Erm... What's a .love file?

@Texel You caught me with my pants down, I'm afraid, as I was just updating the description!

Love is a 2d Game Framework; http://love2d.org/

You will only need it for the linux version.

This game is hilarious.

71 Treasure! I would have really liked to have more opportunities to buy cannonballs though!

Cool! Could have been made twice as good with some sort of aftermath screen for each action you make.

@texel: Baby, don't hurt me.

where are all the cannonballs?!?!

Debian/Ubuntu Users: apt-get install love, run the love file using that command. Works fine. Game's pretty cool too! My only wish is that it is a bit hard to easily understand the effects of various things. For example, "Get more grog" has "G + 10, T -1" (grog on left, treasure on right), but on the score bar, it's the reverse (treasure on left, grog on right).

nice minimalistic story!

Neat idea. Even though the graphics are MS Paint-y, the sepia color tone sells it pretty well. I actually liked 'em.

As for the game, it's an interesting idea, but I didn't feel like my choices had much weight. It was mostly down to me hoping I'd get a chance to buy cannon balls, which normally didn't happen. If this would have been played a bit straighter, with a real sense of your choices having some relevance, it could be genuinely fun. As it stands, I played a couple times and wasn't too interested.

Neat idea, I just wish it'd have gone a different direction.

Realy fun ! :)
I love Pirates so...
Thank you !

Love this. Reminds me of Flotilla. Would love to play a version with 100 times as many random events.

Haha! That was great. Took me a sec to figure out what I was doing, but it was charming and simple. Nice work!

Nice Gameboy-esque palette. Would have liked to see more areas, it felt really repetitive.

Survived it. Treasure 40 :).

Great minimal game!

I managed to get 65 Treasure. Nice little game this.

Thank you everyone for the nice comments, I was expecting to have worse. I'm glad that this little game was fun for you!

@Neten

Heh, there are three places to get more cannonballs, just as there are three enemies to encounter. Sounds like you just had a bit of bad luck!

@StuStutheBloo

I wish you had been around when I was making this, your idea would have solved a lot of my problems!

@namuol

What is love? Ever try the konami code at love2d.org? ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmqouF1VSg0

@CiderPunk

They're out there! Can't expect to sink every ship you come across, or?

@Mark Hildreth

Thanks Mark, I should probably give better instructions for installing love on linux, but hey; you're running linux for a reason, yeah?

I should have thought about the order of actions, it would probably have helped the eye better. Thanks for the suggestion!

@torcado194

I'm so glad you got this, I was very worried that people wouldn't.

@Cybearg

Like my mother always said; if you're going crap tracer graphics, you better make sure it's in two bit gameboy color. Seriously though, I'm glad you liked the style.

As for the game idea, I totally agree. In the end, I only spent four hours on the game, and it's so random that winning the game is generally luck based. So you're right; a lot more polish, and better balancing would have made this game a lot better. Unfortunetly, I didn't have the time to commit to it this LD :(

Thanks for seeing it for what it is!

@BigBlackBeard

YAAARRR!

@metadept

This was what the scope allowed, but I agree; a bunch more scenes would have been a lot more fun!

@Nonameghost

I'm glad it became intuitive. I like to help my users, but I don't like feeding them the whole game.

@Andrio

Yes, the game really did need more areas. With only 8 areas, and 30 days, you're bound to have some repeats. You will notice I took extra care to ensure that an event doesn't happen twice in a row though!

@SiENcE

Cheers mate! It's nice to see people actually finishing the game, and getting some treasure. I tried to balance the game between hard and easy, as I know the game devs don't want to spend lots and lots of time reviewing a single game!

HAha pretty cool, got a little confused sometimes but after a few tries I figured some things out. Well done! :)

you're too fearsome your crew left you

Ahaha, great job. Loved it.

The UI could use some visual feedback, but you probably knew that.

Side note: I've seen so many .love files. I really need to try it.

The graphic style is really nice :)

Nice little game, though I'm not sure about the long-term captivation. Reminds me of story-puzzle books and pen 'n paper games. I like that it stands out due to its' unique gameplay.

NIce and fun.

Great! Thank you :) !

This is seriously great. Didn't fit well with the theme in my opinion but the rest is simply amazing.

This was actually pretty darn fun for something made in 4 hours!

I won (37 treasures). Need more events and canon balls ! Simple but fun game :)

this game is so fun dude, lol. my only problem is u can easily win by mashing buttons 1-4 repeatedly. just makes it kind of lame when u can win easily by chance u know. maybe add some more elements to it. but other than that it was very fun. 5/5 stars

"Yarr har, fiddle dee dee, being a pirate is all right with me".

