Build The Sun by TRASEVOL_DOG
Edit just before the results come in:
Thank you all for the great feedback! I'm working on a postjam version which hopefully will meet most of the remarks that were made, and which will still be free, but we're also going to turn this into a premium release! If you'd like to support the project you can already wishlist the game on Steam! Thank you!! :sparkling_heart:
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PSA: You need to hold click on things! Especially at the very beginning, if you just click once on the starting fire nest the game will crash! (I couldn't figure out how to fix it, sorry, this game's code got really messy over the duration of the jam :sweat_smile: )
Plays entirely with the mouse. Use the scrollwheel to zoom in/out. (advancing in the game unlocks more levels of zooming out!)
You can free up a little guy from the resource it's holding by holding click on it.
It's not impossible that the starting fire doesn't have any/enough trees around it to actually do stuff. You need at least 5 trees in the fire's light at the beginning. If you don't have that, then please kindly restart the game so it can generate a new map.
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How to play: (SPOILERS -- ideally you'll understand what to do by looking around, don't be afraid to explore to find new things, and hover on things you've already seen again as you progress, you may have unlocked new interactions!)
Click on things to make your little guys go to them and work on them! New interactions unlock when you reach a new fire level. Building your first fire allows you to make a house from branches laying on the ground, and to have a gatherer on berries. Once you get to the second fire stage, you can crush and gather rocks, make a mill from a millstone, make pickaxes from rock shards (which have a chance to appear from crushing rocks), and crush and gather iron and solar ore deposits (explore to find some!) with the pickaxes.
You need houses to allow for more little guys to be there, and you need berry gatherers and farms to make little guys appear faster.
End of spoilers.
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Music by Pentadrangle and cover artwork by Julia Godrie! Ambience soundscape by FreeToUseSounds. (check 'em out on Bandcamp, they're great) Everything else was made by one tired remy. (it's me, I'm the tired remy)
Unfinished, menu-less and definitely bugged. There is an end, but no proper ending. Couldn't take the time to test at the end. Will fix crashes and things that prevent you from testing the game properly tomorrow! For now, it is time to sleep, finally...
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Edit on the morrow! Finally tested the game myself and fixed the worst game-breaking issues I found, as allowed by the holy Ludum Dare rules: - Not showing the correct icons for all resources beyond wood and fire - Fixed a crash or two - Fixed farms giving infinite farmers (resulting in an eventual memory crash) - Fixed rock shards giving infinite little guys (eventual memory crash again) - Removed light from solar ore deposits as it was letting the camera wander off really far if you didn't pay attention, which made the game unplayable - Removed a bug where important resources were deleted, resulting in a soft lock - Fixed a bug where no more little guys could come at the beginning, resulting in a very early soft lock
And I sadly couldn't fix this one, so here is the PSA again, closer to the download links:
:warning: Hold click on the first fire nest or the game will crash! :warning:
| Link | https://punkcake.itch.io/build-the-sun |
| Link | https://punkcake.itch.io/build-the-sun |
| Link | https://punkcake.itch.io/build-the-sun |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/build-the-sun |
Ratings
| Overall | 13th | 4.355⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 95th | 4.018⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 30th | 4.182⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 16th | 4.5⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 25th | 4.679⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 14th | 4.37⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 369th | 3.36⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 54th | 4.25⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
I love it !
Anyhow I'm not super sure what I was doing but I was doing something I think I will play another run and try to do things differently, very fun game tho as usual Rémy :P
That said, this game is gorgeous, probably the best I've seen in this jam. Everything looked fantastic, the art, the audio, the feeling, trully awesome!
Congrats on your entry!
Super clean and simple UX, i love this kind of clean design.
The darkness had a great sense of exploration and i was intrigued to explore further into the world.
I was a little bit confused on what everything was doing at first, maybe some more feedback on what things do. eg the houses and farms? Do they give more creatures?
The art was beautiful, though it did feel a bit too zoomed in on my ultra wide.
The main goal of building the sun was a great goal to work towards.
Fantastic entry.
