A Better Place by SvenErik
You've always had a dream about making the world into a better place, but it just seems like nobody really cares. Finally becoming fed up with it, you decide to go and take matters in your own hands - sort it on your own.
A better place is a puzzle game, where the player's goal is to sort different types of trash into the according bins before the garbage piles become unmanageable. As time goes by and days pass, the dump trucks start bringing garbage faster and faster. Once the day comes to an end, which is represented by a countdown timer, the bins get emptied. That is, apart from incorrectly sorted garbage, which stays in the bin until the end of the game as a punishment - also incorporating this autumn's theme "Limited space". :v:
We would like to encourage you to try to use the crane often, as it makes the game more challenging and also gives way more points!
There is currently a bug when you retry the game that some mechanics don't work or the game might even crash. Maybe just restart the game if you wanna try again, but we are fixing this asap!

Feel free to post your score in the comments! :smile:
| Link | https://svenerik.itch.io/a-better-place |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/a-better-place |
Ratings
| Overall | 381th | 3.763⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 690th | 3.288⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 414th | 3.534⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 633th | 3.535⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 18th | 4.644⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 364th | 3.535⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 330th | 3.37⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 294th | 3.83⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 62🗳️ | 107🗨️ |
The gameplay is a bit too easy though. I see there's more depth to it than it seems, but it feels like that depth is never reachable due to how easy it is.
With a bit of balancing this game is pretty good!
Visual style is great. I like Pixel art and you made it pretty. Animation looks cool and makes the game more dynamic. And the raccoon is cute :)
Unfortunately I found it a bit difficult to tell when I right-clicked something properly, since there is no visual feedback until the crane starts coming in. Though I did see a yellow outline a few times, so this might just be a bug.
@alpie @deerangle @renge @owc @matthewdrake @nikaz @jd698 @padlynn Thank you! We'll definitely work on making the game a bit less repetitive by adding some additional gameplay for the next patch :)
@stefan-b @themejmun @neandi Thanks, we'll try to make the crane mechanics a bit visually clearer!
@merdeboi Glad to hear the overall impression was good! We'll definitely see about the sound effects on the web version!
The gameplay itself feels a little limited (drag & drop), though adding the pile mechanic adds some welcome thought to the process. The right click + drag resulting in the crane picking up the pile felt a little weird, I think some audio feedback is missing there.
All in all, a visually great entry with gameplay that kept me entrained a while, but I feel there's more potential in there. Nice one!
@tero-pulkkinen Technically it could be a Amazon warehouse or some other warehouse themed, but somehow got into the garbage one instead. Thank you.
@mncc8337 Thank you! We sadly fell in short with the time with features & balance department, which we hopefully will improve with a post-ludum patch of sorts.
@flaterectomy Thanks! We did have a separate dust animation for the piles which we didn't have time to implement, so many things got scrapped due to time~ Audio was quite the struggle, I enjoy making music more than effects as I find it hard to make the correct one and end up feeling empty in that department yeah...
Thanks for the lovely feedback! :smile:
It did take me a few tries to really 'get it'... at first I thought I was a racoon just sorting trash into the proper bins. And the faster I went, the better the score. Which, as relaxing as it was, didn't seem like it had a lot of challenge. But when I realized I could pre-sort trash into piles for extra points, it got way more interesting. And I really felt like a racoon sorting and organizing trash :laughing: That actually felt relaxing and was fun... the downside is, I couldn't get the right-click to work for whatever reason. I finally figured out I could use shift-drag to move those piles... but I couldn't figure out how to get them in the bins.
I do think there is something there... there is a risk in piling stuff beforehand, and you get a bigger payoff/score... but you're also risking not getting any points if the timer runs out. I just wish I could figure out how to actually get them in the bins. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
The art and audio is so dang good. Great stuff!!
The art is excellent (great pixel art style), and the music is quite nice too. Overall, great submission!
After playing: That was actually super relaxing, you kinda get into the groove and keep clicking. The beginning was bit too slow, had to wait for the trash bags to appear. Then at around 500 score I went from full screen to normal screen and because of that change started playing slower/less precise and actually failed the day at 552.5 ^^''
So yeah, in general the game is pretty easy and turns into a routine that makes you dazed/sleepy. Nice to play before sleep :D But I like the idea and the gameplay, tbh. Nice graphics and sounds helped a lot too.
I would maybe increase the curve of difficulty a little, so it gets harder earlier, just so it's not too slow.
While playing I also had a lot of time to think xD so I thought it would be cool to add a specific sound to each crate (like glass would get that glass sound, microchip maybe like computer-ish beep, soft sludgy sound for organics, metal sound for cans, maybe like for the bottle could be that slight pop for when you squeeze the plastic? as I said I had a lot of time to think, but that's just an idea, the sounds as they are in the game are great ^^
Here's a few ideas I had while playing: I think for a sense of accomplishment it would be cool to have the amount of days you've played show up in the corner somewhere. It would also be cool if every day adds a specific small quest or introduces new rules to watch out for. You could also have each day end/begin with a new little message from the racoon or something like that to add a bit of story!
Altogether very cool entry, I think it could be really addicting with quicker gameplay and more to watch out for :)
Very much like the graphical style.
Fun game! Started to remind me of aim labs towards the end when I was frantically trying to quickly click on the right trash and drop it on the right spot lolll
@pikario @bisnesspirate Thank you for the feedback! Yes we definitely took that with us and will try to increase the difficulty curve in the next version!
@devil-ovo Thank you! Yes, we were trying to deliver that message too :)
@scrapmetal Thank you so much, we appreciate the feedback! Love how you found your own way of making it more challenging, but we also intended it to be like that. We are trying to release a pre-ludum version, which will also have less bugs hopefully haha.
@skel3ton I think the score is pretty good! Thank you for the feedback <3
@jordan-neff Thanks for the feedback, we will try to work on the music! And as mentioned already, we will increase the diffculty curve in the next release.
@jkyd Thank you for the feedback! We will see what else we can put in :)
@alzhu1 Thank you! The theme made sense to us when we had the idea, in the end it was in a lot of minor things of the game, but I agree it might not be super obvious
@kanity Thank you so much for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much :) And the idea about the sounds is really cool, I will definitely add that for our todos :D
@konfekt Thank you! We actually had ideas for showing the day, but ran out of time unfortunately. Might come in the next version! And the quest one is a great idea really, thank you for that :O Same for the raccoon text!
@epb9000 Hardcore! Thanks for playing it :)
I love the graphics and the overall concept, but I really don't like the controls/interface. There's no visual indicator whether you're right-click dragging the crane to the right target - I thought I was dumping the garbage piles into the right bins, but apparently the game registered me releasing the right mouse button in the wrong place and dumped the piles into the wrong bins. And not just once, but consistently. I could drop garbage one piece at a time into the right bins without issue, but moving and dumping piles basically didn't work for me.