Tiny Economy by Hawkin
A tiny world with tiny resources to gather. These tiny townfolk need your help to explore their land and become prosperous! They are so tiny, in fact, that you may not even see them ;)
How to Play
The town's factories are ready to collect resources (Lumber, Stone, and Wool) from nearby tiles. The more tiles, the more they gather! * Simply place a tile by clicking on an available (shaded) cell. * Move the camera with WASD or Arrow Keys to look around.
As the map grows, the town's yield will grow! It's a new kind of microeconomics ;)
Known Issues
- Fullscreen WebGL causes the screen to go completely white. Simply click in the window to restore the display.
- You can place a tile in an "unavailable" cell by clicking the edge of an existing tile. No cheating, now ;)
- The request pop-ups on the fringe buildings don't always disappear when a resource is connected.
- I forgot to put in a quit button (:
Bugfixes
- Version 1.0.1 - The option to move the camera with the keyboard is nonobvious. Adjusted the starting position of the camera so that tiles at the bottom are not covered by UI.
Please enjoy! :) - Hawkin
About
As always, the scope I dreamed about was ever distant. I did a good job adjusting, and I am pleased with the result. Although the final result isn't all that challenging, at least it's sort of relaxing :)
Originally, I pictured a wide map of towns that would be connected by road tile. Towns would need to be connected to resource tiles to grow their stock, and they would need to be connected to other towns through roads and rivers to trade. This created competing priorities: making contiguous plots of resources for growth, but having to cross them with roads. I'd like to try and get to that idea, because I don't think it's that far off at all!
I was inspired by recently playing Dorf Romantik (The Boardgame). I haven't played the videogame, and I don't know how it differs from the boardgame. I have to wonder whether there are many similarities to what I came up with.
Ratings
I am opting out of Audio and Graphics since I used art assets from Kenney and music from OpenGameArt, so that I could focus on gameplay.
I'm also opting out of Humor, because I did not design any humor into the game :)
Credits
I used the following project as a foundation for the hexagonal grid system. * https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/hex-map
Fonts
- https://www.fontspace.com/101-block-letterz-font-f8581
- https://www.fontspace.com/simple-games-font-f90070
- https://www.fontspace.com/cartoon-font-f6674
Art Assets
- https://kenney.nl/assets/hexagon-kit
- https://kenney.nl/assets/ui-pack-adventure
Music
- Synthwave-4k by https://opengameart.org/users/cynicmusic
| v1.0.1 | https://hawkinberry.itch.io/ld56 |
| v1.0.1 | https://hawkinberry.itch.io/ld56 |
| Jam Submission | https://hawkinberry.itch.io/ld56 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-economy |
Ratings
| Overall | 904th | 3.139⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 874th | 2.958⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 865th | 2.861⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1066th | 2.042⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 506th | 3.557⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 55🗨️ |
Thank you for playing!
I also made a casual, relaxing game this year so It's nice to see this :)
Wish there was a high-score or gameover-condition or something, but I liked it a lot.
@bananplyte @eerongal This one is super effective! I'm usually the "game loop" guy, and since I was Solo this event, I just did not get to it. I agree that it would help feel the game, even though it is small, feel complete.
@dnich013 That's cool, I'll definitely check it out! I was really interested in making a casual clicker this time, after a few entries in a row that were more action based.
@ccollider @deantwotwo I really appreciate your observations. "Feedback" is on my list of goals every time, but it always must come too late. I made sure to add some sounds and visual indicators of cause and effect, but I think what was missing was the "so what?" Sure, you know that something happened...but what did you do to make it happen? Lol
Also, the camera can be moved with arrow keys, but I agree that it is NOT expected. I think it would be better to have the mouse move the camera at the edge of the screen.
Also, glad to see you back after Deep Harvest. I'm excited to check out your entry!
Thank you for playing :)
It gives me vibes to Dork Romantik (table game)
I think this is a great platform on which to build something a bit more gamey (maybe add some objectives, points, or even more complex ways to build stuff)
Overall was a cool experience, Keep up the hard work! <3
Edit:
I just read that you were inspired by Dorf romantik after posting my comment, definetly can see the concept :rofl:
Seems that there is no "end" condition. Would have been great !
I have ideas on more things to add, now that I have a start. Thank you for the feedback!
@h1soka thank you for playing! I know the UI can cover some of the tiles (which is why you can move the camera with arrow keys). Can you describe the issue you had with fullscreens mode?
It is very nice to see the landscape coming together, the graphics fit really well!
Thank you for playing:)
The visuals and calm music are well chosen. I also love basically every game that goes for the hex-grid aesthetic instead of the traditional squares.
But my main criticism is that it feels to me like a puzzle game with a way to easy puzzle. As far as i understood you gain „production“ of each resource for each tile thats associated with the resource in its connected component (or did i miss anything?). I think some more rules and thereby created complexity would do wonders for the enjoyment. But granted - I can‘t easily come up with good ideas at that end myself.
Btw. nice cheeky additional theme incorporation there „you may not even see them“. I guess these people have some giant houses an must live in constant terror of their mega-sheep xD
It's difficult not to over scope in a jam game; I always say plan what you want to make and then cut that in half, but going forward the one mechanic I think I would want to add to this game is having multi-tile pieces to place. This would quickly scale the placement complexity and an emergent layer of problem solving and planning would really elevate this game loop.
I hope you stick at this one, I'd like to see it grow over time. I had a relaxing time playing this, well done for submitting!
If this is just a casual build-your-own-village game then I had fun. Made a sea, then the river with plains around it and the forest around the mountains. On the other side of the river there was a quarry. I didn't aim for the resources because I quickly learned you don't use them for anything.
Obviously it is clear you wanted to make use of resources, but such is a nature of jams and never enough time :) Solid entry :heart:
One thing that bugged me was unnecessarily large music box that couldn't be closed or minimized.
Yes, the card count is something I recently fixed post-jam (it did not account for the starting tiles).
I also have plans to make the UI collapsible so that you can fully admire your creations :)
I also liked the aspect that one could just relax and create. As you rightly observed, there should have been something to achieve by collecting resources (the collection alone was not enough of a motivation to play). This was a really valuable insight for me!
At first I thought I did something wrong because some of the pop-ups wouldn't disappear although I thought I connected the right tiles (and production would start). But I just saw that it's a known issue.
It's not the type of game I usually play but since trying out different stuff is part of the jam experience (at least it is for me) I really have to say that your game does a really good job of convincing me to give these types of games a chance more often!
I really underestimated how relaxing this could be and how satisfying it is to see the results of connecting the right types of tiles.
I can definitely see this being expanded on in the future with different goals the player could try to meet and some challenges they would have to face using stuff like the towns and roads you've mentioned in the description.
Great work!
And if you think you enjoy the style, I definitely recommend you check out *Dorf Romantik*, which inspired my thinking. It's an example of one direction my simple mechanic _could_ take!
I thought the idea of placing tiles in this way could be really interesting, having to decide whether to go with a decent option you have now or wait for a better one later. I haven't played Dorf Romantik, so maybe this is an existing idea I just haven't seen before, but I like it either way.