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Orrstead

A city-building game with incremental mechanics. · By IndividualKex

The First Alpha

A topic by IndividualKex created Feb 13, 2022 Views: 490 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 5
Developer(+2)

Hello all! I've been working on this city-builder strategy/sim game for a couple years now, and am excited to be releasing this first public-facing build.

First off, is it working? Please let me know of any game-breaking bugs (or if the game isn't running!)

Second, excited for any feedback. Gameplay mechanics and future phases are very flexible at this stage in development.

(+1)

    Hello! It’s working mighty fine. I’ve played for some 6~7 hours already and found one bug: When I start a new game with the second speed already selected, sometimes will not be triggered, so I have to switch to speed 1 and then to speed 2 again. Nothing alarming, didn’t bother me at all. Also, the game’s running good, no fps drops even in some cities with more than 100 people and my PC isn’t even good at all. Nice work. Now some feedback: - The core gameplay of the game is addicting, the possibility of not losing the game makes that I don’t need to rush objectives like “Cities: Skylines”, which will put me in debt in 30 secs of gameplay, or “Kingdom and Castles” (this game share some similarities, but for the best!) that will put me in danger everytime i’m getting the hang of it. This game has a very relaxing tone to it, plus the world generation system allows to make some kinda diverse towns, some with rivers between areas, some more coastal. And the freedom to arrange the town to my liking reminded me a little of the game “Townscaper”. Here’s some towns i’ve made in your game:


- I have a question in relation to how the tavern works: Do I get +1 happiness for every house in the area of the tavern or do I get 1+ happiness for having a house in the area of the tavern, independently of the number of houses? (By the way, I like that I can click in a house and show how much happiness I get for that house, that’s a nice addition).

- I think that when you are building something, the hud doesn’t need to be always visible, because if you are building a lot of things at the same time, it might cause a bit of conflict with the minimalist design of certain things, like the wood storage. Maybe show how much is needed by hovering the mouse over the incomplete building or making more diegetic by allowing us to see how many wood logs there are inside the box construction, exactly like the infuser, which allows us to see how many logs are inside of it. So, by making everything build working visually the same way, you get a more consistent design.

- Maybe be able to choose the priority in which I build things, like “The Settlers IV”, by clicking on the construction while it’s incomplete and choosing a form to allow me to prioritize the transport of materials to that building.

- The sounds are very crispy and go very well with the shaking of the trees when you hit them. And the distortion of the perspective is also very well made, nice job again.

_________________________ 
Now, with all that being said I wish to make an offer: I found your game through your youtube channel and I am always looking for new games because I am a composer, and I would really like to participate in them, or any of them, in anyway that I can, to help build the atmosphere that the game is passing, and because I am also interested in making soundtracks for games that I enjoy, like this case.

I made a little draft in four days that shows the type of soundtrack I could be making for your game - No charge at all, I am really just interested in participating. 


The gameplay is from channel Fulltrough. And here’s the link to my bandcamp:
Music | Marcelo Lehmkuhl (bandcamp.com)
It has my professional email in my bio and you can contact me there, just send a holler if you need anything. I would be glad to work with you.
Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your feedback! Your towns look amazing, much better than anything I've built!

- Taverns: I keep revamping the way taverns/happiness work. In 0.1, taverns increase household happiness, and global happiness is affected to average household happiness. However, I didn't like how it makes taverns feel like a requirement than a choice, so patch 0.11 will have a completely different implementation, which will hopefully be a bit more clear and flexible :)

- HUD: Good idea on the disappearing HUD! I do want to keep things minimal. I'm planning to implement construction animations, at which point there will be in-world visual feedback on the construction progress.

- Priority: I've already implemented a change to job priority, which will be in 0.11, where citizens will construct things in the order they're placed. Hopefully that will make things feel more controlled. I think it does sound useful for players to be able to prioritize a building individually as well; I'll try to figure out a way I can do that without introducing too much micromanagement.

Thank you for your music composition sample and offer, I will definitely keep it in mind.

I hope this isnt dead, but I have ran into an issue where the citizens stop working.  Then they starve to death.  Hitting esc twice, and thus zooming out and back in again, seems to fix it for a few seconds.

Any ideas what's happening?

But it doesn't work forever.  The farms are full, but the granaries, markets and houses are empty.

Developer

Would you mind emailing your save file to individualkex@gmail.com ? The save file should be located at C:\Users{user}\AppData\LocalLow\IndividualKex\Orrstead\savedata

also did any errors pop up?

Developer

I’ve pushed an update that may possibly fix the issue, let me know if it worked!

(1 edit)

I just downloaded the demo on Steam and played it for about an hour. The game is very engaging, and in the first 5 minutes or so, I was hooked. The only thing I would add as a feature is a rotation tool where you can rotate the buildings. When I started building houses, I didn't see that there was an option to change the builds' orientation, so perhaps make it a bit more obvious, or just add a rotation tool. Another thing is that there should be a small description of what each building does (perhaps there is, but I didn't see it).  For example, I don't know exactly what the Tavern does, but I noticed that it's there, so I built it just to see what happens. I've only played the demo for an hour so far, but I will keep playing and will be there for the release!

Developer

Thanks a lot for your feedback and trying the game!