Petty Puny Planet 38 by JorgeGameDev

Why have a pet rock when you can have a pet planet? Micromanage this cosmic massive rock from its humble beginnings and take its people to places they never thought possible! Sure, you can teach them about food and science, but what if you take some liberties with evolution?
You've got a planet, and you have to decide what happens to it. But being the boss is such a tiring job, so you have to take a century long rest after every decision. Let's hope they can manage without you for that long. Every action you take can change the tiny people's destiny!
Playable on the Web and Available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and Android on itch.io!
Features:
- Randomized choice based gameplay. Your choices unlock more things to choose from, as well as new consequences and events, some which are also dependent on your previous decisions!
- Keep the people happy and wealthy! Or not! I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
- Did the worst that could happen actually happen? Well, ditch the planet and start a new one! You can take a screenshot of your planet at any given time. It'll be saved on the game's folder. Don't tell the tiny people though. Nobody likes paparazzi. Screenshots only work on the desktop versions though!
- There's 10 different endings. Let's discover them all!
Controls:
- Use a mouse, or the equivalent. Click your way through the universe!
Credits:
- Team - Whales and Games (https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames)
- Programming - JorgeGameDev (https://twitter.com/JorgeGameDev)
- Graphics Artist - The 'Moski (https://twitter.com/The_Moski)
- Audio Composer - Zakblystone (http://twitter.com/Zakblystone)
- Grafika Font - Zess Type
- Extra Scripts - Melang (Unity Forums)
Downloads:
DISCLAIMER: The current builds of the Web and Android versions and the first download builds presented on the itch.io page are builds that have had some small bug-fixes and typo fixes (no new content) made after the original submission hour builds. If you prefer to judge the original submission hour builds, these are also available on the itch.io page for desktop platforms, and are marked as (Ludum Dare Submission Version) accordingly.
Screenshots:



Ratings
| Overall | 69th | 3.988⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 190th | 3.538⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 216th | 3.475⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 50th | 4.163⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 68th | 4.45⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 72th | 3.93⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 42th | 3.974⭐ | 80🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 150th | 3.743⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 67🗨️ |
I tried really hard for the anime ending, but it's either not there or I missed a trigger.
Oh also cool art!
@z4f1 There's probably a bunch more games that fit the title, but your enthusiasm is highly appreciated!
@spinaljack Neat! I hope that they kept you found them amusing
@daveybb Never thought that it'd be the kind of game that people would play together. I'm glad that you liked it!
@firewill Huh. I personally had more problems with other endings, borderline thinking some were bugged. If we come back to this, we'll try to make them more intuitive. Thanks for your input!
@flipsy Thanks for letting us know about it. The original idea of the endings was to give the player around 10-20 rounds before they could unlock anything. Trying to branch too much causes a lot of non-improvement options to start appearing, which makes it easier to get stat-dependent endings. Regardless, there's room for improvement balance-wise, so we might tweak these if we decide to make a post-LD release. Thanks again! Remind us to give yours a try when the judging starts!
@sniperninja564 Thank you! We wanted to make it more personal to the player, making it feel like the planet was their own. No 4th wall was left undamaged!

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On another note, we also updated the game to **1.0B2**, which only made some small bug fixes that we weren't able to fix as we were closing up but we're taken care off, as well as fix some typos we noticed from feedback. **No new features were added** as we want to make sure we follow the Ludum Dare rules strictly to the line. That being said, those final bug fixes make the game pretty much done for the time being, and we won't be doing any more bug fixes to the game during the judging phase.
If we end up developing a post-jam version, it will be after judging. We hope you look forward for it in case we develop it! :smile:
As such, itch.io now has these original versions for **Windows, Mac OSX and Linux** on the downloads section, next to the current builds, marked accordingly has **(Ludum Dare Submission Version)**. If someone who had visited this page and has read this commentary thought it was unfair to play the game because of the bug-fixes, we apologize and want to make clear our intentions were not as of trying to gain an advantage in regard to other users.
If you're looking for the original builds, make sure that you're downloading those versions. The web version will be the current day version, as most of the game's traffic, right now, on itch.io comes from users from that site alone searching for the Web version, rather than Ludum Dare users. We believe this is the best trade-off and we want to make sure we please everyone as we can. :smile: Sorry for the wall of text.
Great and fun LD game. I left you a rating. Good luck!
Gameplay-wise not very fun, but the results fun. I like how things you choose can have effect on the way random events are handled. Played it a few times to see if I could get different endings, so it's definitely replayable.
