Bus Upon a Time by Sylf
You play as Gary, owner of the road building company.
Build roads for passengers, plan the routes to avoid crashes, earn money from every passenger, who gets to his desired destination. And most important - you can take all your money and run away to some distant island any time! :moneywithwings:
How to play this game:
You start the game with 1000$. Every bus costs 100$ and every road tile costs 10$. Every passenger, who reaches the desired destination, pays you 20$.
Click and hold the mouse button to build a road for the bus. Once you release the left button, you will spawn a bus that will circle from first tile to last and back. You can see desired routs of every passenger on a nameplate under every bus stop. Passengers spawn randomly every 10 second.
If 2 buses collide, they explode and disappear - so plan your routs carefully!
Finish the game any time by pushing "Take money and run" button.
Link to gameplay: https://youtu.be/rXmQ6fYYAVs
Share your highest score in the comments! :bus:
Music used: Ola by Independent Music Licensing Collective (IMLC)
Link to the music: https://imlcollective.uk/product/ola/
Link to the license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
| Game | https://fury-road.vercel.app/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/bus-upon-a-time |
Ratings
| Overall | 1189th | 2.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1128th | 2.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 836th | 3.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1187th | 2.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 920th | 3.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 622th | 2.765⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1118th | 2.647⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 5🗨️ |
Congrats though!!!
...sort of, anyway.
I still haven't done better than just running away with the money immediately. I don't really understand how the bus routing works. I feel like sometimes passengers who have a valid route just don't go there. I also still don't know how to avoid bus collisions. So eventually I just succumb to that and die.
I think the game would benefit from having more routing mechanisms like tunnels or signals (see Factorio's railway building for inspiration).
Another thing I would add is that there was no urgency to build any connections (as far as I could tell). It might be beneficial to make stranded passengers disappear after a while or cost you money. It seemed like one could make infinite money by building one connection and waiting. Anything that adds urgency would bring a lot of focus to the "every 10 seconds" theme.
Finally, the controls didn't feel fully explained and I found myself confused at the beginning with the camera zoomed way in. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to discover how to move the camera and zoom in and out. Maybe a simple graphic on the side (along with the costs) could help explain this aspect.
Overall, I think the game has great potential. Besides my complaints, the mechanics worked flawlessly, the graphics were simple and concise, and the controls were solid.
Nice gfx, nice audio. Intuitive UI, well done :)
Some thoughts:
- I couldn't really understand the rules
- The building system is very polished, how the tiles light up and so
Now trying to accomplish the goal? It's hilariously convoluted, which makes the "take the money and run" button very appropriate!
And then I realized I could make one bus route connecting all the stops. That's why they pay me the big bucks $$$
Only downside is people have to wait a long time, just like real buses.
Another thing: For some reason, the game started me zoomed all the way in, I couldn't see enough of the map to connect almost any stops or even read the labels, so it was kind unplayable. I mouse wheeled down, which zooms out on most things, and nothing happened. Took me an embarassingly long time to figure out I had to mouse wheel UP to zoom out, opposite of most zooming in apps :P
I liked graphis, tile design and animations. Game feels really nice, when you lay out the road.
Really would love see it as full game with different maps and situations.