I think you should include link to sources

Good call! I forgot to include a link to the github repo. Its uploaded now.

Nice to see a fellow JavaScript game-coder in the Portland area! ^_^

My [first LD game](http://micah.cowan.name/friendly-baubles/) a few years ago was about making connections between people, too (I think the theme was "Connected Worlds").

@micahcowan Nice to meet yah! That's a cool concept you had going on there! You actually managed to work game play into your entry though. haha

@law5guy Heh, well believe me, no one is more surprised by that than I am. All the actual gameplay stuff was added in the last few hours of the compo, and I had no real idea what it was going to be until it was finished. Toss in some coins, make them reappear, add baddies. Presto, game! :D

I always spend the bulk of my time (a) creating weird and interesting mechanics (b) wrestling with debugging all the quirks in those weird and interesting mechanics. ;) I need to up my tool game so I can develop those more rapidly. Then maybe I'll have time left to throw art at it, instead of basic HTML canvas shapes, and scribbled, unanimated sprites that took 30 seconds to draw. ;)

Clicking everywhere, nothing's happening

@bthedestroyer That's not good news. What browser are you trying to run the game in?

@micahcowan Haha, I made the mistake of starting with an art direction this time around! Thats how I ended up with little guys bouncing around on the screen for a game! I should've thought to add coins!

@law5guy I think that worked well for you. The art direction started good, and stayed good. You can clearly see what happened with mine ;)
Meanwhile, you also managed to turn that art into a game, or working and fun toy at any rate. I count that as wild success, especially for 48 hour compo!

Nice concept you had here! I originally had planned on having a social gameplay mechanic in my entry as well, but had to toss it because of time :( I felt like the beacons didn't stay long enough, navigating around the more complex levels was a bit tedious. Cool game though, and I liked the low res graphics a lot.

@maggardjosh Thanks! I definitely agree that my pathfinding and challenge mechanics did not really develop how I hoped they would. :-(

I like the social angle/interpretation of this theme though!

The concept is great, and the inclusion of computers as an element is really clever :)

Embracing the ability of the game to create puzzles would have been good to see, but it looks like time constraints prevented that.

In the absence of that it may have been better to remove the win condition from each level altogether. It feels like a sandbox, but rips you out of each level like a puzzle game. More time to observe the simulation would be cool. It would also be nice to have some sort of sandbox mode where the player can place elements and people and see what happens.

For puzzle elements it could have a starting configuration, and the player needs to place people/computers/objects in the configuration that will lead to the fastest connection between people. Certain buildings could attract different kinds of people, or scare them away or something. That way the simulation would play a key role in the puzzles. Just spitballing ideas here so it probably wouldn't work but it's a thought.

Graphics were great, although pixelated lines / pixel grid aligned sprites would have helped the aesthetic. I know that can be a difficult thing in a lot of engines, so its not that big a deal.

Good work overall!

Hey @law5guy great Little game!. I absolutely love how the people interact with each other as well the simple pixel art aesthetic. Very cute and good intuitive controls. Similarly to @terracottafrog comment I would have loved to have seen some more complex arrangements of the people in order to solve the puzzle. Oh btw congrats on you first solo jam! I couldn't agree more with analyzes of working alone. Sometimes we lean on others to much and don't really appreciate how wonderful they are at what they do; Until we ourselves try to replicate what they do. Keep at it!

@terracottafrog @kappa-b Thanks for the comments guys!

I definitely agree that the game would've benefitted from a distinction between a puzzle mode and a sandbox mode! I was originally trying to configure it as a puzzle game, hence the level end mechanics. But I found it difficult to create entertaining puzzles in the short amount of time that I had left myself for that. So that's when I added in the sandbox mechanics for spawning in more people and level skipping.

I definitely had a little too much enjoyment just watching the little people wander around and talk to each other which definitely distracted from getting more advanced mechanics in!

Quite cute but not much to do or nothing that I could figure out how to do. Reminds me of megalomania a little. Would be interesting if the worlds connected (via the computers) and you could switch between them and they'd still be running. I like the idea with the links, it'd be cool if you could extend it and make something of a game out of that.

very interesting, but that's it - i could not figure out what to do - however, it was fun adding more peeps to the level and watching them move about and connect - so for that i gave some good scores - nice, er, game.

@impbox @paulhocker Thanks for taking the time to check out my entry! I agree that I did not get to creating a very good gameplay experience. I ran out of inspiration (and time) to create a solid underlying mechanic.

The linking different worlds together via computer terminals is a cool idea, and could provide a nice mechanic for tying together the different levels.

Great concept and artwork, I love to form the connections between people and machines, I would add "the catch" for the game, like connection count or person count limits to make it more challenging and thus rewarding.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kceqnjm861ykd76/Screenshot%202017-05-04%2001.15.24.png?dl=0

Nice work there!

Realy nice game!I realy realy like the art on this one!
Please also check out my entry if you want.

Hey I really like this one. It's pretty light on the gameplay like you said, but it definitely is satisfying watching the little connections take place. It's not super game-y but I think you created something pretty interesting and unique, and thats what Ludum Dare is about :)

Didn't expect this kind of game. A bit of refresher

It is a good and innovative game. Shouldn't have such less ratings.

The graphics is neat, color is good. audio is very noisy although.
The game idea is fun. It's a hard work to make a simulation into a playable game, but worthy.

Your game lack of gameplay. I'wll tell you how to do:
There are two kinds of rules. The first set of rule is about how the game world works. That's the simulation rule. You've done a perfect job on it.
The second rule is about the game itself. What is the game goal? what can player do? How the world reward the player? Your game lack of this kind of rules.

Maybe you can set rule to limit the population. Maybe you can set rules to reward player powerful items. Maybe you can set rule to limit the amount of flags.

Another suggestion is on the narrative. I've get your idea from different scenes, about how people establish SNW in royal, in city, in outaku. However, there is only the scene tells story and that's not enough. impatient or careless players might ignore them. You can use gameplay to tell the story. That'll be more clarify

Cool entry, i liked the 'polished' pixelart feel, just did not understand the skip the levels mechanic

Pretty nice game. Good Concept. Keep it up! :thumbsup:

Please take the time to rate me https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/survival-game

So I placed some flags down, but I don't know what they did. There's no instructions on what to do or what the goal is.

Very good game based on a simple concept, did have some difficulty making the people follow the flags, since they wouldn't go towards them if they were too far away and would walk away from them on occasions. Still easy to follow regardless.

Wow I needles to say that I love clicker games, so I filled everyone but like the simple concept and minimal style. Only thig it would be so much lovable with a nice chiptune soundtrack!

Cool little game ! I like it. Pretty simple on gameplay but funny.
Cool concept and good interpretation of the theme :)

Fyi it didn't work on W8.1 64bit / FF 53.0.2 (64bits)

The concept is quite innovative and nice, but the game lack of challenges or objectives. It's a promising entry and I enjoy to play with its the simulation aspect. Good job :)