Civilisation Afloat by Starven
Civilisation Afloat is a City Building Game set on a tiny floating island! The island will shrink as you mine it for the resources you need to grow and build your massive sky-scrapers. This is my first Game Jam and Ludum Dare, it was difficult to call something so unfinished and unpolished... finished. But here we go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETsXW6NciE8

Made in under 48 hours for Ludum Dare 42 (Compo), "Running out of Space"
Instructions WASD or Arrow Keys to Move Camera
R to reset Selection, Click in-line with diagonal rows to select and view one row at a time.
Tips
- Civilian Housing - Produces Population, At the end of each day you will receive money based on how high your population is. Requires food to survive.
- Food Production - Produces Food, costs Power and Currency to run, must be placed on a Powered Tile.
- Food Storage - Increases max storage of Food and increases the production of nearby Food Production Buildings
Power Generators - Produces Power, must be placed on a Powered Tile
Tower Extension - Increases max height of towers.
- Tile Expansion - Allows you to create a new Tile
The following can only be placed on a Ground Tile.
- Power Supply - This Powers the Tile, which allows you to place Food Production and Power Generator buildings on top of it.
- Resource Miner - This will mine the tile of its resources, once depleted that Tile and all buildings placed on it will be destroyed.
- Bank - Increases Maximum Supply of Currency/Money
The Coloured Squares down the bottom are your building selection buttons (believe it or not). Clicking on them will give you a rundown of what they do.
Basic concept = Population need food, food require power, power require resources/money
Tools Used
- Visual Studio Code
- Reaper/Kontakt 5
Change Log (Post deadline bug-fixes as per Rules) - Fixed resource bug (food and power will no longer go below 0) - Creating a new Tile of land where an old one was mined out will no longer create a new tile with 0 available resources.
| HTML5 (web) | https://starven.itch.io/civilisation-afloat |
| Source code | https://github.com/Starven/ludumdare42 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/civilisation-afloat |
Ratings
| Overall | 519th | 3.125⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 609th | 2.725⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 321th | 3.25⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 384th | 3.525⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 650th | 2.375⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 363th | 2.868⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 19🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Also the axis selection is a bit confusing, if there was a button for it it would be a little easier to see what's going on.
Otherwise great job!
if you have time you could work on the graphics, instead of colors, still very great !
As for generators (much like food production), they require a "Powered Tile". A powered tile is one with a Power Supply placed at the bottom (first building on tile). This is very poorly explained in-game, but I ran out of time for a lot of things unfortunately. Thanks for the response!
If I can offer some advice for future jams: Add some sound effects and make the game super easy. Some sound effects could help fix the problems I listed, as well as make the game feel more complete overall. As for difficulty: the saying that really stuck with me is "if you think it's just hard enough, it's actually way too hard". Plus, that way players can see all of your work instead of just the first two levels.
Hope that helps, and hope to see you again at the next Ludum Dare!
PS: change camera movement from WASD to middle mouse click to be able to play the game with one hand
Thanks for your detailed feedback! My first Jam was a lot of fun, and a little bit stressful. Can't wait for the next one.
Some feedback on why clicking was doing nothing (not enough money, not enough resources, no power) would go a *long* way towards making the interface feel better. I often found myself clicking and having nothing happen, or having the help at the bottom poking out right over where I was trying to work - I'd move the view, and the click something else, and it would be in the way again. Maybe the help should be in a fixed location, and just make it clear, via a highlight or something, which tool is selected.
I like the clean, simple aesthetic, and the gameplay was pretty fun to figure out how everything worked, how many of what I needed, etc.
welcome to Ludum Dare :D
I enjoy city builder games so this game is right up my alley, I think this is a good start.
I think there is an issue with every building costing both money AND resources. Specifically, the Resource Miner should probably only cost money because if you drop below 50, then you can't build another one. The Resource Miner is already costing you land, so making it money-only shouldn't unbalance it. Alternatively, if you could destroy your existing buildings for a small amount of resources (less than the initial cost), then players could dig themselves out of the hole, rather than it being game over.
The graphics/music are simple so I won't go into detail on those but I think one easy improvement would be to make the UI bigger.
Thanks for making it HTML5!