The Dealer by Porcus_Pie

Content Warnings - Gore, Dark Themes, Implied Death and Violence
You've had this job for a while, it's pretty cozy, but you need to make sure you know what to sacrifice...
And sometimes, who to sacrifice.
You play as a back-alley organ dealer in a future world where organs can simply just be bought and grown. They take time and money, however, so sometimes it's best to take them from the source. Manage your resources, deal with customers, and choose who you deal with, who you ignore, and who becomes part of your stock.

This game was a bit of a change for me. Gone are my usual platformers and puzzlers and instead I decided to try make a resource management game! I think it turned out well. I ran out of time to get some music in but I think the atmosphere works okay without it!. Overall I'm quite happy with how it turned out! (But wow I forgot how tiring jams can be)
Hope you enjoy!

16-01-2023: Windows Version Added, no changes outside of adding "A game by JudeHDesign" on the title screen. The game is exactly the same
| Link | https://judehdesign.itch.io/the-dealer |
| Link | https://judehdesign.itch.io/the-dealer |
| Windows | https://judehdesign.itch.io/the-dealer |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/the-dealer |
Ratings
| Overall | 32th | 4.02⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 49th | 3.9⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 16th | 4.12⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 6th | 4.46⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 38th | 4.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 110th | 3.438⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 11th | 4.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 19🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
Really well polished, and definitely worth playing!
I absolutely love the concept of harvesting the customers lol.
Fun take on the theme. Game balance seems good, but there is a lot of waiting so more elements could be added so the player har something to do while waiting for crops to grow.
There could be some more variety in the customer faces and the sound is kind of simplistic.
Also, clicking on the tubes to check contents often did nothing - the tube remained unselected - maybe a bug?
I can really see this being developed further for a very interresting game.
And it's a Compo? Holy crap! Great job, dude!
(P.S.: I'd love a windows download that I can save in my "LD52 Favorites" folder. I like to replay some of my favorite games from each jam sometimes.)
And most importantly it was fun to explore the consequences of the system. My first run I was dragging it out being careful, but I kept getting jammed into a corner because most of my deals were done at a cash loss. Needed more murder! But then I pushed it a little too far too fast.
If I could tweak one thing it would be the way the menu system works. If I clicked on a tube I sometimes didn't want to do anything, and I had to click "exit menu" but that wasn't intuitive or convenient. Sometimes I wanted to just click into another tube, or even into the same tube to toggle out and back into my inventory.
I was often struggling with "what is my current inventory" so I'd do things like try to sell limbs that were at 100% in the tube but not yet harvested into my inventory, and I'd be clicking "sell" and nothing happening, and by the time I realized what I was doing wrong the timer ran out and OOPS. Or I'd click an empty tube and then "buy" and then I'd be picking but not recall what I already had in inventory.
Must be so hard to get the multi-modal sub-menus into a streamlined play experience in a compo, and I think you did a really good job with it, but it's SO hard that I still felt a few minor splinters along the way on that aspect.
But I enjoyed the dark mood of it all, and really fun to experiment around and see what's what.
Really imaginative and complete well-rounded entry here, nice job!
I did definitely tried to push the player to harvest, I wanted to get the balance just right that could play without harvesting, but it would be so slow the player would feel like they had to!
Thank you again for the lengthy comment (in the best way :grin:)!
A few minor notes, though I think if you had more time to playtest you probably would have caught these: if I'm already in a growing tube and I click on another one, I wish it would switch to that one rather than requiring me to click out of the menu first, and also I think it would be helpful if your current organ counts were listed while buying new ones.
Again, absolutely fantastic and an easy 5/5.
The menus took a bit getting used to (having to exit the menus in order to change) but that is my only nitpick.
Well done, congrats!