Woo, I beat it with 55 treasure! Not too shabby. And considering it only took 4 hours, it's pretty darn impressive! Lots of fun! :D

Got 55 treasures :)
Good job on making a nice game in only four hours!

Good little game, quite tricky to manage the crew, but quite fun none the less :)

@Kiwibo

I'm glad you figured it out. I tried to give it a learning curve that would teach you the elements of the game.

@syawqy

You've pushed the crew too far and they mutiny!

@namuol

I agree, and StuStutheBloo hit the nail on the head. A secondary state showing what happend would have been optimal.

@Ragzouken

Cheers!

@8BitPimp

It's definitely a short game, but then again I only had four hours to scope it out :)

@AnnaGavaldaKedavra

\o/

@CherryNukaCola

You're welcome! Glad you like it!

@Morgawr

I tried going for the old Commodore / Sinclair ZX decision tree system with 1,2 and 3. I then used a DMG-01 color palette. Then I thought, pirates! Perhaps the last step was the problem? :)

@JaJ

Cheers! There is about as much code as there is game data (not including images and music.)

main.lua: 166 lines of code
gamedata.lua: 134 lines of code

@Chman

Everyone seems to want to sink every ship! What is this? I'm glad you won!

@vegard1992

I had my girlfriend playtest this game, and she had to make the proper choices to avoid losing the game.

Also, on that note, I spent a few minutes mashing 1-4, and I only ever got to 12 days before dying ;)

@Griz

Take what you can, give nothing back!

@Andrei Barsan

I'm glad you liked it. It's nice to see people actually finishing the game. Either it's a good game, or it's too easy ;)

@kreddor

Very much appreciated!

@LrdKzrth

Kill them all! Yarrr!

This was really for 4 hours. Good job!

Really fun game and amazing art-style

really good*

Also, people can play .love files on the browser if they use Chrome and this (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/l%C3%B6veliness/mompnkcmpbopandjnddeecgeeojegohc) plugin.

Great minigame :)

Cool! It reminds me pen and paper role-playing game, which is a really good thing. Also I love pirates.

Maybe too much parameters to be realy minimalist but a very minimalist way to create a pirate simulation ;)

And great GB art by the way!

I like this a lot. As a big fan of Pirates!, Mount and Blade, Darklands, etc it cool to see that this kind of game is still fun even when stripped down to the bare bones. Only criticism I have it that that, first time through, I spent quite a while staring at some of the stat lines trying remember what "F" or "T" were. Symbols would have been nice! =)

Regarding the gameplay, pillaging seems to have better returns for cost than attacking ships, and comes up quite often. And you can often go quite a while without seeing a port where you can get more cannonballs. Maybe the cost for attacking ships could be tweaked down, or the benefits improved?

Also, anyone beat this score? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v514/Atolm/best_pirate.png

Love the old gameboy feel. Didn't love my crew abandoning me because they were too afraid of me... I'll maroon anyone I want on any island I want!

Nice game, good job with the theme especially.

I love that there's no option other than to Maroon someone or Bury Treasure when you come across a desert island. Even if you don't really want to give up the crew or treasure, well... it would just be un-pirate-like not to.

Like the graphics. I never got any cannonballs though, and the music got quite annoying after a while. Overall was fun!

Yeah, buy all the grog! Lovely little game.

Interesting game and mood. At first I only selected random desitions, after playing a while I decided to just see what actually happened. Great game and atmosphere.

Cool choice of palette, good fun indeed. Nice work!

Nice One.... Now I want to play Pirates! Gold again ... thanks

One of my favorites, great job dude.

Haha Nice game, my entry is very similar in idea / rules http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=16170

For 4 hours of work it's pretty fun (I won with T:69)! I'd love to see more screens (Kraken battle, exotic ports, contest the most beautiful parrot, etc.).
But the music doesn't fit well with the pirate theme

77 treasure! Great game!

If only I could get this kind of feedback on my other games ... Thanks guys!

@adnzzzzZ

I noticed that the plugin works really nicely with my game because I used love.graphics.setBackgroundColor! How serendipitous!

@kewry

Not being good at making art is no excuse to making good stuff!

The key, in my opinion, is to just reduce the colors that you can use, and the size of the canvas. By taking "shortcuts" that a real artist would, you can look more professional.

@atraxgames

Yeah, it takes all the fun of a tabletop, and removes all the annoying of a tabletop. Lots of numbers, no need for pencils. Glad you liked it!

@NicoJaujou

That was a concern of mine as I was making the game, but the number of variables for the ship sort of came naturally. I was in "the zone" I guess. Glad you liked the art as well!

