Mammon & Sons by HexStart
Congratulations minion! You have been handpicked by the lowerups to manage the summoning branch of our operation. Make yourself at home in your new domain. I entrust the satisfaction of our consummoners in your capable claws. Welcome to the Mammon & Sons family!
Mammon & Sons is a management game, where the goal is to build up your rating as high as possible. Your workers' attributes determine how well they perform in jobs they've been summoned to do. All attributes matter, but some are better rewarded in certain jobs.
How to play
The game is not time constrained and you can play it at your own pace, so feel free to refer back here if you're lost.
The core activity of the game is matching worker attributes with summoning portals. Portals require a certain number of points to achieve a max rating. Points come from attributes. Points = the sum of ALL attributes, including multipliers (e.g. "Power counts x2").
Example:
Sending this worker through that portal provides:
- +1 point from Power
- +6 points from doubled Endurance (counts x2)
- +1 point from Evil (alignment is also an attribute)
That's a total of 8 points, so just above half of the points needed for max rating. Which will probably make for a 3-star rating!
In the early game it is more important to earn just enough money and level up attributes, rather than aim for high ratings (this can't be achieved until later). You can level up attributes by assigning workers to unlockable buildings.
Tips
- You can hire new workers with a button in the top bar.
- When your workers run low on health - pay their wages (top bar) to bring them back to max.
- Paying wages also heals workers inside portals, but they lose some health on exit as usual.
- Get rid of some workers if you can't afford a full payout. Either throw them into lava, or send them through a portal again so they can die earning you money (good business practice).
- Hover over a portal with a worker in hand to see how many attribute points they provide.
- Hover over a finished portal before collecting to see the rating with a review and a log of things that happened.
- If the tooltip goes outside the edge of the screen - move the camera to see it in full.
- Some portals require more workers - they will wait to go in until there's a full party.
Controls
- Left-click - hold to drag and assign workers
- WSAD - move camera
- Scroll - zoom camera
- Right-click - hold to drag camera
Created by
Together we create Tano Collective - Twitter, Itch
Attribution & Resources
- Bass Walker by Kevin MacLeod (CCBY3) incompetech.com
- Walking Along by Kevin MacLeod (CCBY3) incompetech.com
- Deadly Roulette by Kevin MacLeod (CCBY3) incompetech.com
- Cash register by MaoDin204 from FreeSound.org
- ROCKCrsh by newlocknew from FreeSound.org
- Woosh by moogy73 from FreeSound.org
- Additional sounds from 1BITDRAGON library
- GermaniaOne by John Vargas Beltran from Font Squirell
- Encode Sans by Impallari Type from Font Squirell
Changes
We uploaded an optional update with improved balance and UX. The original submission remains available for rating. The v1.1 update can be downloaded at the bottom of the Itch page, or selected in the web canvas (thanks to @badcop's JamPack <3).
| Link | https://tanocollective.itch.io/mammon-and-sons |
| Link | https://tanocollective.itch.io/mammon-and-sons |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/mammon-sons |
Ratings
| Overall | 226th | 3.91⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 450th | 3.59⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 282th | 3.718⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 140th | 4.244⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 203th | 4.269⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 219th | 3.697⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 205th | 3.987⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 63🗨️ |
Overall great game, I love your jam template, and how you have links to your other games, and a splash screen. Feels very professional.
Great new version!
Do you need to complete 10 5-star missions to get the victory screen? I'm not sure where I was up to, but a demon jumped out of a completed job directly into a new one ruining my streak. It was funny every other time that happened, but quite annoying in the endgame trying to get the 5 stars. Similarly not being able to tell if a job was a 1-demon or 2-demon one without putting a demon in was frustrating.
Other critiques were that all the time gating felt too slow to me, I'm already paying 2 HP for training plus the 10 Soul investment, why a timer bar too? Also as demon HP was always 4 I think a "chunked" HP bar works better than a continuous one. Matching the right demon to the job is also a bit of a pain with them running around all the time, a drop down UI to pick an available demon or being able to put them in pens to keep them from mingling would be nice.
Otherwise I really liked the idea and general sense of progression. The "biblically accurate" and\or hellraiser demon visuals but still having cutesy SFX was a nice touch.
The art is very solid for this kind of experience and I really enjoyed it overall. Good job to the team and congrats for the game!
The SFX are top-notch :D I enjoyed it quite a lot deisgn-wise as well. I feel like hiring more workers is inferior to upgrading existing ones. Maybe adding the timer might help balancing it, it might also be beneficial for scenarios when you have the last imp with 1HP and you just wait for it to finish the job (I would not allow myself that if there was the timer ticking). I understand the intention to make things more chill for the player though.
And yes, it wasn't obvious what the rating is for, until I realized it's a win condition. Aside from that, I had a blast with the game, it's addicting and it constantly gives you interesting choices to tackle. Congratz!
The SFX are top-notch :D I enjoyed it quite a lot deisgn-wise as well. I feel like hiring more workers is inferior to upgrading existing ones. Maybe adding the timer might help balancing it, it might also be beneficial for scenarios when you have the last imp with 1HP and you just wait for it to finish the job (I would not allow myself that if there was the timer ticking). I understand the intention to make things more chill for the player though.
And yes, it wasn't obvious what the rating is for, until I realized it's a win condition. Aside from that, I had a blast with the game, it's addicting and it constantly gives you interesting choices to tackle. Congratz!
Everything fit nicely into one package, from the art to the audio, great entry!
If you want to rewatch my playthrough, you can do so here:
https://youtu.be/VrinXzvnhho
For your reference, here was the first stream where I was tired and didn’t do much:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2123757357
Followed by this one where I beat it, after one slight whoopsie:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2126502001
are great and the music choices are spot on.
Perfect for theme,
Great Work!