Thank you - this is really useful feedback! And very timely as this Game Jam isn't finished yet - I've updated the tutorial to reflect the fact you're 'claiming' resources, not accumulating them. I've also made the end turn command R-Click instead of Spacebar.
Yes, the random generation of the family needs quantities slowly ramps up, meaning that you have to regularly upgrade your inventories otherwise the amount of resources your family requires will start to outstrip your capacities and you’ll take damage even if you have all your resources at max. Probably needs tweaking though, I haven’t playtested the late game much.
Peace and Love and may the trades be ever in your favour !
The 'unlimited' power is a deliberate design feature - it's potential for being over-powered is countered because you can only buy one upgrade per resource per day. You might have full resources one day due to a handy chain of trades, but after a couple of days with a bad table of trades and some family needs hitting you simultaineously, the wolf's back at your door! I wanted to encourage players to study the trades carefull and find chains like these, some complex ones requiring sometimes 4-5 different trades to execute, so I didn't want to put a limit on the max number of trades, just how much they can benefit from one of these exploitative chains of trades. I wanted to make arbitrage simulator which is all about looking for weaknesses like this in the market and exploiting them.
You definitely make a good point though, it does feel like a design flaw when it's really easy and obvious to spot and execute - I'm going to look into running a check on the table of trades each day and prevent chains of just 2 resources from occuring - don't want to make hunting for a bargain too easy!
Yeah I think that's a good suggestion - probably not too hard to test for either! Thanks for sticking with the game for so long and giving such nice feedback :)
RE: Your caveat - Yeah this was a mechanic I deliberately built into the game - Yes sometimes they're easy to spot and only need a couple of trades, but sometimes these loops require long chains of trades to work. Each day is like a puzzle to solve - If you can find a loop and execute it you can 'beat the system' for a day by basically exploiting the poor villagers who have priced their goods unwisely. I've capped the maximum benefit you can get from the 'infinite' resources by making it so you can only upgrade your inventories once per day. You might be flush with resources one day, and stricken by scarsity the next - you're trying your best to survive in an unforgiving market that is mostly outof your control ;)
I had an idea to make a game based on arbitrage rattling around my brain for a while, but couldn't think of a way of doing it in a way that was easy to grasp (I'm still not sure I've succeeded with this one!) - This Jam's out of control theme lead to me to the semi-fictionalised post-apocalyptic setting I ended up going with, which lead me to the idea of bartering for small amounts of a small palette of goods, which lead me back to the idea of making a profit from a web of lots of small transations. Thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Addictive - smart - fun - risk/reward-y - love it! Core mechanic is great and I'd play a whole campaign mode's worth of it if it had just a little more depth
I couldn't tell what was happening in those time slow-down parts - was I slowing down and everything else was at normal speed? Was everything slowing down? What were those glowing powerups? What did they do? I'm not smart enough for this game :( sorry
I was not good enough to win this game. Would be nice to see some of these websites these popups are trying to take you to i.e. socialist teeth what even
Great stuff - feels like playing Blackjack - when you're like ooh I could play it safe and end the turn... OR... I could try nailing the zombie with the lightnin-AHGGHWHYY (shoulda just clicked the healing card, would have been worth it even if it had healed the zombie :[ but it's the principle of the thing! You shouldn't go round healing zombies :|
This has great potential - waiting for a gap in your opponent's swing to lunge in with your attack and then move back and recover - in that way it felt kinda like how I imagine a real sword fight would be like! Jank to the max but the 20 seconds or so that I could play before it broke were great :D
Cute game! I liked that the levels wrapped around horizontally and vertically - it made for some interesting compact levels. I liked how you had had to use enemies+shield to allow you to diverge from the straightest path to the end and grab the gems - it gave the game depth and an element of strategy. I'm still not 100% sure how the shield functioned - I think it allowed me to be pushed back by the enemies? But then sometimes I would trade places with them.
Unsatisfied with the computing power the AI unit had managed to muster by converting the entire Earth’s garbage into quantum computers in the service of mining cryptocurrency - the AI unit turns its attention skyward - designing, fabricating and launching a Von Neumann probe containing a piece of itself in search of new planets to harvest resources and generate more and more computing power: https://lukenofurther.itch.io/computronium
Not sure how to answer that! I used Photoshop to create the image assets and the 'Hall of Mirrors' effect was created as a consequence of using a camera in GameMaker Studio 2 and not having a background texture and making sure the application surface isn't refreshed between steps.
If you mean more generally than specifically, then the only advice I can give is do the thing you love doing and keep doing it until you're good at it.
Thank you for your kind words - I’m glad you enjoyed it! I consider the tone and polish of a game to be an aspect of the game’s design overall - they’re elements designed and crafted to elicit an emotional response in the player just like the mechanics and the narrative.
Thanks for playing! Yeah sorry about that - it definitely does make the keyboard into a minefield D: This game is a jam but I can look at that issue once the review phase is finished then re-upload an updated version.
Thanks for playing! I didn’t have time to implement a tutorial so apologies that you got stuck.
Once you collect 100 bits of tech (the number at the top left that increases every time you destroy some garbage) you can build solar arrays on the cleared-out blue outdoor plots of land. These charge up and can give you an extra-powerful shot that can clear through garbage quicker, you can charge up by right-clicking once a solar array has filled up. This charged shot can by used to power the green mining rigs you can find around the map. When you power-up the green rigs, they slowly generate cryptocurrency - when they turn white you can click on them to pick it up, and drop it in one of the two yellow conduits on the map so that you can use it to buy things with. You can buy more mining rigs on the indoor plots of land with this cryptocurrency, to make more crptocurrency faster! If you earn enough you can build shells for human conciousness on the orange indoor plots 👍
I’m glad you enjoyed it - personally my favourite part is building a whole load of solar arrays so that you can nearly always become charged by clicking the right mouse button, and blasting my way through garbage or recharging my mining rigs at lightning speed!