@Cake_Catastrophe

Nice to have someone who has a lot of pirate background compliment me. I did a bit of pirate research, and realized half of the things that I was allowing the player do made no sense, but were just pirate stereotypes. I decided to excentuate that fact, and work some humor into the game. As for symbols, I totally agree. Originally I was making a font on fontstruct.com, but they were having service issues, and I had to fall back. On top of that, it's hard to make an icon at 8x5 in mono.

As for your balancing ideas, I totally agree. Had I known the resonse that I got for this game, I would have balanced the cannonballs and the 'graping' better.

To your score, I think my best was around 70! Great job!

As for the options at the island, I wanted to force a confrontation. At this point I wonder if I should remove the "Ignore Port" command to force more choices. In the end, it's as you say; "it would just be un-pirate-like not to."

@Broxxar

I added six ways to die, so that a person playing one or two games would bump into a few, and hopefully having learnt from the first time, will get a new death the second time. The game was not designed to be won the first round. Having said that; serves you right for marooning crew!!! Haha. I'm glad you liked it.

@graytest

There's never enough cannonballs to be had! Yarr!

As for the music, it's short and "acceptable" for a short and "acceptable" game. You won't believe, as the developer, how grating the music became. iNudge has it's place for short and simple music, but that's about the lot of it.

@TheSheep

Yo Ho, A Pirates Life For Me... Glad you liked it!

@ilovepixel

I'm glad you were looking for the good endings as well as the bad endings! Thanks!

@Richard Matey

I'll play your game right away!

@jerombd

Ooh, all very good ideas, and I totally agree with you on music. Originally I wanted to do a cover of Drunken Sailer, but my time would not permit it.

@Zccc, @farmergnome, @psychomonster, @Kortuga98, @Shigor

Thanks guys, you are all too nice!

Very cool. Liked the theme. Would have loved some intro to the attributes, but I figured them out. Liked the nod to WKYK. Good work!

Pretty decent game, especially given how little time you spent on it. Definitely something that you can expand on later, if you were thinking of doing so. The graphics are very stylish, as well.

The pop music entertained me and the monochrome pixel art of pirate scenes reminded me of old adventure games. I liked it. If you continue to develop this, I didn't see the stats at the bottom of the screen until halfway through the second game, and I was uncertain what changed during some encounters or events.

The Cannonballs were in short supply... but my crew mates weren't. I was almost alone on the boat by the time I won... but the treasure was plenty. Great fun! Exceptionally made for only four hours. :)

Nice little game with cool graphics :).

Really impressed with this for only 4 hours of work. Some of my playthroughs would be strangely devoid of certain resources (like cannonballs). Never felt bad about "losing". Nice game. I imagine you were hoping for Pirate Life to win the theme?

That was original

Really cute graphics style & music, it made some real cool aesthetics. Liked it! (;

cute!

Haha, love the atmosphere on this one. I drank...a LOT of grog!

When i saw the game, i thought at once that i would like him. I was dissapointed.

I loved it !!!!!! it's a marvelous Game, minimalistic, but with a lot of interractions. i have some time to understand all but i'm fond of it. you have make a very good work.

Congratulations !!

Great mood. I keep losing! My personal opinion, but the font was hard to read and it was tough to determine the effects of my choices. Perhaps use icons next time as well?

37 treasures. It's a nice game.

Nicely done! Can't think of anything to add other than the obvious: expand and polish.

Nice little game! It becomes quite easy once you master the mechanics.

That's a cute little thing. I mostly really like the music. If you had more time and did nothing but add more types of events and descriptions, that could be a really fun take on the pirates theme. As it stands it's kinda easy :p

Nice looking graphics as well.

P.S. "Grape". I think you dodged a bullet there.

Fun game! Hard though, I rarely make it past the first few screens :s

Sweet game, made me feel like a pirate! But my crew turned on me on the last day! Really liked the art style too, good job on the game!

Nice old-style game it was fun to play thanks.
Btw u've mentioned that u hace 3 scenes to spend Cb and 3 to gain, but IMHO u have equal chance of spending(10+20+40)/3 and gaining 10x3/3. I know it gives u treasure but u loosing crew when fighting ships and purchasing CB over hiring. Just food for thoughts.
Thanks again.

Nice game, quite minimalistic indeed. I feel like it could have used some random elements, like in how much treasure you get or how many people die. But it was fun, definitely made me feel pirate-y!

Great game! I pretty much graped and pillaged every chance I got! Lol

Awesome! Love your game! Great idea, great graphics, great music :))
Had a lot of fun!