Though- I didn't really know where the entire thing was leading to. It seemed that "Nothing Happens" every 100 years every time I play.
As a suggestion though- I know the game has some sort of "Pet Earth" feel- so what I guess was missing was to have the "Earth" feel stuff? It just didn't feel right when the planet was on fire- and it only affected the population- yet the Earth has some sort of "Hat" on him to make it so like the Earth itself is a character?
Just some thoughts... :) :) :)
Anyhow, I'll be replying to y'all now.
@spacedoubt Thanks! Sad that it wasn't the kind of fun you were looking forward though. But I'll forward the message to the sound person. He'll be pleased!
@aviv871 Aww, shucks! Thanks!
@mathijsvissers Yeah, we've been getting that. This one's a hit or miss situation, but given our direction, we're still pleased with how it's going. We did want to have a bit of replayability too, so that's why we've got that many endings! If we retake the project, we'll try to add some more thinking or interaction to see if we can rise the fun in some of the lacklusting aspects.
@drestuff Neat! Hope that your planet got as good as it could!
@theclinthennesy Thanks for the feedback. We foresaw a lot of unbalance, and while it's not a problem late game, yes, there's a lot of nothing early on. If we retake the project, we plan on adding far more events and objects to further enhance the planet. As for the Pet Planet idea, yeah, there's probably a mixed idea somewhere down the line. The people themeselves never appear, and we wanted the planet to be the goof, so... the planet kind of reflects how the people should look? We'll have to think a bit more on this one...
@zaibakk Appreciated!
@those-30-ninjas Thanks a bunch!
@carsen-d Impressive. We half-improvised that ending to round the number to 8. It was the last one, and I thought that few to no people would play the game enough to get it. And yes, binding of Isaac was actually the main inspiration for me. I originally pitched that the Choices would be Items and have synergies with others. Some ideas got cut, but the roguelike-esque text adventure core remained. Sorry about the typos though. Neither Jorge nor me have english as our native language, but we try our best. We'll see upon double checking them and see if we can fix 'em if we return to this project. Thanks a bunch again!
Cute graphics, funny noises as I proceeded to make the best world possible. I enjoyed you including the previous context of what happened so far on the side. A lot of work seems to have gone into the choices and scripts/dialog. Easy to use UI and clean cut/easy to read. Overall I'm pressed.
I'm jealous of the cursor (never got around to getting one to work properly on the web in our game) and it looks like you got mobile working as well (really jealous).
Keep up the awesome work between you and your team, I hope you had as much fun making this as I had playing it.
I enjoyed the experimentation and trial and error with the answers, although sometimes the "nothing happened" outputs repeated a bit too much.
The "cosmetic" variations of my little planet were a highlight for me, but it was a shame that all my complements didn't stack (maybe some answers nullify others?)
P.D: I burst out laughing with the manga/anime related options lol
However your game was very nice, so we'll let it slide... for now!
Ok, seriously that was a very enjoyable game and I really dig your sense of humor.
Well thought out mechanic and variety. Quite polished indeed.
The perfect game for people with a (mostly justified in my case) god complex!
@mikea Glad you enjoyed it!
@nuebomundo Some of the early events definitely need some tweaking for future versions. As for the cosmetics, it's not that some answers nullify others, but it's more that, if all the cosmetics started stacking, the planet would probably look really messy in the end, and we decided to have them swap around so it looked pleasing to the eye and not too much visually polluted. But overall, we're pleased that you enjoyed it! (I'm still personally disappointed that we weren't able to have all the actions and ending swe wanted on the Anime tree 👀).
@awesomealliterationalliance Oh no! We didn't mean to offend the Awesome Alliteration Alliance! We instead would like to offer our game's extraordinary extraterritorial example of alliteration to the awesome alliance! We're perfectly passionately pleased that the game satisfied your god complex! (My alliteration game is pretty bad compared to the rest of the team, sorry.)
I enjoyed.
I realized that in the starts there are a fish (the same that appears like a 3rd moon)

@sean-m Glad that you liked it!
@silvertwig The jewelry delivery thing was a parody of the Lord of the Rings. Honestly, I didn't finish watching the original trilogy, so I didn't expand on it. whatever happens there, happened in the planet.
@krunoslav Good eye. Congratulations on finding the Whale Constellation. We tend to add small, silly easter eggs in our games whenever it's a possibility. Some are inside jokes, so they tend to go unseen. The Whale Constellation is a reference to our team, Whales and Games. You can notice groups that kinda resemble the tie and the hat.

