One True God by kidder

[raw]
made by kidder for LD28 (JAM)
The One True God!

Build a cult and take over the world. Make millions of dollars and gain millions of followers. A simulation game of epic proportions! Developed and tested exclusively in Chrome - not sure how well it works in other browsers (but please report any bugs!)

Instructions & Hints:

The goal is to gain followers and cash by converting citizens to your cult. Careful management of society's perception of your cult and grooming of your bishops is critical to success.

Most buttons and controls and labels have (occasionally helpful) tooltips - mouse over something if you don't know what to do.

Bishops are exceedingly important and their attributes can never be high enough. Creating a pool of great bishops is key. Be careful that they don't defect - paying bishops the median region income is a good start, but might not be sufficient if their loyalties are low!

Keep track of Fervor and Hostility. Carefully manage your tithing rates to keep your congregations growing.

Make sure to read the tooltips!

Starting Out:
It's important to get your first region in a good state before expanding. Your goal is to get hostility low and fervor high, and to have a bishop with high stats. If your starting bishop isn't so great, consider recruiting a new one or training one to get his stats up. Once your starting region is positive in growth and profit, start expanding to other regions.

There is a wide variance in difficulty depending on starting conditions. Sometimes the best option is to restart (refresh) if you're stuck with lousy bishops and a hateful population.

Have fun!

Authors - @kiddarr and @pedawia

Ratings

Coolness 55% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.55 93
Fun(Jam) 3.34 111
Graphics(Jam) 2.76 386
Humor(Jam) 3.25 87
Innovation(Jam) 3.69 38
Mood(Jam) 3.24 162
Theme(Jam) 3.21 139

Feedback

code-11
17. Dec 2013 路 04:46 UTC
This is a very ambitious concept, and shows promise. It was created in a very short amount of time, clearly, but if you have more time to fix it up in the future I would gameplay testing. For me, the learning curve was very steep and it was difficult to tell when certain things would happen. How much is "good pay" for a bishop? Do bishops leave their posts when you train them? How much do bishops improve when you train them? How can I make money?
馃帳 kidder
17. Dec 2013 路 04:55 UTC
@code-11: Thanks for the feedback!

Totally agree on all of your points. We would have loved to get more of a tutorial or way to learn in-game, but as you can imagine time was pretty short. I've tried to make some things clear via the in-game tooltips and the instructions on this page, but some things are intentionally vague to encourage experimentation and exploration. But that's a fine line to walk, of course.

Some of the UI actions are a bit unclear - I'll try to clarify the language in places to make it a bit less overwhelming.
angryfacing
17. Dec 2013 路 06:02 UTC
This is a very, very fun. I forgot I was going through and reviewing games and got carried away for about 30 minutes just clicking away. Very entertaining, really enjoyable, would actually love to see more to this game. :)
Bribz
17. Dec 2013 路 06:07 UTC
Actually very in-depth, interesting, and fun. I'd love to watch this progress!
stvr
17. Dec 2013 路 06:10 UTC
Did you make SimChurch in three days?! How?
j_stirk
17. Dec 2013 路 06:20 UTC
Loved some of the random events, even if half my followers did die in a bus crash :D Great idea, and an interesting take on the business/tycoon sim.
Zerkruemler
17. Dec 2013 路 06:29 UTC
Very interesting and very promising. A good entry for a ludum dare, but quite hard to understand. I didn't manage to 'survive' more than a few rounds each time. Maybe this is intended, but for me it made it hard to know what to do.
I would like to get guidance how to play.
Seigeengine
17. Dec 2013 路 06:31 UTC
This game was enjoyable, fairly easy to understand, but I lost interest at about the point I had a few territories really good and conquered.
BluShine
17. Dec 2013 路 06:47 UTC
Fun, funny, and clever use of the theme. Some of the mechanics could be more transparent (I wish bishops had a "happiness meter", and I wish regions were colored differently to separate them or indicate population/income), but the game is still very playable.
Nut
17. Dec 2013 路 06:49 UTC
Ooh a strategy game. I'm not finished but I think I'm creaming it? I have money just rolling in and I'm expanding at maximum church size as fast as I can hire bishops. The balance probably needs some tweaking. Regardless, this is a lot of fun. The only serious downsides to me are that it doesn't really evoke the theme, and that there's no sound.
john_conder9
17. Dec 2013 路 07:09 UTC
Month 11155 | 180673 | $1,000,0007,132,592.76

I think I got the high score. Super fun game, the first ~15ish tries I went bankrupt and then it things went well and I started to understand the game. Around month 50~ish my manage bishop button quit working and I could not replace or recruit bishops :/ Around month 70 it got boring so I pressed & held enter and ... now I'm a trillionaire. HOLLA.
馃帳 kidder
17. Dec 2013 路 07:41 UTC
thanks for all the feedback guys!

@BluShine happiness meter is a great idea. Region coloring was on my todo list, but it got cut :(

@Nut definitely needs some tweaking. The balance between profit/growth is a bit funky right now, and it basically comes down to expanding churches. Gonna think about how to adjust that a bit.

@john_conder9: I just fixed the bishop management bug :P The balance right now makes it easy to get money but hard to get followers - there actually is a win condition if you get enough.
Jago
17. Dec 2013 路 20:08 UTC
A lot of potential in this one.
Hypermagical
17. Dec 2013 路 20:13 UTC
Good to see a strategy game on here.

I was running into an issue that after a while some of the buttons didn't seem to line up with their clickable areas. This was on Firefox.
milugames
17. Dec 2013 路 20:16 UTC
This was pretty good. I spent a good amount of time playingit and enjoyed it.

The lack of graphics was a let down though. Just the small thing of having a few buildings around to signify the cities would have changed a lot for me. Just a few blocks and the whole thing looks a lot better and is more exciting.

Other than that a cool game. Good job!
Lacutis
17. Dec 2013 路 20:25 UTC
Really nice concept. Was really difficult to play and I ended up going bankrupt.
I think it was really ambitious and interesting for a LD entry!
theholychicken
17. Dec 2013 路 20:34 UTC
Very cool to go from managing money in a small church to planting megachurches all over the place!
How much money is the win condition though? I got to $60 million, built a convention everywhere but got too tired of keep recruiting bishops to run them.
A great take on the theme!
udo
17. Dec 2013 路 23:46 UTC
I loved this one very much, very nicely done! I always wanted to manage my own cult... er: church :)
OrangeeZ
21. Dec 2013 路 16:37 UTC
Man, that was a really awesome game. Turned out Allah surpasses Jesus, Putin and patriarch Kirill, so I guess I'll just go and have a sip of Kool-Aid ;)
tripleVisionGames
22. Dec 2013 路 13:12 UTC
Great in depth work for such a short time. With more time I'd work to implement a good tutorial to help you get into it easier as it's a bit overwhelming at the moment