Pretty good for 4 hours! I got 88 treasure on the first play through, 95 on the second, 64 on the third. It may just have been my luck, but it seems a bit unbalanced: cannonballs are in too short supply, crewmen are just right, and everything else (grog, fear, anger) never became a problem for me. I like the MS Paint style graphics; they work quite well because of the limited palette.

Fantastic. Loving the oldschool Nintento palette.

Sadly I'm unable to get past Day 10, despite several attempts. Seems I'm not cut out to be a pirate.

I think the quickness is why I liked it so much. The life of a pirate squashed into agonizingly short bursts. Nice colour pallet.

Nice job, drink the grog.

kind of, sort of interesting - more like a text game. but fun and very minimal. for 4 hours this was pretty nice

A really good fun game with great audio and good humour

Wow!, I have no words... Top 10 minimalistic. :D

Cool game josefnpat. I didn't have much luck getting cannonballs so I just drank a lot of grog and only ended up with 20 treasure :(

I loved it. I never played a text based pirate adventure.

@cwilloughby
The grapist is the only scene I know from that show, but I liked it. I'm glad you figured it out, it was supposed to be a bit exploratory. Thanks!

@jwolf
My friends on IRC are starting to tell me to expand and polish this. I might just do that. Glad you liked it!

@ethankennerly
I designed this to be a bit of a learning game, but I'm thinkiong of changing it to be a little clearer.

@alts
Yeah, it's a lot of random, so anything can happen. As for the theme, I only decided to participate after the compo had started, so I didn't even vote. I didn't even know "Pirate Life" was one!

@zitheker
I'm glad you like it. I spent about 50% of my time making content for the game, which is why it seems so well balanced.

@davidpeter
Yeah, I wasn't very happy with the font, but it was the best I could find, so to speak. Icons also got cut, because originally they were embedded in the font, but fontstruct.com wasn't working on that day.

@cahman
I'm seriously considering it at this point! I'm getting a lot of feedback here, heh.

@fullmontis
Yeah, there's a small learning curve, but the game is technically playable even if you don't know what you're doing, which sort of gave the game a "roleplay" feel.

@nintendoeats
I agree. I spent half the time making graphics and the engine, and I spent the other half filling in content of places and actions. I'm think of expanding on it at the moment. An alternate to the "Grape and Pillage" was "Berate and Pillage".

@FuzzyWuzzie
Figure out what the letters and numbers in the brackets after each choice mean, and you'll be sure to win!

@Jellycakes
I watched the stream, thanks for playing! You were really unlucky to lose on day 0.

@Funkiside
Now that you mention it, I messed that up. I forgot that when you "Grape and Pillage" you get grog, not cannonballs. So you're right, I did screw the balance up. Thanks for pointing that out!

@Puzzlem00n
Originally that was in the scope, but I couldn't get myself to commit to the time. Glad you liked it!

@Frozen Fractal
Yeah, the game needed more playtesting in the end. At the end of my session, I told myself I'd rather have the game be too easy, than too hard, adn whent with what I have at the moment.

@Lafolie
The trick is to figure out what the letters and numbers in the brackets at the end of each choice do, then the game becomes a lot more easy.

@paulmcgg
Quick and easy, with a few laughs. That's what I was going for!

@multitude
I missed your cast, sorry! I went back and dug through the playthrough, and it was very entertaining! Thanks for playing!

@Nezzhil
I would be suprised if I got top 10 on anything. There are some awesome games out there, and most are better than mine!

@leafo
If only someone had the nerve to make a drinking game out of this ;)

Leginar, omaromeir, EdoMiyamoto, BarrensZeppelin, gmaker, Jubjub., Vaalen, dasrkrain, lasergans, mchaza, jhrrsn, blearn

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you liked it.

Pirates yessss my crew drank so much grog haha :)

Funny game. Nice job!

Unique game for 2013. Congratz!

Solid effort to make it in 4 hours. Love the pirate humor. Scoring it high on that because quite a few lines actually made me laugh. :D

YESSS! The perfect marriage of pirates and ADD!!

Hahahah, died on the first one

This game is awesome!!!!

Nifty. It took me a bit to figure out the abbreviations (e.g. Crew versus CannonBalls), but I got the hang of it. Finished with 61 treasure. Nice simple gameplay. Impressive that you got it all done in 4 hours. It usually takes me that long to get good text handling figured out. =)

Good representation of ship power using the number of masts.

The music got repetitive pretty quickly. Sounds like you used iNudge, maybe? I love the tool, and it lets you use multiple patterns pretty easily. But that would've taken more time.

The graphics and controls are pretty minimal. But the statistical model isn't. The music doesn't feel very pirate-y. But I liked the images.