Bureaucratic Deity Simulator 2018 by mmason
We've already reached over 20 ratings, so feel free to play another game that needs a rating more, or play ours, don't let me tell you what to do
The play store build was added after the Jam finished but it is the same APK available on the itch.io page (the final Jam submission build)
Supported Builds:
- Web
- Android
- Windows
- Mac *
- Linux *
* If you run into any issues running these builds please leave us a comment, we did the build but haven't had a chance to test them properly yet.
What it's all about
As a bored and powerful being you have decided to take it upon yourself to create worlds. Unfortunately you're not THAT powerful and you can only create small flat worlds, oh well. Roll up your sleeves, you're about to get your hands dirty.
The Goal
Your goal is to use your somewhat powerful abilities to create worlds to certain specifications, be it a planet of cities, a giant swamp or some combination of the possible plots of land you can place.
The short guide to creating worlds
I don't need to tell a being with powers how to do their job, but you may want to start by grabbing some land from your scroll of power and placing it onto the bedrock on the planet's empty husk. Sometimes you'll only need to fill a planet up to win, other times you'll need to meet certain quotas in order to create the perfect world (divine bureaucracy, am I right?) . One thing you'll notice right away is that each plot of land will often influence the land it is placed next to. A mountain can be completely eroded by an ocean, and a grassland can be settled in if a river is near.
Where do I sign up?
As someone who wants to have the powers of creation you can sign up at your local power being recruitment center above.
You can also get the mobile starter pack at the above location (Android only), proper recruitment center pending.
Final words
We recommend trying the game on your Android device, it was our self imposed additional goal to make the game friendly. The current APK will say you need to allow installations from unknown locations (I swear no bad things were added :grinning:). I'll be trying to put it on the play store later to facilitate things.
Below we've added the possible combinations, for the best experience I recommend discovering them on your own but in the interest of saving people time for rating we'll provide them below.
Credit:
- @musluk - Sound and Audio (all of it and a bunch more)
- @growlands - Graphics and Art (all of it and a bunch that got redrawn)
- @douglass - Programming and other tasks
- @mmason - Programming and other tasks
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| |exists |exists |exists |exists |exists |exists |exists |exists | |--- |--- |--- |--- |--- |--- |--- |--- |--- | | |Mountain|Grassland|Desert|River|Hills|Town|Water|Swamp| |+Mountain | |River |Hills | |Mountain | | | | |+Grassland| | | | | | | | | |+Desert | |Desert | | | |Desert |Swamp |Grassland| |+River | |Town |Grassland |Swamp |Grassland| | |River | |+Hills | |River | | | | | | | |+Town | |Town | | | | | |Grassland| |+Water |Hills | | |Water |River | | |Water | |+Swamp | |Swamp |Grassland | | |Swamp | | |
Ratings
| Overall | 223th | 3.643⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 192th | 3.536⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 77th | 3.857⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 475th | 3.25⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 414th | 3.429⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 264th | 3.259⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 589th | 2⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 283th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
My only real complaint is that I thought it was a little weird having to move the tile from an existing spot and move it back again when trying to add together tiles multiple times.
This is an awesome LD entry and with a little polish and some more world tiles. I could see myself playing this on my phone regularly.
@douglass put a bunch of time into getting the levels to flow just right and admittedly we probably could have added double the levels to make the learning curve more manageable.
I tried it out, and it's intriguing! Very nice game indeed! The mood is just right, and the gameplay is interesting!
I think the boardgame formular is great and the difficulty curve is adequate.
cheers~
Shoutout back to @sheep42, check out their awesome game where you play as a cat doing what cats do best.
[Wood Womb](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/wood-womb)
Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 3:50:40)
The pixel art is amazing! And combined with the music, it gave the game a very nice mood. The volume of the sound effects was rather loud compared to the music (especially the "cannot place here" effect), which was a bit jarring, but otherwise the presentation elements fitted well together. The town had an interesting "high tech" vibe to it, making it an interesting contrast compared to the otherwise serene nature tiles.
