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(+1)

Art

Your art is super cute, and I think you're hitting on the right vibe to interest a lot of players. The colors are nice, the layout is clear. This is obviously your strong area, and lean in to your aesthetic!

Tutorial

I think your are you're feeding information to the player way to fast, I open the game to a wall of text and a lot options, you should break that down into small tasks and have the complexity ramp exponentially if you want to make the player feel overwhelmed.

Simulation

On the simulation,  none of the prices or numbers make much sense and the terms don't line up to reality very well. For example Profit = Revenue - Cost, it seems that you're using "profit" to mean "revenue" in this case. Your ingredient historical performance doesn't make a lot of sense, the cheese sold 40-45 unit per quarter for the past 4 quarters, when I ended my first quarter without changing anything it sold 73, it didn't pass 100, so increasing production literally would help (since no-one would buy more than by base production).

Balance

Also, the balance is off I literally didn't engage with any of the systems for a play through, and my budget went up, my profit/revenue went up and my deficit didn't affect my budget at all, I ended up saving the company with 5 strikes with a score of 833, and continuing I made it more than 40 quarters and bumped the score to over 10k. Again this was without playing the game, just hitting advance. It seems that the business wasn't really failing (maybe that's the point?)

Story

On the story side, how your financials do doesn't really seem to affect the outcomes for the strikes which doesn't make a ton of sense. If the point is that Boards & CEOs do layoffs after record sales (which is a fair point), I think it should be if you have a sudden bad quarter (maybe model in a random recession or an event where you get hit with a food poisoning scandal that spooks the board into pressuring you into layoffs or what ever). 

Suggested Next Steps 

I'd recommend looking at some real annual earnings reports (companies legally have to public report their financials to be traded as a stock) and reading up a little on economics (like how supply and demand work) to close that gap, at least if the goal is for the player to be able to make good decisions. If it helps you can find all of the equations online for how all of the numbers you're trying to represent would work in real life. It'll also help make things feel more real, and help the suspension of disbelief. 

Overall

Overall, I think you have a really interesting game, but the simulation really needs a lot of work along with the balance along with ease the user into to keep them from bouncing. Best of luck and i hope your game succeeds!

(+1)

Thank you for the incredibly detailed feedback!

I did intend to build the tutorial to be fully interactive and chunk the game up, but ran out of time. I agree it is definitely too dense and wordy in its current iteration.

Good catch on Profit vs Revenue, I changed around the labels, and it looks like I never corrected that! I also have Demand listed twice, even though one should be Loyalty. Do you have other examples of where the information is incorrect? The economics are admittedly very rudimentary  and gamey (production increasing demand doesn't make much sense, but it is a way to reward players for completing research), and rely too much on random numbers, but I might be able to make some minor tweaks if there are big issues.

As for the previous quarters starting at 40ish, that's a good point. I just have it generate numbers around 50, I honestly didn't think anyone would pay much attention to the information from before their start! I could bring that more in line with the player's likely first quarter!

It is intentional that you can win by just Submitting Quarter repeatedly. Since this was made as part of the Fuck Capitalism Jam, I've tried to stick to that theme (potentially to my own detriment), so I actually tweaked numbers until you could win by default (basically making a joke about CEO being unnecessary).  I probably should've added something to call the players out for doing it!

For the story elements, that was actually in the original plan, but got overlooked along the way unfortunately.

I think you bring up a really interesting point that I haven't seen yet, I may have made something that's neither realistic nor fantastical enough, and put the game in a kind of weird limbo! If I ever dig back into it, I'm definitely taking a good chunk of your feedback in with me!

(+1)

Happy to help! I think you hit on a core area to unlock for the game, what type of game do you want to make? Are you shooting for a story driven, satire with some simulation elements, or are you shooting for a simulation, with satirical elements? I don't think one is necessarily better than the other, but right I think you're half-way in between which makes it a bit confusing to the player. 

For example, giving a ton information about demand that doesn't do anything either can be a way to heighten the satire, or it could be a useful way to make decisions, but it would require some sign posting (maybe delayed by a couple quarters) that it's not working to not confuse the player. (Personal I did this poorly in my project) A great game that does primarily a simulation but also satire well is the Tropico Series. A great game that did satire well with a bit of simulation would be Papers Please.

If you want the experience to be more story driven and satirical, than I would pull back a little and simplify the simulation elements & ui to focus on your impotence as CEO. If you want to make a more simulation focused game (perhaps still with a satirical overtone and message), you'll need to do so more research and make sure you can use the numbers to make good decisions and maybe give a bit more player agency (so it's clearly the players fault if they fail, or clearly the boards fault they fail etc).

For better simulation & making it more real, you can look at company earnings reports (like Tyson Foods for example), and look at the metrics they use in quarterly reports, and then you can use investopedia to understand what each number is and how it is calculated to help make the numbers make sense. (you can always also simplify it a bit if need be, but at least reading through it will help a ton). 

The other thing for the economics you could do is use a random range like you're doing, but then multiply it by a curve so every quarter demand grows x% * random_number. This will help things feel more real. For example, the amount people will buy is a curve and at any given price only a certain amount will be bought, and if you produce more the price goes down.

You have really neat idea here! I don't think I've ever seen a game that turns quarterly earnings reports into a CEO simulation game, so I'm excited to see which direction you go and how unlock the potential!