Wow. Really amazing cute little strategy game. The graphics are amazing. Never would've had the idea to use Townscaper haha. But it fits so well!

Cool concept! love the parallax when moving the mouse cursor haha

Simple and well executed! It's a shame you had to opt out of audio, the voicelines alone would've made it a 5/5 for me :smile:

Well easily 5/5 for the theme here lol

A strategy game with an original approach to managing conflicts in the kingdom is simply incredible! 👑 The graphics in the style of Townscaper fit the game perfectly and add charm. The idea of ​​using voice to manipulate factions is truly original! I recommend it to everyone who loves strategies and non-standard solutions! 👍✨

I really enjoy "My subjects are so far below me that I consider them tiny creatures" as the take on the theme. The ego of the king is a wonderful narrative device, and then combined with the nonsensical voice lines as you speak to your people "Carpe Diem!" "Ludum Dare!" makes the king appear incompetent, in all the right ways.

I spent five years pitting factions against each other. By no means did I actually solve the problems, ha!

Let's talk about the graphics, because woah- the city design is great. I love the subtle parallax as you move the cursor. It emphasizes the distance (metaphorically) between you and your subjects. It's a juicy detail.

We were talking in the discord call about how cool it would be to have a "speech counter" at the end of the game, and after playing, it would be really neat to compare that number with other players, or try for a "minimum speeches" run. In my run, I don't think any factions made it above 20 members, but with a fewest speeches run, I could imagine it getting much more strategic, and cutting it way closer.

All around, a wonderful game! Great work.

I knew from the post on day 1 that I was gonna love this one, and it did not disappoint. Small but unique concept executed (heh) flawlessly.

@100th-coin I added the speech counter! (I think the change is small enough to be justified, and added it to the Post-Jam notes of course) Now to see what best score I can get...

Really nice game, the look of it is so good! Plays well too, gj!

Woaw, this is an amazing and unique game!

My best run was 9 speeches:

I really love the concept, and the execution is flawless! It's very interesting to try to let the faction grows so we don't give too much speeches, but then there is tension that one of them will reach 30 members before our speech!
Graphics and sound are top notch, I especially love the title screen with the parallax (and the ingame too). Fits the theme very well too.

A awesome entry, congrats!

N.B. It was nice to hear those latin sentences, especially the "Ludum Dare" one! Is that the official way to say "Ludum Dare" ;)?

Oooh, love it!

Probably gave may more speeches than was necessary bc I really wanted to hear which nonsensical voice line would be next haha. My favourite was "Lorem ipsum" bc that's the one that made me go "Wait. What did he just say? Did I hear that right?"

Perpetuum mobile!

i could play this game for a while the audio, the mechanics of blaming different groups, its cool and has a really nice tone to it!

5 STARS, Flawless, Greater than great.

Really fantastic concept! Great use of the theme, and i love all the audio ques, great bit of humour added! The gameplay felt really satisfying and i wanted to keep playing.

I fell in love at first sight; the unique perspective and interactive approach create an immersive experience. I think I need to dive deeper into it when I have time.

Pretty interesting game. At first i thought you could just randomly blame anyone for anything, but almost died for this, bc they refused to kill 27 people faction lol

I Love the whole concept of the game
especially the part being a king behind the wall (for five years).

won the game with 10 speeches.

the "Ludum Dare!" speech makes me laugh out loud!
Great game.

Very good! Such a tactical and hectic (if you try to minimize the speeches) yet simple game. Wonderfully executed, love the graphics and sound effects. Points for voice lines.

Is that... Townscaper I'm seeing? Creative!

Interesting idea. I really like artstyle, very unique

Awesome idea and execution! As always @sheepolution doesn't deceive, absolutely astonishing and impressive to see such levels of finish for a compo game.
I'm in absolute love with the palette and visuals.
SFX are great and entertaining, I had a great laugh; gamefeel and interface super sweat, amazed from the very main screen menu.
The game mechanics is a bit easy once you have a strategy but this is enough to require having one to test. Mine was somehow to blame factions one after another for the less important issues to keep them away from real issues I did nothing about. It took me 40 ~~massacres~~ speeches to stay for the whole 5 years. I could be king now (or France president), I'm ready.
Close to perfection for what a compo game could be, this is one that will end up in the top ranked list IMO.
Awesome job as always,

Cheers!

Great Game, it was very laggy / Jittery on my chrome/mac.
But otherwise Very cool concept and execution!

Very interesting idea. Nice viusal desigion and souds.
The only downside is the lack of ability to speed up time in the game or at least skip the delay after speech.

The aesthetic polish is great, The rules were a bit hard to grasp initially but thanks for explaining the rules on stream, Solid effort and scoped well.

This game is so cool! I loved it!

This was terrific one-mechanic game that really knocks it out with that one thing. Poignant as well.

Had a blast with this one, even the main menu was fun!

fantastic game wow! so polished and such a fun theme. Coming up with games that are so tight in terms of features but still fun is something I've been trying to get good at! excellent work!

