Hi,

This is a fun game. Well done.

Here's some feedback that might prove useful.

1. A simple page of help would go along way as I also tripped up on the need to click on fields to harvest food. I also completely overlooked the dock system for adding resources.

2. A button (ESC perhaps) to free up your mouse pointer from the build menu. If I've selected to build a house and I then click on a bunch of fields and orchards to harvest food then I find myself occassionally inadvertently building more houses when I misclick on the wrong square. Being able to hit ESC, or something else, and quickly deselect to a straight mouse pointer would avoid this.

3. Couldn't figure out any game effect for happiness or rain. I ignored both as a result.

4. Towers appeared to be bugged. Build one and two workers are deducted but very soon after they return.

5. The strategy of systematically ringing your island with Towers as early on as possible kind of made the pirates a bit pointless and devolved the game into a straight build up the resource engine until you've got enough to win. Without a full set of towers the game was really good fun and forced some tough decisions on you. Not sure what the answer is here but an 'easy-to-implement' game tweak that kept the Player in the tense, decision heavy, pirate environment would go a long way.

6. The game options to vary the speeds are much appreciated.

I think you've got the elements of a winning game here. Find a way to generate some variety and maintain the tension and it could be something that can be developed into a commerical product.

Cheers,

Plugger

1. True, a tutorial would be a great help; many seem to struggle to understand a few mechanics, especially the manual harvesting until you get the storehouse.

2. You can right-click to revert the cursor the normal, though it might have needed to be conveyed a bit better perhaps.

3.Happiness I think is too easy to maintain, but when it hits 0% you lose- which is the alternate condition for losing apart from the town centre being destroyed. Rain should have increased the speed of farm growth; however they were already so fast that without a storehouse, rain would become a hassle in most cases.

4. the most poorly conveyed feature is that after harvesting ~120 resources, a lumber shack or quarry will infact run out- returning the initial 2 worker investment. There is no notification of this apart from actually visually noticing it's gone- which definitely needs to be improved upon.

5. We have some (what we think are) good ideas on how to do this- such as a blood moon type of event, where a strong / multiple ships will attack; but the time constraints were too tight for LD (though we are planning on adding this later)

6. thanks bud

Hi,

Thanks for the info.

I think that you're being too generous with the fast worker refund for the towers. Who is manning those cannons? I'd also be inclined to increase the workers required for towers and make them more of a strategic choice rather than 'quick, plonk down another tower', automatic decision.

A blood moon sounds interesting but if that was in the game I'd only be spamming out more towers to counter the possibility. It might work better if you created a second threat, one separate to the pirates. Give the player a reason to scratch his head and wonder if it's worth building another tower or, instead, putting the resources into countering the other threat. Maybe something internal to do with your approval rating?

At present the only impediment to your winning the game is a single threat (pirates) which can be easily dealt with (ring of towers). A second threat might open up a larger strategy space for the player and lead to more interesting decisions.

Cheers,

Plugger

Initially, when a resource ran out the workers actually weren't refunded; which made building houses a much greater priority- but that completely broke the balance of the game and often led to an inescapable pit till you lose. Tower price, in terms of resources is a tricky balance- as most of the time in the case of being attacked you either have barely enough to scrape a tower together, or you have enough to build multiple easily. We did think of adding foot soldiers to attack- which is what walls were originally meant for; except we didnt have the time to put them in. But internal strife, while adding depth and difficulty, off the top of my head would be quite hard to implement a system which is simplistic enough to keep the overall feel of the game, without being tedious. (random events might work?)

We agree; the issue is putting those extra layers of strategy in. though with some thinking and perseverance i hope we can get the right balance

thanks for the feedback

Hi,

Downloaded the latest version to give it a go. Nice cloud graphics.

I think the latest version is bugged (v0.38.03). Everytime I build fields, soon after the field tile is removed. A little tricky when the God of Little Worlds keeps confiscating my food producing real estate.

[edit] Nope, happens because I forgot about the windmills.  All good. Perhaps a notification of this deleteing in a future version could be useful as it's not obvious what's going on if you've omitted to read the info on fields, or, like me, have read it previously and just plain forgot.

Feedback on new version...

Some good improvements here.

Pirates were much more of a concern with multiple pirates turning up at once.

Resource depletion seemed to happen faster. The notification of these was excellent, especially the skull and cross bones symbol.

The help for the rain, eg. what it does, was good and I noticed an effect on the crops. Rain is now a game consideration whereas before I ignored it.

Approval rating tended to fluctate between 50 and 100% which is a big improvement on the previous version (sat pretty much at 100 most of the time). Nothing to worry about but nice to see it in a wider band. At least I was watching it, before I didn't.

On the downside all of the above slowed me a down a bit, but not a lot. Once I'd built a ring of towers and got the storehouse up and running there wasn't a whole lot to do except watch the resource numbers fluctuate and tweak accordingly along with a gradual expansion.

At no point did I build an archery barracks or wall and I'm pretty sure I didn't ever lose a tower. I saw both options as redundant.

I felt that the challenge hadn't increased, instead the game had become more drawn out which is probably not a plus. The current challenge is busy work at the start, rather than difficulty, until you've got the towers and storehouse and after that it's simply process (or 'grind'). I'd visualise it as a difficulty curve that went up a bit at the start and then went into a steady decline, till the tipping point (towers/ storehouse) whereafter it flatlined.

If you took away the time pressure there probably wouldn't be any difficulty there at all.

I wouldn't get perturbed by my comments above as they relate, more or less, to your core game design which is still evolving. Give yourselves a pat on the back for heading in the right direction.

Your basic game loop is pretty good but I'd be  thinking about  a way to give the player a few more balls to juggle and to keep the difficulty slowly ramping up rather than down.

Keep on keeping on.

Cheers,

Plugger