@invader Thanks! We did plan it to be kind of like Civilization, with the tech trees and what not. Ended up tweaking it to work somewhat different, but the main concept of selecting one tech before moving to another remained the same.
The idea and all the art is nice. The important thing would be to prevent looping the same events again and again during the same game.
Keep up the good work
But this is nitpicking. The game is creative, charming and a top contender for the best in LD38.
Congrats and best of luck :smile:
And yes, we completely agree, we'll definitely look into increasing the palete of early-game choices so starting a new game, although it might not be as diverse as the end-game, it still feels somewhat different every time you start over. Thanks for your feedback and for playing the game!
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@mestrerothld You can skip text by clicking twice, one for making all of the text to show up, and another for actually confirming the message. We did miss making you able to jump the "_100 Years Later_" notification though, but we want to make those skip-able on the next iterations. Thanks a lot for playing and believing the game is great enough to be a top contender of this Ludum Dare! :blush:
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@xavier-indie-gamedev We're glad you enjoyed it! We tried to make something unique with the theme and tried to give it our own charm, as we've had tried with our previous jams, and we're pretty satisfied on how it all came together. :wink:
We're also a team that believes people are much open to discussion and creativity when there's a transparent relationship between the team that creates a game and the people that play it. Even if most of us are developers here, we believe it's equally important to try and speak to everyone and be clear on things that some people might take in a different way than others. It's just the values we try to follow as individuals. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Thanks for playing! Hope you had a whale of a time! :whale:
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As a foot-note to this comment-replying bulk, we will be posting some more stuff regarding the development of the game soon on the front-page. Some of the upcoming posts that we've got planned include the _post-mortem_ of the game (like always), and another post we want to do to involve to start involving more of the _Ludum Dare_ community in helping to shape the future iterations of this project. We hope you look forward to it! :whale:
Lady Regnant of the "filled with pyromen planet",
Protector of the third moon,
Khaleesi of the Great taxes,
Breaker of cold centuries and
Mother of werewolves !
Overall, even though the flavor is very different, the game reminds me of Reigns (and also, appropriately, of another LD38 entry, [Puny World](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/puny-world) by @joe-cowman). I really hope you expand it in the future, I want to see more games like this out there.
@@nightshadow0 Actually, that's not people, that's happiness. But I see your point. There's quite some players that thought it was population, so we're already discussing changing that later on. The stats make some options available or unavailable, and going too high or too low triggers some endings. While this is supposed to encourage experimentation, we'd like the stats to have a bigger and more obvious impact in the future. Thanks for the feedback!
@sebasrez Yes! There are more choices and endings depending on the stats, like I just replied to the person above. We're considering adding some actual tells about when they go up or down, to further show that they have an impact in the outcome of the game. Anyhow, thanks!
@behenate Thank you! @jorgegamedev is our polish guru, trying to keep the bugs to a minimum on each of our games.
@hbocao I'd like to do some animating as well. We wanted to focus this time around on different stuff, but if we do upgrade this thing, animating some objects is on the table.
@buteratosgames Well met, thanks!
@yoanndeplo Long live xXTheStreamerXx!
@gamechoy Thanks to you too! Yes, there's currently times when there's lots of nothing despite the player's best efforts. Balancing is necessary right now, including more stuff for early game, and adding more impact to some choices that, other than visual changes, add not much to the game.
@philomory When brainstorming, Reigns, Sort the Court and Binding of Isaac were among our biggest inspirations to make this game. We tried to keep it simple, yet replayable and diverse. Glad that you liked it, and congratulations on finding most of the endings!
:whale:
I have one question: How many moons can be built in total? The narrator sort of indicated that enough is enough when I got the third one.
@jordgubben We've heard of that game, but we haven't actually played it. We should give it a try and see if we can learn anything from it. As for the moons, well, there's a new choice that unlocks when you have 3. You should go check it out :D
@earthcollapse Thank you! I had so much fun drawing them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf9jH1KZdXw
As usual, here's another comment chunk to reply to the feedback that has been posted. We're not sure if most people tend to recheck the comments they've left on games they've commented on, but hey, we still like to reply to people. Site notifications couldn't come sooner, as we're pretty sure that, when those become a thing, much deeper conversations and feedback exchanges will be taking place over all the games.
Oh well. Meanwhile we wait for those, here comes another set of replies.
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@goncalo-monteiro I sure do! I personally still got to post the feedback I already gave you on your page as well. Will try to take care of that today! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
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@simplepotential We hope you actually had fun with it! Thanks a lot for playing. What elements do you think are there that help making the game fun? We would love to hear your opinion in extra detail!