Those phrases give me giggles each time; Lu-dum Da-re! :smile: Awesome game, clear gameplay and neat main menu effect. It is also deep in this irl political way. Congrats!

Here are my 8 speeches:

https://youtu.be/wooVVxg2xPI

Very solid entry! The sense of atmosphere and perspective is amazing, the humor was appreciated to lighten the mood a bit, and the mechanical push and pull was quite a bit of fun, too. I do wonder if the timer was a bit long, but it wasn't too bad. Graphics were great, putting aside the town assets- I looooove what you did with the title screen. "Tiny creatures" feels appropriate both in terms of how the king looks at the subject, and how he explains his powerlessness in the prologue.... I feel like there's some good food for thought here, similar to some of Nicky Case's stuff. Great work!

Woah. The style is GREAT, I love the parallax when moving the mouse. I think the game itself is fairly easy, but trying to get a low speeches win is way more challenging. Great job!

Got 13 speeches on my first run, and 6 on the second. Aiming for a low count totally changes how you play!


Amazing. The interpretation of the theme is very original, and the resulting game feels very polished. The way the game forces you to keep an eye on every faction, emulating the way a king has to evaluates where they put their trust... This contrasts with the art style and the random latin phrases which gives the game a more silly vibe. I love it!

(btw, thanks for the LÖVE tutorials, they've been a great help!)

Victoria! 27 speeches might have been a bit much, (I do be yappin’) but can’t blame a royal for adressing her subjects!

LUUUDUM DAREEE

DEUS EX MACHINAAAA

Made me laugh!

Great take on the theme! I loved the art style, and visual perspective. The voice acting was really great as well!

I had a lot of fun playing it, before I knew it I won. While this might be societal commentary, my main takeaway is that perhaps I could be queen one day?

So good! And hilarious! "LUDUM DARE". Love the humour you put into your games! :D

Thoroughly impressed that this was done by one person in 48 hours.

Lovely game. The parallax and palletization give it a very nice and cohesive look. Quite fond of the audio design too, especially the Latin phrases!

Gameplay wise, it makes for a pretty interesting puzzle/strategy game. The base idea is very solid and there's plenty of room for players to try and optimize, as shown by the many comments with several playthroughs going for a better score.

Overall a great submission that feels very polished, great job!

I mistook the coin purse for a witch icon at first, so my head canon became 'blame them for the witches' XD
This was really fun and a smart design, a great take on the theme and then executed really well.
Felt a touch of monty python. Nice!

Pretty fun concept! I yapped 12 times for a win. I found it a bit tricky to keep track of the factions and especially their growth, as it feels like the others get a rapid recruitment bonus when you wipe out another faction, gaining like 10 members in a few seconds. Managed to cull the herd once when they rapidly jumped to 29 members :D

Loved the voice lines too :D good stuff overall!

This game was really fun! I loved the visuals you used for the game, and I thought that the shouting of Latin phrases was really funny. I had a whole "name of the game" moment when I heard him yell "Ludum Dare" and something about a king yelling "Ad Hominem" to whip up a violent mob was raelly comical to me.

There was also a solid level of strategy to the game, as you had to be sure not to whittle your groups down too much or you risked letting one grow too strong to tear down in time.

Great job!!

I knew I would have liked this since I saw the art on your twitter feed :smile:
It's a nice take on the theme. Loved the speeches!
Maybe there is something missing to make it more replayable.. after a while it becomes pretty much the same over and over, but that's a common issue with the 48h entries... it's really hard to pull off something that makes your game addictive and replayable.
Good work!

It's an impressive work, nice job!

I found you on itch.io a while ago from your SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE game, so once I saw your username I new I had to play. Knocked it out of the park once again, particularly with the visuals and the latin mumblings from the king :laughing: pretty unique idea that I haven't seen anywhere else too. Feels like this concept could work as some sort of board game as well!

As simple as it is, this is one of my favorites from this Ludum Dare. I especially love all the Latin phrases you say when sending your minions out to kill one another. This is the way of politics, isn't it? Turn people on each other so they don't pay attention to you. I did it in 15 speeches, but I can think it could be done in a lot fewer than that.

5/5 Theme, and also 5 stars for humor because of the "LUDUM DARE" lol

One of my favorite game from this LD! Really polished entry, easy to understand, with a bit of strategy (even if it's kinda easy). Also one of the funiest game here. "LUDUM DAAAARREEEE" 🤣
Finished the game with 19 speeches 💀

Amazing entry! Loved the easter eggs from the voice hahah Very polished and fun to play! Well done!!

Really liked that one ! Good concept, and great humor throughout. It could be interesting that the "speech limit" thing was a little more tangible (like with real time repercutions when some limits are reached), and I also wonder if some kind of cooldown system for every faction accused would enhance the strategical aspect of the game. All the BS latin phrases was a nice touch, too. Congrats !

One of my favourite ! I really like the originality of the concept !
And those graphism are great !

that is so awesome!!! what idea, graphics and fun!

Hello @sheepolution. I came here after reading your post-releasing-post on the main LudumDare page. It was very interesting to read and since you will not continue working on the game, I will not suggest any gameplay changes.

First of all, the game was interesting enough, that I wanted to play through it. For my taste it was a little bit too long (had 12 speeches). I guess having a time limit of three minutes would be better for me.

I really like the art style! The picture you've made for the main screen looks good and the "view from above" is also very cool. It was fun watching the little persons killing each other. :D

I think you nailed the theme! Seeing your population as tiny creatures is a nice idea!

The game was properly introduced by the text. I knew what the setting was and I was ready to play the game.

I also like the overall humor in this game. It did not felt that you tried too hard to be funny, it felt very natural in this game. The latin phrases were a nice touch.

Overall it is a very polished game and a great job for only two days! :)

Very unique! I was quite impressed with the visuals, both those based on photographs and the plentiful nicely drawn sprites. The overall gameplay loop and mechanics took me a minute to get a hang of, but once I understood it I thought it was an engaging cycle. It was interesting to find that the real thing to focus on was how many Complaints there were, rather than the number of total members of each faction. The number of faction members only gives you a target, while the number of complaints basically acts like your ammunition count. It was fun to balance the two. A creative use of the theme as well! Not literally tiny creatures, but tiny from your perspective. The voice lines were charming too, nice job with those. Overall, quite the impressive project for this jam!

As many have said already - the voice lines really give this a great edge and using Townscaper to build out the setting for the game is such a cool idea.

The gameplay pulls together really well as well - I caused myself some problems by letting one gang get too big to the point it was quite hard to get the others to whittle them down, nice that that kind of strategic stuff crops up quite naturally from how it's all set up!

This was so charming, I found the visual execution to be absolutely incredible. It helped make this game with simple mechanics feel lively and complex. The voice lines are a nice touch. I'd say you _killed_ it with this one, Sheep!

This was wonderful, my favourite compo entry so far, easily! The moment I saw the name I realised what the theme interpretatio nwas, and I thought that was magnificent. I found the game quite easy, but that's just because it was so elegant. The visuals were lovely, and I especially loved the silly latin "speeches". The rate at which the crowd joins new factions in general was perfectly tuned for the single-playthrough a LD game often gets. Top scores.

Great work, simple mechanic and beautiful to look at. I think maybe shortening the game just a bit might have been better since the gameplay remains pretty static throughout the 5 mins. But overall so freakin good!!

Nice game,very interesting plot!!!!Nice job!!!!

great idea, great visual, great game ! hard to know how to really control the game but I think it is part of the feeling, it is hard to be a leader XD !

funny. ludum dare, lorum ipsum, speech. great game.


mr meeseeks style blaming. Very cool concept and super unique. Love the art style

I got it in 32 speeches! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet! Great game! Although I think 5 minutes might be a little bit too long? I feel like by minute 3 I was like "OK I get it" and I had a strategy that prevented any faction from going past 13ish.

Finally got to play this one, and I liked it a lot :) The random latim gets some extra humor points from me 😁

A funny thing, when I saw the game earlier (either the pictures or streamers playing it) I had found the buildings kinda familiar, but it took me reading your post-mortem to figure out they were from Townscaper 😅 .

The whole way you composed the screen to make the king look down on those tiny people was very cool (I kinda wanna "steal" the color reduction trick in a future LD entry, don't know how much it'll work with the NES palette though).

Finished my first run with 7 speeches. Then I tried two more runs, but I got greedy and lost both after two speeches, hahaha. Did anyone else finished with less than 7?

Sooo cool and absolutely hilarious! You did a great job with the graphics, they feel really gnarly (which I love) and the townscaper background town doesn't feel out of place at all with the rest of the game thanks to the pixelated look and limited palette. All around very well built, the gameplay itself was very engaging even if it felt like it could be pushed further. Currently besides final score there's not much consequence to being cautious and using many speeches for example. I finished my run with 11 speeches btw. The audio of the game was absolutely great, the random latin phrases made me laugh a lot, "Ludum Dare" in particular really got me. :joy: The little conversation at the start of the game was nice and short, gave me enough context to want to play the game seriously.

Amazing work on this, great job!!

Excellent! The graphics are great, the gameplay is simple yet engaging, and the Latin is 👌🏻

I'm sure people have done it with far fewer speeches but I did it in 18 lol. There's a really cool blend of stress with managing the crowd sizes and feeling AWFUL for creating infighting in the first place. And goodness is this a perfect creation right before the American presidential election lol

As far as the game goes, it fits the theme perfectly as these people are such tiny creatures before you, and I LOVE the visual of your kingly hands on the window as you watch and give speeches over the years. It was also so awesome to hear vocalizations of so many classic Latin phrases, including Ludum Dare!