My only issue was with the "delete if holding" mechanic, I deleted important material from creatures that just kept walking into my cursor while I was doing something else several times.
Still, I built the sun in the end ☀️
It was a bit frustrating when approaching then game, resources placement is really unbalanced and and found gold really late in the game. Also, there wasn't enough flint/axe available and so the game tend to bit artificially longer that it should be.
Anyway, the best jam entry I played this year :thumbsup:
It takes me about 3 hours, I'm gonna say it's defnitly a good game.
if you could make any adjust that should be increase the pickaxe drop rate. On avearge they are even rare than gold when you need lot of them
here's a little doodling
I’m looking forward to a future version with a save function!
It'd be great to see more development of the civilisations - the mechanic of the different types of worker jumping onto the thing to build / destroy was really fun.
I never saw it to completion as no save and I had to get to sleep as a work night - will definitely be looking forward to a version with perhaps more impact of the farms / houses so there's less of a grind - even when I had a bunch of farm-land/houses, spawning of fresh blob guys felt quite slow )
The only other thing, you're probably already aware of, which caught me off guard when I got my first pick-axe dude, was that holding over a dude will remove their speciality. When trying to chop trees or build fires etc, sometimes a guy who wasn't the right type would wander into the mouse zone, then inadvertently erase his speciality/hat/power etc.
I did find myself getting frustrated when I accidentally hover over something someone was carrying, and deleted it. Happened with ore at least once ( :fingers_crossed: ) and I was like "I hope I didn't soft lock myself." At some point I clicked on or used something and a diamond appeared in one of the little dude's hands. I wasn't able to get another diamond from what I saw.
What I'm about to say has probably been covered by others, but here are my notes:
- It's impressive that you could deliver procedural generation on top of everything. Although I think it could be adjusted so some resources are easier to find; it took me a long time to even find millstones or ores.
- It's not obvious what you can obtain out of a certain item on the ground, even if you've done it a few times already. Houses can be built from normal branches but also from white ones, which I kept confusing with rock shards that would get me a pickaxe. I get the idea of having zero text, so I would suggest showing the result of the recipe in the tooltip (perhaps only after trying it once).
- At first I tried playing without reading the "how to play", as you suggested, but some things are hard to guess without it. For example, I thought clicking on berries gave me a resource to use elsewhere, just like every other item. But it didn't appear in any recipes, so I just didn't bother with berries at all. It's hard to tell that your character is harvesting as it looks like he's holding a resource and there's no visual indicator that you're exploiting the tree. Perhaps the way to gain population should be less obscure altogether, as it's also unclear what houses do, and I never really saw new people appear.
- I noticed I was getting new flamebearers every now and then, but I'm not sure what action led to this?
- When I first sent a guy with a helmet to the... dungeon (?), he disappeared in the fog of war as soon as he entered, so I couldn't tell what I gained from it.
- It can take a long time for the character with the right resource to arrive when you're building something. Perhaps their speed could be increased as long as they're off screen?
This is a really nice and addictive twist on the AoE or god game formula, full of intuitive and juicy elements (the little guys jumping into the recipe slots!). For me at least, the micro-managing became a bit overwhelming as my settlement grew, and after a while I started wishing for a way to let my citizens gather resources on their own - which probably would make it a very different game. Still I'm stunned by the quality of the presentation here, and this is definitely an entry that could morph into a full game.
This is probably one of cutest entry, and also the one that kept me busy for the longest time here, yet I couldn't build a sun XD in fact after several hours i minimized the game and went AFK and when switched back to it my creatures have been travelling too far for hours, and I lost any hope to find back the main fire :') I'll try to build a sun once again later but it was not a lie when told it requires some grinding, it already kept me busy at least 2 hours aha !
Visuals and sounds were sweet, juicy animation of tiny dark creatures are lovely and satysfying, and gameplay far ahead from average LDJAM game expectations. The whole thing feels unique, such as the tiny creatures that obviously fits perfectly the theme. Also I enjoyed the nature of the goal.