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@numnumdude We tried to emphasis the curiosity of the player wanting to know what kind of cosmetics would get added to their planet depending on the choices, and decided to pair those with some references here and there in the text to make it extra engaging, and funny at times too. :smile:
Thanks a lot for playing! We hope you had a whale of a time, and @moski will definitely be happy knowing your liked the game's graphic style!
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@jackson-frankland We're glad you liked it! Polishing our games is something we always strive to achieve!
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@jupiter-hadley Thanks a lot for featuring us once again! We owe you a great part of the game’s reception and overall popularity, especially after the article you posted on _Alpha Beta Gamer_. Really, thanks for all the coverage you’ve done in the game, and we’re really glad you found it wonderful! Hopefully during the next jam. we will be able to surprise you once more!
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To finish this comment chunk off, and for any people that might come across the game until friday, we've recently posted a [blog post for people to post their own ideas and suggestions on what they would like to see on the game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/petty-puny-planet-38/petty-puny-planet-38-planetary-expansion-ballot). We would like to involve the _Ludum Dare_ community and the people which have played and gave feedback on the game more on the development process of future iterations. As such, in case you do come across the game, please check it out, and if anything crossed your mind during your playthrough of the game do comment on it!
Meanwhile, we've been also trying to catch up with reviewing more games. It's been some busy weeks for all of us at [**Whales And Games**](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames) with school and professional work, but we would also like to give one last wave of feedback before judging closes. :whale:
Really great writing and very funny. I had a lot of fun reading the consequences of the choices to the planet. Nothing really to add what hasn't been said in the above comments apart from really good job!
And I want a mobile version game too !!
Great job =)
I was going to write here my favorite part about the game, but I can't decide if I prefer the gorgeous cartoon art-style or the funny dialogues you got going.
Here's how my planet turned to be

As usual, it's time to reply to all the new comments, as the last hours on the clock tick off until the end the judging phase!
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@binaryferret Thanks a lot! Having different hats and cosmetics on the planet wasn't even on the plans originally, but once the thought crossed our mind, we knew we simply had to stick it! Glad you had a whale of a time with the game! :smile:
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@wolderado Saying this is the best game you've played so far is really flattering and we're glad you liked it!
As for the mobile version, there's already one available for _Android_ on the itch.io page, and we will be looking to add _Play Store_ support when we develop and publish the post-jam version. As for _iOS_ support, it's an harder platform to tackle given it's requirements, so we don't know if we will have a way to support it anytime soon.
Hope you have fun as much fun on your next playthroughs as you had on your first one! Tell us which new endings you found afterwards!
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@wisstopher Thanks a lot! As we've mentioned in one of the many replies above, polishing is one of the things we strive for the most, even during Game Jams. Thanks a lot for marking us as one of your favorites! :star:
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@gimbalock The @moski will definitely be pleased to hear you loved his graphics, and @zachery-blystone will also feel pretty fulfilled knowing you loved the sound effects! Thanks a lot for playing!
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@himeija Didn't know making choices could get so addictive to some players. Complied you found you one of your favorites. As for the mobile version, read the reply to @wolderado, as a version of the game is already available for mobile, but we plan on extending it's support! Thanks a lot! :mobile:
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@tony-godfrey Thanks a lot and we're glad you had a sea of fun playing the game! Glad to know we're on the top there with the game's polish, and that the whole thing feels solid. @moski must definitely be proud you found the graphics cute as well!
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@syndelis Maybe your favorite part is exactly the mix of both? Thanks for finding everything to be on the point (and for the follow on _Twitter_ as well, which we have already followed back). That's a great and very unique planet! :earth_africa:
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Thanks a lot for everyone that has given feedback on _Petty Puny Planet_ during these past weeks. We're definitely looking forward to see how the game ends up performing once the results are announced. Whatever ranking we end up achieving, it was all thanks to everyone single one of you who played the game, rated it, commented and gave feedback on it!
We definitely want to continue developing the game, and the structure in which we developed the game in lets us quickly add new features and actions very quickly. That being said, there's quite a few things we want to tackle, and some feedback we want to reply by adding new specific features to the game. We hope you look forward to it, and if you wish to keep track of any future updates, we suggest you to give us a follow over at [**Whales And Games**](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames) as it's going to be our main method of communication going forward (although we will definitely still post an update article here when the update happens).
Once again, thanks a lot, and we're glad everybody had a whale of a time with the game! :whale: