I actually don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing, I'm trying out the commands and following the steps but constantly typing in each command gets very tedious over time. Perhaps opt for a button system instead? I don't know if it changes later in the game as I haven't gotten very far. I think the instructions needs to be a bit more explicity

@gerugames Yeah I can see the problem with the instructions. I probably should have taken the extra time to add more help commands to explain the game a bit more, once you get 400 Peeps you are able to upgrade the game itself to a full graphical experience which is much easier to play and basically gives you the ability to steamroll the rest of the game. Thank you for taking the time to comment, this is my first ludum dare and Id love to hear what I can improve for the next one.

completly understand how difficult it is to add a tutorial when you only have 48 hours to make a game, I only managed to upload the game 2 minutes before thedeadline

The Game definitely needs a little more interactivity. The command prompt section was so boring for me I had to stop.

Sorry to hear that you had to stop early, Its definitely something I could do after the compo if I continue working on this, but thanks for the feedback and thanks for trying.

after claiming an orb it only produced 100 peeps and then stopped and I was unable to buy the gui upgrade am I doing something wrong? as the game seems pretty interesting.

@inventivum-games Orbs cap at 100 Peeps to encourage expansion. You need to capture more orbs by selecting your maxed orb and targeting an orb you can target. As the GUIUpgrade costs 400 Peeps you need, using the minimum amount of orbs, 4 orbs, but you can use more orbs. I hope you can get through the rest of the game.

Cool concept, but it was hard for me to visualize what was going on and what I was supposed to do before looking closer at the provided image and re-reading the instructions multiple times

After two days of intense coding I felt like home in your game - all those functions and numbers, you know, ahah.

I know that it doesn't matter now, but I've got an idea - add '--help' for each command to describe mechanics and decrease game's entry threshold.

@alex-lutay You know what, That actually sounds like an excellent idea. Thanks for giving it a try and for the advice. Its a shame I had 1 hour before the deadline which I could have realized it sooner.

Just completed the game. It took patience.

The command line part was pretty clunky.
Having a few shortcuts (e.g. command autocomplete, up/down for history, etc.) might help streamline things, but would still be hard to pick up for players not used to command lines. At the very least, being able to scroll up to see more of the history would be nice. It's slightly annoying how the `help` command clears the console by taking up all the space. Also, you should reduce the space between lines so more lines can be seen.

The GUI upgrade was weird because I had to figure out the controls again. (Left click to toggle select. Right click to toggle target) After some time, I realised that the GUI strategy boils down to selecting all your orbs and targeting a non-owned orb. Repeat until done.
The visuals here could be improved for clarity. The selecting/targeting highlights are not great because they obscure the ownership of the orb. It would also be clearer if each orb had its own population number instead of only having one number in the corner.

On the whole, a solid attempt at a game. Polish is needed.

@zuf Thank you for taking the time for a solid review of my game. I really appreciate all of your feedback.
Command line - Yeah, that had problems that I noticed after actually releasing the game. More lines and history would have been great to add.
GUI - I know what you mean about the highlights, if I had the time to figure out outlines I probably would have used those instead. Also noting your suggestion about individual population numbers, I have no idea why I didn't do that and left the single counter for total peeps, It wouldn't have taken too long to implement and made the GUI stage so much more readable.
Again, thanks for pushing through the whole game. This is my first LD, and compo at that, and your feedback will help me a lot in the future make better design choices, and hopefully make something better for the next one.

I was having trouble with the starting menu, maybe i'm just messing something up but I couldn't get the locate enemy command to work despite trying lots of different ways to type it.

@zerptin sorry to hear you were having trouble. All commands should be typed exactly as listed in the help menu. If this is not working, please tell me so I can try to patch the game.

@musicblox here is a copy of what I typed exactly LocateEnemy(): , if that is wrong please correct me, because it seems like a great game.

Gave it shot, got up to 100 peeps with a claimed orb. The cmd interface is a cool idea, but you need to clear the prompt after each command is entered. I'd also recommend looking into the Command Pattern if your not familiar with it.You could easily implement the ability to use the up and down arrows to cycle through previously used command which would add alot to usability. Good work getting a submission in for the compo, its something to really be proud of. This was my first compo, but I've done many jams before. Cheers

Very difficult to figure out what to do, even with the instructions.

The command line at the start is interesting, but it needs more instructions. I figured out the following:

* LocateEnemy()
* ClaimOrbNearEnemy() --> it gives you the orb number (ex: 3)
* SelectOrb(3) --> the one that you own
* ListTargetOrbs() --> gives you the number of orbs nearby
* Foreach near orb number: InspectOrb(number) --> gives you the number of peeps. Choose one (with low number of peeps?).
* TargetOrb(the number you chose)
* SelectOrb(the number you chose)
* ListTargetOrbs()
* etc...

After a few turns you have enough to GUIUprade(), and see the visual representation.
At that point I was completely lost. I didn't know if I was blue or red... left click turns an orb to green, right click turns an orb to red. But I could only do that on blue orbs, so I guess I was blue.

Overall, the concept is interesting, good job :smiley:
It just needs more instructions about how to play. And also, as others said: Having the command line auto-select itself after each command so that you can type again right away.

I gave up after a while of having no idea what I am doing. Having the command line interface at start is not a good idea, especially when it lacks essential command line features such as selecting previous commands with up arrow, staying in focus after pressing enter, command auto completion, scrolling etc.. And in web version, the help section overflows, so it is not much of help.

It is a shame, because it sounds like actually fun game, but for some reason you decided to make it worse with the command line interface. Was it supposed to be a joke? Was it supposed to make it rewarding getting to the actual game? I don't know. Either way, I didn't understand it. Why not put the energy it took to make the command line interface towards polishing the game or making a proper tutorial?