Packrat by NBumgardner
Grow your humble business by selling backpacks of items to anthropomorphic customers!
How to Play
Click the mouse to interact with buttons, pick up and set down backpacks, or buy upgrades. Click Next Day when you are ready to gather items and sell to customers.
Gameplay Tips
- The contents of each backpack are displayed underneath it.
- To sell a backpack's contents, move it underneath a compatible customer and click Next Day in the bottom-right corner.
- New customers arrive daily, so waiting a couple of days for a bigger sale may be more rewarding.
Credits
Packrat was created with the Godot engine in 3 weeks and includes original code, sound, and art.
The full team included:
- @doctor-zeus - lead designer, programmer, animator
- @nbumgardner - designer, programmer, composer
- Tom Bumgardner - artist; drew all backgrounds, regions, items, and customers
The Roboto font was created by Christian Robertson. Given its external source, please do not consider the font when rating our team's artistic work (the rest of which was made within the confines of the jam).
Feedback Wanted
This Ludum Dare entry features original art, music, and gameplay, and we are welcome to all kinds of feedback, especially related to how fun Packrat is to play!
You can also check out the open-source code on GitHub.
| GitHub | https://github.com/SamBumgardner/packrat-game |
| itch.io | https://nbumgardner.itch.io/ludum-dare-54-packrat |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/packrat |
Ratings
| Given | 6🗳️ | 8🗨️ |
I also have the same feeling about the game's lukewarm incentives. There were some elements of the design that I intended to implement that might have helped:
- Customers could have "bonus" objectives for scaling rewards (e.g. extra money for having mostly fire in a bag, worth more for larger amounts)
- the ability to make specific customers stick around as you prepare to sell something to them
- the ability to switch where you gather items from, and more meaningful differences between gathering locations
In combination, I think these could give the player more to anticipate and look forward to & more agency over what's going on. They wouldn't do much to increase tension in the game (none of them would have a penalty attached under the original plan) but I hope a lighter sort of tone would work well for this sort of game.
It's a skeleton of a concept, that's for sure. Thanks again for giving it a play and taking the time to share your thoughts!
I agree that the game's design doesn't do much to introduce itself, and there aren't a whole lot of neat incentives at play to grip folks. I think there are paths forward to build depth, but it didn't really get there in the space of the jam.
I'll happily pass along your kind words to our artist, I also thought he did a great job! I'm responsible for almost all of the flat / placeholder UI stuff, their jarring out-of-place-ness lies at my feet. A fully cohesive style would be best, but we had to work within our limitations. My big hope is that the readability of information was okay - I worried a lot about keeping things understandable & functional without sacrificing too much of the real art's style and appeal.
Thanks again for playing and taking the time to give feedback, we really appreciate it!
Overall pretty solid. I see that icon.svg though!