Happy Life by scalliondelight
About
The theme of LD46 is Keep it alive.
Happy Life is all about keeping the fragile aspects of your life in balance. You want to keep your digital pet alive, but at what cost?
Everything could hinge on one stressful evening in this point-and-click life management sim. Can you keep your happy life together for another day, or will it all come crashing down?
Pay attention to the important things and take it seriously, but don't forget to live a little!
Disclaimers
The following creative commons resources were used. These sounds are the paper shuffle, wine bottle sound, gulping noise, and restaurant foley, as well as a song remix as a ringtone. All other sounds and songs created by the team. ``` "Umblättern (kurz).wav" by MiSchy, 05DEC2016 https://freesound.org/people/MiSchy/sounds/369960/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
"20170101 Big Wine Bottle" by kijjaz, 31JAN2017 https://freesound.org/people/kijjaz/sounds/378852/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
"Water_Gulp.wav" by Q.K., 27JUN2008 https://freesound.org/people/Q.K./sounds/56271/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
"Restaurant_Ambence.wav" by mshahen, 01MAR2020 https://freesound.org/people/mshahen/sounds/507218/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
"Local Forecast - Elevator" by Kevin MacLeod, remixed by @aspectmfr, https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300012 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
```
Changelog
``` 4/21/19 v0.3
- Increased time wife prompts can be viewed
- Capped duration of drunk view, automatically set back to 2 BAL (this is to prevent endless drunk bug)
- Allow the boss' last message to be seen
- Allow the ringer challenge to fire
- Extend time food choices stay on screen after selection
- Fixed mysterious game ending crash (it was a while loop i'm sorry)
- Allow the wife to become happy again
4/20/19 v0.2
- Lowered volume
- Remove food choices when end game modal is displayed
- Fixed phone modal instance missing error
- Possibly fixing the bug where texts stop coming in ```
Known bugs:
- Audio track restarts abruptly in Google Chrome when attempting to crossfade smoothly between tracks.
- mouse enter / leave threshold causes hand flicker when right on border of the pet case
- sometimes menus flip back and forth, can't drop cursor menu
| Youtube | https://memorydump.itch.io/happy-life |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/happy-life |
Ratings
| Overall | 526th | 3.797⭐ | 280🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 919th | 3.466⭐ | 280🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 137th | 3.991⭐ | 279🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 214th | 4.176⭐ | 278🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 802th | 3.914⭐ | 280🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 566th | 3.621⭐ | 274🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 296th | 3.748⭐ | 278🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 542th | 3.767⭐ | 277🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
Managing multiple things was really fun! The music and the ambient track of the restaurant was really cool as well as the sound effects. I saw that you didn't create some of the sound but they were well chosen to fit the mood. Some mechanics such as having to remember what was being said to respond is really unique and interesting! Also liked the art style. The only thing was that it was a bit confusing about what I had to do at first and how the stats change, but it was fun once I kind of got it. Good job!
Overall great job though!
I enjoyed it. There's some handling of the events that are tough and frustrating, but the overall style is great! Very real to try to keep three things alive at once!
Cute idea, pretty funny, it took me a while to figure out what the menu was for but the reveal was nice! :D
If anything could be better, I think the lose screens could have more in them, as opposed to just text.
Art and sound were also nice
The music worked really well with the environmental aspect, and the ambient sounds helped bring it to life and also provided a nice audio clutter of things which helped make the game more hectic.
The game struck a really nice sweet spot between visual clutter and hectic atmosphere that has made this one of the best examples of this type of game in LD46 so far that I've encountered. I want to try and remember to come back to this at a later date and keep playing to see how far I can get.
I managed to feed the tamagochi and see the menus, drink wine, but talking to the woman doesn't work, so it's not really fully playable!
But I do really love the concept. Great job guys!
Could you please check it out?
Overall, very nice and well-detailed!
Overall really love the concept, feel very original and relevant! Well done!
Great concept! All the attention sinks on the scene made keeping everything balanced challenging, which was cool. Graphics and music suited the game, too.
The phone interface was a bit glitchy, and there was one time where none of the options offered by the waiter matched the menu (not sure if this is bug or feature though, to be fair :D)
Other than this...Nice entry overall, congrats!
As a big fan of *Papers Please*, this game clicked for me in a great way. I would definitely love to see it fleshed out into a full, multi-scenario game. Maybe start off with just the Tamagotchi and the spouse - and slowly add more distractions and things to juggle.
For a game like this - where click, dragging and mouse interactions make up the whole gameplay - it's important to really make those interactions work smoothly and comfortably. Sometimes it was difficult to slide the phone slider all the way - and sometimes it was difficult to land on the right button with tamagotchi. Small tweaks to the mouse interactions and visual feedback can really make this game *juicy*.
Fantastic art, visual/audible style. I hope you continue to work on this one - it's a neat one!
Walker
Would really like to see another version of that for mobile
Really liked the concept and the graphic, wish it would become something more!
Great job!
I would love to see something like this developed a little more to be the base of some deeper interactive fiction.
Great job!
I really like the game, but geeez, it's so hectic that it very much feels like work... But still, good job!
** Mood and esthetics**
Oh it feels really juicy. I like the tripping part when you get drunk :D
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