I finally have time to play through your game haha. Here are my opinions:
Presentation
Great aesthetics in the game - a consistent color palette, camera movement of the screen, and low-poly models with a minimalistic “stage” holding the city. Also having fish swimming in the sea and wind blowing - all contribute to an outstanding level of presentation despite the fact that it is just a 7-day game jam.
The BGM also provides a “dangerous ocean” vibe and creates an immersive and intense atmosphere for the player.
UX
Generally speaking, I think the UX is well done despite some of the other players thinking it is not. IMO it is quite intuitive. After reading the help section, I am able to quickly memorize the shortcuts to switch to different modes, select buildings, and understand what I need to do.
I like the hovering effects of the buildings. It was fun to just hover around.
I also like the “damage indicator” on a grid when a hazard event hit that grid; the warning sign shows up when the health of the building is below the threshold. These visual aids really help guide players in identifying which grid they need to repair.
Adding Shift/Ctrl + left click key combinations for survivor assignments so that players can add/remove 5/10 survivors at a time. Every time I build a building I have to quickly click 10-20 times to reassign survivors but I have already missed 1-2 ticks of production which is quite vital in your game.
Locking the survivor assignment buttons during the hazard event would be a good improvement. Don’t know whether it is intentional: when I was crazily clicking on the building to repair, I always accidentally clicked on the assignment buttons.
Contents
As a game jam game, the content is fairly enough for the core game loop. It has a relatively balanced economy overall.
As other people have mentioned, the survivor slot of the town hall is a trap. I thought it will speed up the recruiting process of new survivors. Maybe it is your initial thoughts on the functionality of the town hall? If not, I think it would be a good idea to gain new survivors based on the survivor assignment of the town hall, instead of gaining it in a fixed time interval.
Progression
I understand the game is meant to be hard. But IMO it is too hard for a game jam game, in which most of the jammers are too busy to play your game multiple times. I bet there are 1/4 of the players are patient enough to reach the maelstrom (i.e. Day 10 00:00).
I myself can’t get through the maelstrom since I am not able to level up my town hall to lv. 3. I think I did quite ok in terms of utilizing space and resources:
- Stage 1 : 3 logging + 3 mines + 1 storage
- Stage 2 : (Expansion 1) 5 logging + 3 mines + 1 storage
- Stage 3 : (Expansion 1, Town lv2) 5 logging (2 lv2) + 5 mines (1 lv2) + 2 tungs + 2 storage
- Stage 4: (Expansion 1, Town lv2) 5 logging (4 lv2, 1 lv3) + 5 mines (5 lv2) + 2 tungs + 2 storage (1 lv2)
- Stage 5: Almost the same as stage 4, with more lv3s and stocked resources.
Then I got rekted by the maelstrom within a few seconds and all my stocked resources turn to negative numbers somehow. I can’t repair my town hall or do anything besides watching my city being torn apart. I know it is intentional because players are expected to upgrade the town hall to lv3 and build the anti-shock buildings. I am just venting haha. Don’t know whether I am in the right direction for beating the game.
I built more logging than mines since the town hall requires more wood than stones to upgrade.
I think the difference between town hall lv1 and lv2 is too huge. Leveling the resource building need a very small amount of tung but it enhances productivity a lot, but there is no way to get any tung besides waiting for sufficient resources to level up the town hall.
I think the tips you have mentioned on the game page would not be applicable to most of the players (like me) because I just can’t find a way to upgrade my town hall fast enough. Also expanding the border to max seems a bit pointless for me since I don’t have that many survivors and resources to utilize in new spaces.
RNG
I found that the sea rise event is the easiest to deal with since it involves the least RNG. I just need to repair all buildings, as for other events, sometimes it will somehow hit the same building multiple times within a small interval, so the building will be destroyed and I lost all the survivors inside it.
Currently, the replayability of the game is relatively low since the hazard events seem to be the only random element.
Conclusion
It is the most all-rounded impressive game I have played in a game jam. And it is made by 2 people only! What a talented team! Hope to see your team again in the next jams!
P.S. This game reminds me of my cursed Frostpunk playthrough in which I didn’t upgrade any of my houses but ended up overcoming the great blizzard, and won the game with most of my citizens becoming disabled lol.