The Empty Cone by Acr515
Your ice cream parlor, The Empty Cone, is at risk of shutting down! Due to the unfortunately frequent monster attacks, The Empty Cone is on the brink of financial collapse. Can you keep the parlor alive?
Serve customers ice cream as rapidly as you can while hiring employees, purchasing upgrades, and, well... fending off monsters every once in a while.
Controls:
Use WASD to move. Other controls are explained in-game.
Screenshots:
Changelog:
v1.0
- Original release
v1.0.1
- Fixed a bug that prevented the player from purchasing the "Training" upgrade
- Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash or enter an error state after Day 7
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused machines not to dispense ice cream to the player
- Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the player from taking a customer's order
- Fixed a bug causing the end of day report to display the incorrect amount of money lost from customer deaths
- Fixed a bug that prevented music from stopping properly
| Youtube | https://acr515.itch.io/ld46 |
| Youtube | https://acr515.itch.io/ld46 |
| Youtube | https://acr515.itch.io/ld46 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-empty-cone |
Ratings
| Overall | 295th | 3.929⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 125th | 4.036⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 238th | 3.869⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1315th | 3.619⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1026th | 3.762⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 170th | 3.952⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 982th | 3.5⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
@jackcaunter I did all the graphics, SFX, and user interface programming, while @Epicular programmed everything else and worked on the design of the game mechanics.
At first I was wondering what the gun was for. I was not disapointed.
The graphics are very cool, great pixel art. I love how the gun rotates in a pixelated way when you move the mouse. Everything is presented very well, the colors are very well chosen and all the icons are so easily recognizable that there was not a single misunderstanding of anything in your game. Really great job for such a detailed scene with so much going on. Hats off to you! Also nice LD46 on the wall :-)
The music and sound effects really fit what is going on. The ice cream music sounds like it and when the screen turns red, the darker music conveys the feeling of danger, like it should.
The mechanics are versatile, I like how day one is easier because you just get the ice cream but then you step it up by adding the topping. Also the three types of employees, the guns, how did you create all of this cool content in just three days?! Awesome job, very well executed.
Like I said, 5/5 in all categories, it was fun and funny, it looks great and is a very unique game, combining different genres in a consistent way. I would love to eat at the Empty Cone - during day times - myself! :-)
11/10 would serve ice cream again!
It feels balanced and polished for being done over a jam, well done!
Nice one!
Graphics and sound are great, concept is really cool. I guess my only criticism is that the making the ice cream is tedious with the stations being so small and so close together.
It seems like listing the controls in the description would be a good idea, especially for a jam game. Maybe the controls show up on the screen, but I missed them both times I played through the game.
Though maybe the whole point is to surprise people? I was certainly surprised when the monsters came in. I guess you have to balance the surprise with the chance that people will ragequit.
Once I figured everything out the game was fun and had a good amount of depth, so good scores all around, but if there was a rating for intuitiveness I'd have to dock you.
Very impressive amount of content for a jam game!
Apart from those things (which are just minor gripes at best), I really enjoyed playing! Awesome work team!
i love it!
Unfortunately, I ran into a crash towards the end of the 4th day when I defeated the monsters and then tried to get ice cream. This was on the web version - dev tool's console says: `RuntimeError: invalid index into function table`
Either way, it was a lot of fun to play, good job!
Here's the news- this game is brilliant. I did not read the description, so everything was a surprise. You really captured the stress of retail/food service in the mechanics of the gameplay.
"Oh shit- I made the wrong ice cream cone" was a thought that actually went through my head. Trying to get rid of that cone and watching the customers slowly get pissed off- all the while glancing at the clock spinning in the corner... I'm still chuckling reliving it- omg- the twist- the release- and the consequences- perfectly executed in my opinion. The newspaper cut scenes were the cherry on top.
You have a wonderful sense of comedy and drama- not only within the plot and mechanics- but through the audio and visuals as well. I mean, the characters are very reminiscent of ice cream cones. Super impressive jam game. And the self-reflexivity! I think every game developer should be required to play this game. No matter how hard you try to please everyone, mistakes will be made, and the monsters are coming.
The reasoning behind not putting the controls in the game's description is because we wanted to try and avoid information overload, as I never appreciate trying to read everything about how to play some game before I even start it. In hindsight we should probably have included them as a sort of safety valve. Thank you for your feedback, it is absolutely invaluable.
@hulien22 We haven't heard of any such crash before so we will look into it and try to reproduce it, thanks for telling us about it.
@emperor-eagle We haven't heard of that sort of thing happening to anyone yet. We'll try to reproduce it and see what could be causing that, thanks for letting us know.
@joemid We're glad you liked it so much! Thanks for the kind words, it really means a lot to us.
Now to some cons:
- I felt like there was a lack of progression in terms of ice cream parlor. You can hire all 3 employees very quickly and both upgrades are basically aimed to make more money. Something like faster severs' speed, stronger mercenaries, cheaper repair costs would make progression feel more varied imo.
- The combat generally felt kinda awkward. I haven't tried second weapon, but all others seemed to have rather small clip size with long reload times which didn't feel nice, especially considering how fast paced the game is otherwise
- Maybe partially due to the last point, difficulty spike on day 6 felt very sudden. I managed mostly fine before, with monsters only maybe killing a few people but on days 6 and 7 I got completely wrecked.
I hope my review doesn't come of as negative, I really enjoyed your game but I'm kinda bad at describing what I like about things. Great job!
So my winning stategy is hiring three mercenaries and training them as best as I can. The money comes back in eventually. I only upgrade the market thingy twice, that is enough to keep everybody busy. I get a reaper and nothing else, with that I start shooting the big guys as soon as the screen turns red. I have a felling that enemies do not get more after day 12 or so, is that correct? My mercenaries will clean up all red devils and DOOM monster eyes (are they called cacodeamons?). Once everybody around me is asleep I might try to get a new highscore yet again :-)
I have to say, playing this for so long at a time it gets a bit repetitive. But not so that I would not want to play again. Maybe I will be back with a third comment. Your game is one of those that I can come back to. Great job!
@gonutz Day 17?! I don't think I've ever made it past 9 or 10. Also you are partially correct that enemy waves stop growing significantly around day 12 - they keep growing in a linear fashion, so eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in and each wave starts to feel almost exactly the same as the last. We're really glad that you've enjoyed the game so thoroughly.
The game play works well and it's very addictive. You should make the shooting phase more juicy by adding FX. And also, update the customer face to show which client is bored.
Overall, very fun game !
- I sometimes get the wrong topping. The ice cream machine gives me a nice feedback. It shakes and the ice has one of three colors. The topping however is only a few changed pixels and some combinations look very similar. Especially when you are in a hurry :-)
- There was some issue where the screen just turned black. Right in the middle of day 4 or 5 maybe. I was getting an ice cream and everything turned black. It would not come back for a minute so I had to reastart the game.
- I had an issue twice where I would keep moving left/down without pressing the button. After a couple of seconds it would stop.
- Bullets came out of the top-right and bottom-right corners of the shop in two or three games when the deamons arrived. I guess they were stuck there and shot through the walls?
Are you planning on releasing this as a full game? If you kept working on this and fixed the last bugs, maybe made it so that I do not have to play to level 30 before dying... ;-) This is a great game, I am going to play this again in a minute...
We are toying with the idea of expanding the game and publishing it as a mobile game, or maybe as a cheap/free Steam release. Aside from the obvious bug fixes and balance improvements, this expansion would include more weapons/employees, training for the individual employees (plus the ability to hire more than just three), the ability to buy/move furniture in your parlor (including extra ice cream machines and topping stations, as well as aesthetic items to improve customer moods, and defensive installments like turrets and traps), refined combat with more enemies, and likely the ability to sell your parlor and buy larger buildings in new locations, in order to create a larger scheme of progression.
As for your individual points of feedback:
- We agree that the topping stations need more feedback
- I haven't heard of this specific bug, although we've had a few people report randomly occurring crashes
- Haven't heard of this one yet either, I'll have to look into it
- This one's a known bug. We just never got around to fixing it, lol
- When I stand next to my employee, waiting for an ice cream machine in use, once the employee is done with their ice, I have to move out of and back in to the trigger zone or I cannot press E.
- While at it, E turns out is a quite inconvenient button to press while you are moving with WASD. Space, Shift or user-definable would have been better.
- Random crashes here as well. Once on day 3 and right now I was doing great on day 14, with 2000 cash but then it crashed! This is a show stopper. I will now stop playing this game because of this.
- The employees do not wait on me or each other to get their ice out of the machine. This is a minor detail but seems a little inconsistent.
As I said, I will stop playing now because I am afraid I will never get to level 100 without the game crashing. This however brings me to my next question - are you going to release the source code to this. I like this game so much, I would really enjoy working on it myself for a bit. If you published in on Github for example I would be able to work on it and hand you back any improvements.
Your ideas for expanding this game sound a bit too much for me. It reminds me of when the Command and Conquer games turned into a confusig pile of options, most of which nobody ever used. To this day I prefer [OpenRA](https://www.openra.net/) over the latest commercial Command and Conquers. Do not fall prey to the same false assumption that more is better. Only better is better and to me what you describe as your final goal is worse because balancing 3 things is hard but balancing 30 things is impossible. As of now I only buy mercenaries and one extra gun and make it to the end of the game (the eventual crash) every time, meaning you would first have to balance this out right. Every piece you add on top of that will have an effect on the overall balance.
I think you have a great game here - fix the bugs and make a free Steam release out of it. That sounds like a very cool thing to do. As I said, I would love to help you with finding the bugs!
I'd love to try and track down the crash that you're experiencing but I'm a little tied up at the moment, I may see what we can do in a week or two.
As for your concerns about expansion, I generally agree with that sentiment, but at the same time we absolutely need to introduce a broader arc of progression if this is to experience any amount of success outside of a jam context. Only 3 employees, 4 guns, 3 enemies, and zero variability in your parlor is generally not enough to keep most players entertained for any longer than an hour or two. Of course balancing could prove to be tricky but that's what testing and feedback is for :wink:
I have nothing against releasing on Steam, but we'd need some sort of financial incentive to continue to devote time to this. Maybe that means a paid release, or DLC, or something. But a completely free Steam release is off the table at the moment.
Unfortunately, for this same reason we're also not open to publishing the source code at this time.
I would suggest maybe having a handgun or melee weapon that is weak but has unlimited ammo, it feels like if you ever run out you're just sore outta luck right now as the monsters basically wreck everything you have and you're sunk way too deep into the red to ever do anything about it.
Anyways, this was great fun :) I do wish there was a little more to the ice cream serving portion of the game. Yeah, the toppings sort of added more to keep track of, but at its core it was still mostly just following directions. I can imagine this going in either a multi-tasker game route, where you need to direct all of the servers (more micromanagement of different things), OR an overcooked-style route, where delivering the actual orders is more frantic. As is it just feels pretty mundane, which although realistic isn't exactly thrilling.
As a final note: Please give credit to the original source of the audio track!
Great job on a successful LD entry! :D