct 08th · 00:15 UTC
Fun gameplay, like the mechanics
SergS Workshop
Oct 08th · 00:21 UTC
Fun game! I really like the art, and the boss attacks are good. Looking forward to seeing more content in the post-jam version.
BlackCat508
Oct 08th · 00:23 UTC
fun gameplay! I really like signing stuff with the quill lol
Archmage_Gary
Oct 08th · 00:32 UTC
I'm surprised by how polished it is! A lot of really good art, and a fun inverse on the theme. Raining coins is just brutal, well done!
raysplaceinspace
Oct 08th · 01:50 UTC
Quite funny and unique concept. The signing was an interesting take. The way the coins would be weapons at first but then you could pick them up was interesting. Great job :)
MistaGiggles
Oct 08th · 18:13 UTC
Fun to play through and such a funny/silly take on the theme! Powering up was satisfying though the last fight felt like it ended really quickly. One moment he was on 99million hp/money and suddenly he was dead.
Great entry
ellaris
Oct 09th · 11:59 UTC
Cool game, lots of good humor, my main concern is that from what I experience it seemed like you are supposed to buff up the combo and stick to him ignoring damage, since it's more important to raise your combo then to dodge, if you dodge you can lose the combo and you need it to make any kind of money, I liked when he jumped up to do the shotgun blast, but not when he did it multiple times, the only way for him to break my combo since even with double jump I couldn't reach him.
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 09th · 13:19 UTC
@ellaris Thank you for playing! you are absolutely right, at the moment, the game relies way too much on combos. We are on our way balancing that in the postjam version :slight_smile:
Eugenik
Oct 09th · 16:36 UTC
Love the graphic, nice work!.
naru
Oct 09th · 20:25 UTC
This game is just simply awesome. Great work!
ExLudos
Oct 10th · 17:08 UTC
Very funny concept and pretty fun to play, definitely needs more clear tells for the boss as it feels quite random and very hard to react to. I liked the upgrades but progression is very slow for the length of the game, just giving multiple upgrades per round would speed it up and make it more satisfying. You could then make having more money useful as you can spend it to get multiple upgrades at once
b0guslaw
Oct 11th · 10:55 UTC
Nice combat and fun interactions also very good take on the theme. I had some trouble in the beginning but go better later. I REALLY like the death animation, it somehow gives the game it a very polished look and feel
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 11th · 10:57 UTC
@b0guslaw Thank you for playing :heart:! Are you talking about player's or billionaire's death animation :smile:?
Crowelian
Oct 11th · 12:32 UTC
Hahahaha! Fun. Love the humour!
Ntimi
Oct 12th · 17:45 UTC
I approve of the message of the game. 😄
I feel like you captured the fight against billionaires very well - every fight is hard and leads to only little results. But you persist and fight on.
The fight is fun, and it's cool that you basically have endless upgrades. For me, the game dragged on a bit too long, though, so I didn't play until the end. Might just be my bad skills, it might be faster if you achieve more hits per round.
I didn't really understand when a round was over - It was pretty clear when I died, but I didn't understand the other condition(s?) that ended a round. Was there a timer? Or did the billionaire have a limited health? I'm not quite sure.
Overall, cool entry. Thanks for building this. I might restart it again for a quick round of fighting. :)
Lisek Gagatek
Oct 12th · 20:28 UTC
Pretty funny experience. I really like that even with jam's time constraints you've managed to make a cool game with interesting upgrade loop and clear ending. Although I thing controls would use some more polishing. It seems unresponsive that attack animation locks you in place and disables movement and jumping, it's probably the most frustrating part. I also couldn't figure out how to dash, I've tried spamming some random keys on a keyboard, but with no luck.
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 13th · 00:55 UTC
@ntimi Thank you for your feedback! The round is over after the end of the year (one minute of gameplay), which I admit is quite unclear. There is no real consequences of dying at the moment :sweat_smile:
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 13th · 00:56 UTC
@lisek-gagatek Tank you for your feedback! Yes the controls need a little more polishing. You can dash by **double-tapping** a direction. We should add that the in upgrade description to make it crystal clear :thumbsup:
Conduit
Oct 13th · 16:03 UTC
Had a lot of fun with this one! I really liked the art style and the simple sound effects did the job very well. My one piece of criticism was the pacing. I don't know how many free upgrades there were but I really struggled to get any meaningful upgrades before the game ramped up. I thought the bubble attack was really funny as well :) cool entry!
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 14th · 02:03 UTC
@conduit Thank you :blush:
Wouter52
Oct 18th · 18:23 UTC
That was incredible fun! But I do have some questions / feedback 😁

- The screen was twitching from left to right a lot for me, it felt glitchy. Nobody else is talking about it, so I don't really know what was happening. If you want I can make a little video / gif so you can maybe debug it better
- I thought the sign here would accept actual mouse movements at first, so I was a bit confused at first. I like the idea of it, it fits really well with what you've made
- I had a really good streak with hitting the damn ZuckerBesos and then the game was suddenly beaten. I was a bit confused as I did not think I would be so close to beating it. The power of "powers" I think 😅
- Love the message of the game!
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 19th · 03:44 UTC
@wouter52 Thank you so much for your feedback bro :smile:

- I know what glitch you are talking about, because an offline friend alreafy reported it to us, but we just could not reproduce. It really looks like browser/OS dependent. I would be curious to know what OS and browser you played with.

- The only way to realistically win the game at the moment is to abuse of the combo multiplier mechanic. You probably just comboed him to the oblivion, and he went from 9 Billions to 0 in a single strike :sweat_smile:
We need to balance the game and expand the upgrades to have multiple winning conditions

I loved playing your game by the way :v:
Wouter52
Oct 19th · 09:36 UTC
Ayy you remembered our game? :smile: That's a big compliment :-)

I do have a potato-pc, so maybe that explains a lot. Here's some info:

![Screenshot 2025-10-19 113130.png](///raw/fd4/43/z/6f7a9.png)

- Please note, the CPU is 4th gen. The GPU is an integrated Intel HD graphics 4600
- I use Firefox 143.0.4 64-bit

====

I did have a mega-combo indeed, so maybe that explains it :grin:
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 19th · 12:27 UTC
@wouter52 Thank you so much for the report, it will be very useful :handshake:
Wouter52
Oct 26th · 08:06 UTC
Ayy congratz on your sub-50 for humor! Very well deserved! :smile:
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 26th · 10:41 UTC
@wouter52 Thank you bro, I can say the same for your innovation ranking :grin:
Wouter52
Oct 26th · 12:05 UTC
@wakobu thank you!
🎤 Wakobu
Oct 29th · 00:34 UTC
@orlov-nikolay @pfannkuchen @lvselh @dendi-life @cambryx @yatsu @basic-eagles @sergs-workshop @blackcat508 @archmage-gary @raysplaceinspace @mistagiggles @ellaris @eugenik @naru @exludos @b0guslaw @crowelian @ntimi @lisek-gagatek @conduit @wouter52

Thank you all for playing and for your kind feedbacks :crown:
See you soon for LD59 :grin: