The Rise and Fall of Professor Moriarty by ProfessorMoriarty

[raw]
made by ProfessorMoriarty for LD25 (JAM)
The Rise and Fall of Professor Moriarty is a real-time strategy rogue-like in which you create a vast criminal network throughout a foggy ancient London. Moriarty, the infamous mastermind from Sherlock Holmes, must balance his greed with his ambition as he stretches his web of vice throughout the city. You will eventual fall, but the rise is its own reward.

HOW TO PLAY
- Hover over a lair to bring up the build menu.
- Drag out a thief next to a source of gold (orange circles) to steal gold.
- If you are being attacked by the police, drag out a thug. Thugs will destroy police and wreck nearby buildings.
- If you wish to expand your criminal network, build out a lair. Lairs can build new lairs, thieves and thugs.
- Use '+' and '-' to adjust sound.

STRATEGY
- When gold runs out, your criminal network dissolves.
- The size of each node shows you its loyalty.
- To increase loyalty, acquire more gold.

WINNING
- You earn 1 point for each lair in your network.
- Get the highest score possible.

Team:
- Fedor Jutte (@fejuto)
- Benjamin de Jager (@M0rph3v5)
- Daniel Cook (@danctheduck)
- Music from Andrew Riley at Lucky Lion Studios (@luckylionstudio)
- Special thanks to Brian Carter who jumped in with graphic design awesomeness & advice

TOOLS
Language: Haxe (http://haxe.org/)
Libs: NME (http://www.haxenme.org/), HaxeFlixel (http://www.haxeflixel.com/), Actuate (https://github.com/jgranick/actuate)
Editor: FDT (http://fdt.powerflasher.com/)
Graphical tool: Adobe Illustrator (http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html)

So much still to do, but thank you for playing. Appreciate any feedback.

Ratings

Coolness 49% 670
Overall(Jam) 3.95 10
Audio(Jam) 3.63 36
Fun(Jam) 3.59 31
Graphics(Jam) 3.90 67
Humor(Jam) 2.17 222
Innovation(Jam) 4.08 7
Mood(Jam) 3.70 24
Theme(Jam) 3.59 100

Feedback

Dark Acre Jack
18. Dec 2012 · 02:29 UTC
Very impressive. You'd think this was made by people who actually knew what they were doing :)
Sestren
18. Dec 2012 · 02:33 UTC
Very nicely done. The graphics, though simple, are extremely clean and serve the mood well. The music was great, as well. Winning the game seems relatively easy and straightforward, but apart from that, really nice job!
SuperSausageDog
18. Dec 2012 · 02:48 UTC
I really like the concept, and the fact that scores are kept low is cool.
The first half of the round seemed promising, and was a lot of fun, but once I'd gotten all the immediately gettable gold, the rest of the game just seemed to be spamming lairs in a tight network to max my score, and it was easy to get 23 this way. Not sure if maybe that was the intended method of play? Also, it does seem to end with a bit of a whimper rather than a bang, as your gold runs out but nothing actually takes you down.
Anyway, still fun and great music and art.
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
18. Dec 2012 · 04:34 UTC
Love it! Love the style, the music, the idea, the theme and the world of goo blob style! Made me feel spider-like. And the right kind of emotions were triggered, because at the sight of the holmes head, I felt very antagonistic.

Needs mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
A little hard to lose, I feel, but maybe it's because you didn't have time to iterate

Also, what is the logic under which some assets wither and die, even if well connected?

Kudos all around guys!
ddionisio
18. Dec 2012 · 05:40 UTC
Nice game. Good visual ques on what each icon does (I didn't read the instructions before playing the game). I didn't know you can drag each node.
🎤 ProfessorMoriarty
18. Dec 2012 · 19:20 UTC
Current high score is 26 points. Can anyone beat it? Appreciate all the comments!
https://twitter.com/Ralkarin/status/280874748085420033/photo/1
bach
18. Dec 2012 · 22:59 UTC
Loved it. Great design went into this one. Kept me entertained for a long time. Inspired!
recursor
18. Dec 2012 · 22:59 UTC
This is very interesting, and very well done. Add a few more mechanics and maybe more levels and I could see this selling nicely on an app store or two.
oborux
19. Dec 2012 · 00:09 UTC
Really nice entry, clean presentation. Enjoyed building a criminal network. Good Job!
PIXEL^3
19. Dec 2012 · 03:56 UTC
Best game I've played yet. Fits the theme perfectly, the graphics where simple but clean, the music was fitting, and I could've played for hours. My one and only complaint is that it's sometimes difficult to select a unit. I realized later you had to hold the mouse button down but still had occasional difficulty with it.

~AlucardX60
Udrian
19. Dec 2012 · 08:04 UTC
Fun and simple strategy game, I really like simplicity in it. However it greatly lacks in challenge and this should be expanded upon. Visually it looks really great and the music is very good.
Monxcleyr Productions
19. Dec 2012 · 08:14 UTC
Fantastic concept, art, and music.
The gameplay was surprisingly complex and tense, although it suffers from a couple issues. Both have been mentioned before, but it was very easy to simply spam lairs early on to net a high score, and this game would benefit greatly from a zoom in/out option.
RipX
19. Dec 2012 · 09:51 UTC
Really nice game, enjoyed the simple mechanics.
shaneshanekavanagh
19. Dec 2012 · 11:12 UTC
I want to play again! Die Holmes!
jackspinoza
19. Dec 2012 · 12:44 UTC
Well that was super, very strategic and I really got into it. Nice work.
DustyStylus
20. Dec 2012 · 22:25 UTC
This is a very nice concept and very skillfully and professionally put together! You guys should continue to work on this and consider putting this on the market! Would make a very nice iPad app, in fact.
Eniko
21. Dec 2012 · 05:33 UTC
Really smooth experience, well polished and good fun. Though possibly a bit too abstract to really feel like you're an evil mastermind, but that might just be me. :P
Pierrec
21. Dec 2012 · 09:24 UTC
This is an excellent RTS, I love the "scorched earth policy" feel! I agree with Eniko, the theme is a bit slight because it could have been anything else, but the colors and mood helps!
Lidfrid
21. Dec 2012 · 20:44 UTC
So polished, really good experience.
I agree with eniko's comment, in the first time i didn't feel like i was the "bad guy".
arhpositive
22. Dec 2012 · 20:22 UTC
A really well made game with excellent, clean graphics and audio. An interesting game mechanic aswell. :)
michax
27. Dec 2012 · 17:15 UTC
Wow, I'm impressed. Great concept for strategy game. Loved it! Also enjoyed simply drag and drop based UI. Great entry!
Interbellum
28. Dec 2012 · 08:36 UTC
Greate game. Best from all for me. One comment: I need the option to dismount the boundary castles from network.
brantkings
28. Dec 2012 · 23:26 UTC
VERY GOOD! Shows how much ambition is great by itself, even if you're gonna fall anyway. Had lots of fun with this, thanks.
goerp
29. Dec 2012 · 14:59 UTC
What a lovely looking game. I like that it has a icon-feel to it, although it makes it a bit hard to understand what is happening.
Music is very good and fits the game.
matthias_zarzecki
06. Jan 2013 · 00:17 UTC
Fun game! Love the music, and the style is great.

Didn't like so much that I had no idea what's going on, and controls were a lot of trial+error too.
Kalumis
07. Jan 2013 · 23:34 UTC
Best game ever!!!