Big Business Clicker by alobker



A combination of a clicker/idle game and a deck builder game. The cards are modifiers for the production of the businesses.
Made in HTML/JavaScript/CSS
PS: I am aware of the server certificate. It's a server belonging to a friend of mine.
| HTML5 (web) | https://pruttelbakje.nl/antony/ld41/clicker.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/big-business-clicker |
Ratings
| Overall | 541th | 3.071β | 23π§ββοΈ |
| Fun | 581th | 2.762β | 23π§ββοΈ |
| Innovation | 662th | 2.524β | 23π§ββοΈ |
| Theme | 623th | 2.881β | 23π§ββοΈ |
| Graphics | 574th | 2.667β | 23π§ββοΈ |
| Audio | 495th | 2.175β | 22π§ββοΈ |
| Humor | 480th | 2.222β | 20π§ββοΈ |
| Mood | 605th | 2.382β | 19π§ββοΈ |
| Given | 21π³οΈ | 9π¨οΈ |
Interesting idea to employ cards.
Not quite sure what to say about the actual game either. It's pretty much exactly what's promised. One thing that was kinda awkward was playing the cards, maybe allowing drag and drop would make it feel better even though it's the same amount of work. Also you should bump the moving card z position to be on top, it looks weird when it moves beneath the static cards.
And I'm still not quite sure how the position of the cards really factors in to making money. It seems like maybe the top cards affect everything and the side ones only that row but why would these two situations result in the same income then...


I think the rate of new card spawning is way too low. The actual interesting bit of the game only starts when you have like more than five cards and actually have to do something to optimise your income (especially so when the more interesting cards start appearing, the ones with tradeoff etc, dunno if they're random though) and most people will likely give up before that happens. Thank god it actually runs even on inactive tab. π
Now I think I got how the cards work, the side ones aren't for the whole row, they're just for that specific slot. The clicky slot made it a bit more confusing. And now I also take that bit about trade off cards back, they're straight up trash.
It's strangely compelling, I can't get myself to close the tab...
I actually didn't understand first that you should apply the cards into the generators to get the benefits (bar some particular cards). Maybe make the slots a bit more darker gray to make it clearer. Also I think the cards spawn too slow.
I mean, it accomplishes pretty well what it set out to do. Well done!


Btw, it would be better to see exact amount even later on instead of the rounded *x million per second*. Would make it easier to position the cards properly.
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In itself, a clicker game is extremely boring. You click the screen and that's it. The reason why people find them fun is because of the thrill of progress. You start out with nothing, getting 1 item per click, and eventually end up with more passive items per second than a whole hour of clicking would give. To enhance this feeling we use visual feedback. Take a look at the original cookie clicker for example. Every time you click, a cookie appears in the background. As you get a lot of passive cookie generation there are tons of cookies in the background. In your game all I have is a tiny, tiny text saying "+xxxx per second". You could make dollar bills fly around, gold bars appear, etc. Your icons look great so I'm sure you have the artistic skill to do so.
Same goes with the businesses. Now, I understand this is just made in 48 hours, but how awesome would it be if you saw hotels appear in the background when you bought them? Instead of the white background, have a simple image of an empty city (just grassland, a few houses and a sky), and each time you buy a business you place a sprite on top of the city sprite. As you get more and more the city gets filled with stuff. That would be satisfying and entertaining!
Another thing, I feel like your layout is a bit weird. It's not very intuitive that I'm supposed to click on that one specific icon out of 8 similar-looking icons. Make the click icon bigger and place it in the middle.
Here's a super quick sketch I put together with lots of stolen art: 
So anyway, if you change the game a little I think it could be a fun little web game. Good luck, and good luck next game jam! :)
Fairly addicting once you get used to it, and it's fun to see what kind of cards will be tossed your way. This is something I can leave running while I vote on other LD games. :grin:
Also, really nice touch on the time played counter!