The tile-interactions themselves were quite fun to discover. The pacing of the puzzles sometimes seemed a bit abrupt; sometimes they skipped a few concepts, or had very different solutions from puzzle to puzzle, which made them seem less cohesive. As you stated above, some more levels could have gotten even more mileage out of the mechanics, which are certainly complex enough to last for additional puzzles.
The discovery process was enjoyable, as was the spatial element of having to perform the moves in the correct order, and using the "buffer spaces" to the best possible effect. Sometimes it was frustrating not to be able to experiment freely within the constraint of the levels - perhaps the sandbox could have been unlocked after the first few tutorial levels, for fun and practice. But the puzzles themselves had a great difficulty - great brain teasers, without becoming frustrating. And the fast reset-mechanism combined with a small playing field really encouraged experimentation!
It was a very enjoyable game to play!
>A pristine new world,
>molded by bureaucracy.
>Behold! Perfection!
My only real feedback aside from it would be interesting to see this game fleshed out, was that there feels like something is missing. Just one little thing that really makes the concept pop. It might be a nemesis, an overarching system of powers/magic that fit the universe together, or maybe just some story tossed in between the levels.
Otherwise I thought it was nice. Decent concept for A Small World, Good graphics if a bit hard to decypher at times, and the beginning Menu music was nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-Jd01zDgs
Works great on macOS running 10.10.5 Yosemite, BTW.
Good job!
I was confused at first. I did not understand that the dropped tile is immune to change, but eventually I figured it out.
What I would like is for the current objective to be always displayed. Sometimes I'm to hasty and click away the level introduction before I read it. Or sometimes I simply forget what it was I was supposed to do. I did find the ?-symbol in the end but still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSWOUTubUBM
PROS
- Unique game mechanic
- Discovery is fun
CONS
- Perhaps opening up the bench area for tiles to be dragged back could make things easier?
For full criticism and breakdown of ranking, as well as candid reactions to gameplay, do check out the video~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6IKB0A9jM8
@anarbitrarymustache, I like your idea for a 'par', it could possibly be implemented with the ability to put tiles back into the scroll of power and count placing or removing a tile as a move, something to keep in mind for next time
@somnium, the sandbox should be unlocked right away, though we should have put it on top maybe to make that more obvious, and thanks for the haiku.
@larrychupacabra, thanks for the video. I mentioned this in the comments of your video, I agree with you that to make it a complete game we would need something more, that extra bit of flair to cover why you're doing this, or as you said a nemesis to "compete" against in filling out the galaxy, a driving factor I think. The only flavour added was really the text when I was submitting :)
@tacomabert, good to know, I assume the Unity folks know what they're doing but it's good to have assurance it plays everywhere. Fullscreen should be possible at startup, but agreed a button in game would be good for the standalone versions, noted for next time.
@unidaystudio, one of our team members spent most of the last day building puzzles and putting them in a cohesive order, without that we probably would have only had like 4 levels and a sandbox.
@gagapete, glad we got someone hooked :)
@headmade, we should probably have added a basic UI tutorial in with the first level to make sure people knew what the top buttons did, I'll not that for next time too.
@jupiter-hadley, thanks for the gameplay video, you played our submission last jam too :)
@inventroom, also thank you for the video, we actually had a long discussion about allowing the players to put the tiles back on the bench and we decided in the end that it would make the game too easy. Players would always be able to place only the tiles that they want to mix and then pick them back up so they're safe, repeat until they have the set they want. Something we did consider is adding a limited use ability to swap a tile with a bench tile and have the swapped tile go back to your scroll of power. Your answer and @anarbitrarymustache's made me think that picking them back up could work pretty well with some gameplay changes.
Thanks again to everyone who's played
Good job!
If you like, please take a look at the game my team made for Ludum Dare, you can find a link to it on my profile
