Keep 'em Alive: Retro by mobiledev
Thanks to all for commenting, I decided to improve the instructions to the game. Many of you were not understanding the mechanics of the game, and thats my fault :(. I'll try to explain it better now:
Controls: Point and click to move characters. Press M to show or hide the UIs for the buildings. The main objective of game is to keep your population alive!
How do you do that?
- Everyone in the game needs to work in order for you to gain more money. Place Factory so your guys can start earning some money.
- In order to keep themselves healthy, they also need to eat. Place a Mall for that.
- Since not everyone is willing to invest 100% of their time working, they sometimes take a break to chat. While chatting, you will earn way less money. Use the Police Officer to order them back inside their buildings.
- THE MOST IMPORTANT MECHANIC OF THE GAME (and was completely broken until (I think) I managed to fix the bugs): Overtime, your guys will have a chance to get a, erhm....., virus, and while infected by this virus, they will lose much more HP. To cure them from this infection, place a Hospital and use a Doctor to fix them up. Also, while chit-chatting, they also have a higher chance of getting infected.
- See how many days can you survive :)
| Youtube | https://mobiledev.itch.io/keepemalive |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-em-alive-retro |
Ratings
| Overall | 531th | 3.793⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 499th | 3.69⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 430th | 3.714⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 327th | 4.103⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 217th | 4.367⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1008th | 3.037⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1119th | 3.446⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
The game is great, although a bit confusing to me (but it's because I suck at strategy games x3)
Could use some audio!
The art style is wonderful though!
Well done!
I think not starting the player with enough money to build a hospital and/or a police station is kinda holding the game back, because the gameloop is tied to those. Waiting around to generate money to be able to actually play the game isn't the best, because you're incentivised to save for those neccessary facilities you can't really engage with the game.
A bit of 8bit music would've been a great improvement aswell!
Made it to night 6, but couldn't change back to the builder, so there was no way to progress in a meaningful way. ^^
* reduce the cost of houses
* police-officers work automatically in a small radius (so you're incentivised to build more)
* sick people should fill up hospitals to a capacity (similar to how they fill up factories and malls)
* doctors should test people automatically in a small radius, instead of the player knowing who's sick immediately
The appeal of citybuilders and to some extend godgames is to see something grow and either nuture it or see how your actions are impacting it.
Changes to cost would make it easier to grow and loop back to making it easier for the disease to spread. Instead of clicking on each individual sick person to heal them personally it would become more of a push and pull between growing and keeping the pandemic in check.
As for the gameplay, ye, there's a bit potential still open, but I could totally see the finished product blow up in the mobile market space (I guess that's your target platform from the orientation of the playscreen and... well your name :D ) Keep up the great work!
Really slick art and I like the country border stuff. It's got animations and everything. Very polished. Much stars.
Gameplay felt a little convoluted. Good thing you wrote detailed instructions, because I wouldn't figure out what I have to do on my own :sweat_smile:
Also, didn't understand if a hospital and a police station building does anything on its own, other than give you access to doctor and policeman characters. Seems like you have to control your population disease and discipline by hand, and juggling 3 characters at a time is quite difficult. The fact that movement and action use are both controlled by LMB made it even harder. Maybe it would be better to assign movement to arrow keys/WASD?
Other than that, a very interesting game!
And for the map, I didn't really see why not be just a flat map, that would make life a little easier, or maybe a grid like.
Like other commenters, I had trouble playing (even after reading the instructions). If you ever do more work on the project, you might consider adding text labels on buttons, changing button art depending on if you can afford it (for buildings) or if it's toggled (police/construction), etc, etc. Of course, it's hard to add that kind of detail during a short game jam. Looks like you set out to do a challenging project; good on you for taking a stab at it.