Happy Fun Death Cult by Darn
Happy Fun Death Cult is a resource management game that holds true to the theme "Sacrifices must be made".
Controls:
WASD + ScrollWheel for the camera
Left click to interact with minions.
How to play:
Keep your minions happy and your power high. Send minions to the break room to improve their happiness and send them to the throne room to praise the power gods. You can also upgrade your minions in the dedicated room. When push comes to shove, perform sacrifices on your minions in order to maintain the power supply.
Upgrades:
Speed: self-explanatory
Voice: increases power gain when praising in throne room
Drain: Increases power gain from sacrifices, and decreases happiness penalty
Known issues: * Selecting and moving minions is buggy. * Volume slider doesn't scale properly. * Can't tell upgraded minions apart.
In the spirit of the limited time given for the jam, there won't be an updated version.
Ratings
| Overall | 904th | 2.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 910th | 2.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 627th | 3⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 578th | 3.381⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 831th | 2.818⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 568th | 2.795⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 367th | 3.15⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 854th | 2.773⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
But I agree there are serious navigation issues, units go to a different place than the one you clicked if they move at all, and sometimes they randomly stop half way..
Be careful with the camera movement system. I would recommend clamping these values, particularly pitch. It is possible to roll the camera upside down, and this doesn't make the game happy. You can also stare at the sky, which is equally unhelpful, and you really shouldn't be able to do that. Some horizontal rotations also yield unusual results. Point is that in a time-constrained environment, it might have been better to force a single 'optimal' camera angle and focus development on the gameplay. I like the ability to move with wasd and zoom with scroll, but the two rotation functions feel redundant. Using this camera system, I also managed to completely lose the scene, so I would recommend clamping the camera positions and rotations between certain values, to maintain focus on the scene.
If you want to make a game more strategic, you can try making the game more coherent. By that, I mean; what does that do? What am I gaining from having the workers in the throne room? How much is the upgrades improving it? How much do upgrades cost? What am I losing by having unhappy workers? Another common strategy element is investments. Maybe having a lot of power will increase the speed with which new workers come? Perhaps workers doing nothing in the welcome room do something? Maybe by upgrading them, you are sacrificing some other stats, forcing workers to specialise? Point is that you should consider the depth of your mechanics, and find simple ways to increase the strategic potential of the game.
I would also recommend considering your level design. Whilst a tutorial is nice and all, many players don't like reading instruction manuals. You could instead use your level design to make the gameplay obvious. Maybe something as simple as text hovering above rooms indicating a room name. Also the decorations can be used, and for the most part you have done a good job with this. I particularly liked the decor of the sacrifice room and break room, as their functionalities were instantly clear, even without tutorials. The other two were not obvious, and could have maybe used some better indication of what they do. This could also be achieved through animations on the workers, such as praising on their knees in the throne room and maybe reading whilst in the upgrading room. These animations would make their functions obvious.
Overall a neat little game; I particularly liked the music, only shame is I don't know if it is original. I would recommend informing us of what is yours and what was 'borrowed' from the internet to help with rating. I also loved the simple texture-less models, with the heavy focus on lighting. This lighting did a good job on directing our focus on the important rooms. Could have maybe used more colours like in the sacrifice room. Overall, the mood is very good and sets me in the mood for some resource-management! Nice job :thumbsup:
In my defense (to be honest, it's just excuses, we should have done better) we worked with several people, but only 2 of us got the final playable version together on the last day (I know there's only 2 authors atm, the others haven't set up Ludum Dare account and I'm still waiting to hear back from them). With several people working, I wasn't even aware of some things, like the volume slider not working properly. Despite many flaws, I just wanted to get the game done for the jam, frankly there was no time to fix a lot of issues.
Sorry about the rambling, I am not entirely happy with the game myself, but I'm glad we managed to get a playable version before the deadline. Also shout-out to @yellafella247 for sticking it out with me on the last day and getting this thing done. Mega props to our artists as well, the map is honestly the highlight of the game.
And yes, the music was made by one of us. We only used a few particle effects, and the outline effect when selecting units (which breaks when changing the color of the units; I would have liked to do that but it's yet another flaw we ran out of time to figure out).
Again, sorry about the rambling, and thanks to everyone for the honest criticism and the kind words! <3
The balance was hard to keep, but was doable. Would have loved a bit more flavour in the cultist interaction (they saying stuff orso)