It's close to perfect for a LD game, thus said here are some small ideas that came when playing:
I accidentally deleted few times the objects creatures were carrying on (some other talked about it above), maybe another mouse button for destruction would avoid this, that can be frustrating when deleting something hard to reach :) Sometime I gave up waiting for creatures because they were too far and I was unsure someone was indeed coming or not ; maybe a small arrow/indicator could help knowing if we wait in vain clicking or not ?
when I finally got lost, I thougt a small arrow such as when starting the adventure when going too far would have been appreciated :) Also, for same reasons, a pause/save or windowing feature; ut of course these are requirement that comes from the fact that the game has a lot of content to show and is able to keep us entertained for hours to get there; so only good things in the end :)
Congrats, well done !
I like to see a windowed mode because the pixels are too big and it's hard to see the shape of some objects anyway cool i love them all :pick: :pick: :pick:
As others said, the pickaxe droprate felt really bad - I'd suggest to at least reduce the amount of little guys per rock - with pathfinding as it is now, it also took quite a while to get them where I wanted them!
Graphics are amazing, and while SFX works really well, I had to mute the game around an hour in due to repetitiveness of the BGM.
I really wish the controls were "click and wait" instead of "hold and wait" - I noticed that holding for long periods of time generally makes me press the mouse button rather hard without noticing, and that's kinda tiring on my hand.
I feel like it'd be better if there actually was a wall and not just infinite empty field, as without the way to recenter camera on (any of) my bonfires, I accidentally almost lost my home location while exploring the vast emptiness.
Overall, a neat experience, and I'd play more if there was more content.
It felt fatiguing to have to hold down the mouse button all the time. Especially when it's ambiguous if I have enough of a given resource. I found myself asking the question "do I need one more stone or is my last wood-holding critter somewhere across the map slowly making his way here?"
What if:
- You click once to issue an order (eg: harvest this tree)
- You only get ONE "task" you can issue at a time
- BUT you can unlock more "task capacity" as a resource. like maybe for every campfire you have you can issue one more order eg: I have 3 campfires so I can request 3 tasks simultaneously.
That would make me as a player feel more powerful over time, like I'm issuing high level commands like "harvest this whole forest" rather than still holding down the button on each and every tree.
My critique is: It got too big for a game jam. I almost gave up after playing for 2 hours. It was my son who urged me to finish it. I would have stopped otherwise. Some small bugs (normal in a game jam) contributed to the long delays: some little characters simply don’t respond even when close to the cursor, sometimes the small torch doesn’t light up the map (I had to increase the campfire level for it to work again), some little characters get stuck in trees even when there’s just one in the way, and others keep circling around houses without leaving.
I really hope to play this game one day with missions and a story mode (not in a game jam).
Congratulations on the amazing game!
silly litlle guys have the same lovability as some tiny birds or something
the controls are simple yet cool, i learned to relax a bit while waiting for my fellas to do what i said
This is a really really solid entry and i'll certainly keep tabs on how the game is going!
It was slightly discouraging to go on as it felt my power does not scale well with the size of my realm. Building another hut for 50s while already having 20 huts feels low impact, compared to the early ones.
That being said it's a fantastic jam entry, full of character and very well executed :)
It's so fun and satisfying. Such an engaging loop, and the music and art and everything make for a very chill relaxing experience. I loved the little jump into the slots animation. It's so dang cute. :smile:
The upgrade style reminded me of Kingdoms and I absolutely LOVE that game. There is something so gratifying and tactile about it. This game takes that fun interaction and makes a very new and unique experience out of it.
There is so much I loved about this I could go on and on... I wanted to keep exploring and building out my colony all day.
I only had one bug that kind of hindered things for a bit, and that's when I lit my second fire, my fire scout guy stopped working.. .he didn't light up the path any more which made it difficult to explore. But then that fixed as soon as I upgraded that fire.
I am absolutely blown away by this entry. I really want to play a full game of this now. :laughing: :fire:
I wouldn't be surprised if you guys are one of the top overall entries. Definitely deserve it. :raised_hands: