Tiny Museum by Keith Wang

[raw]
made by Keith Wang for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

Play as a snail running a museum. Earn leaves from other bugs to upgrade your museum and buy more collections.

Upgrade your museum from the Red snailred.PNG

Buy more collections from the passing dung beetlesDB.PNG

Control:

AD to move,

Space to Jump,

E to buy, upgrade, put collections on base or in the trash bin,

12 different collections in total, if you get all you can dance a little :)

The more upgrade you purchase, the more visitors and traders you get, and traders will more likely to carry rare items.

Expensive items comes with a high reward once you place them.

Ratings

Overall 193th 3.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 328th 3.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 469th 3.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 108th 4.158⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 483th 3.474⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 398th 2.972⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 443th 3.474⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 12🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

toastercosplay
Oct 07th · 06:55 UTC
this game is adorable. i completed all the upgrades, and had a great time. i do think a bit of visual differences between dung beetles of different rarities would be beneficial.
🎤 Keith Wang
Oct 07th · 08:08 UTC
@toastercosplay thank you so much for the comment! Yeah I totally agree I should add that if got more time.
Tykki19
Oct 07th · 08:46 UTC
I didn't really what to expect but it was like an incremental game. Really fun to get a lot of leaves! Maybe I was just paying attention but I didn't notice I have really control on what I get when I buy a piece and how it will affect?
🎤 Keith Wang
Oct 07th · 12:00 UTC
@tykki19 Thanks for comment! Yeah the game is not super clear on that :(
Basically the item you get is randomized based on price, higher price item make visitors drop more leaves when they pass by.
thomz12
Oct 07th · 19:27 UTC
Fun game, it had me hooked for a while!

- The incremental part is pretty addicting.
- A lot of information is displayed in one line, so it becomes crowded very quickly.
- Looks like many leaves despawn, so the second floor becomes quite the chore.
- I liked vacuuming the floor of leaves!

Very well done!
🎤 Keith Wang
Oct 07th · 19:57 UTC
@thomz12 Thanks, yes I realized the leaves despawn way too fast... I forgot to turn on the despawn timer until the last moment so couldn't realize that earlier. Thank you for the comment!
naru
Oct 07th · 21:49 UTC
Lovely game ^^
SergS Workshop
Oct 07th · 22:18 UTC
Nice idle game and fits the theme really good, chill bg music and simple art style works nice. Would be glad to see more content
Profugo Barbatus
Oct 07th · 22:19 UTC
Simplistic, but cute. I tend to play first and read descriptions later, so a bit of in game tutorial woulda been nice, but only took me a few moments to figure it out naturally. Just when I thought I was done, I unlocked the second floor and that immediately felt good, and getting new items feels even better, especially when they bring big rewards.
Jaco van Hemert
Oct 08th · 12:39 UTC
Cute game! I liked the overall tone and atmosphere, and the gameplay loop is pretty solid. Some thoughts:
- When you get towards the end, there was a bit too much going on in the foreground, making it kind of hard to see where you are. Maybe having different sized/shaped leaves for different values would have been good to help reduce clutter?
- As someone else mentioned above, the despawning leaves meant that I basically just ignored the top shelves, because it's implausible to collect there (which I see accidental, so nothing for me to add here).
- I'd have liked to have seen some more variety in the things that can be purchased. E.g. a vacuum or something to automate some of the leaves, or something that increases the likelihood (or gates) the higher-end dung beetle merchants.
- Also, maybe having different customers like different displays? E.g. the ladybugs like one kind of thing, while the dragonflies like something else. I.e. I would have liked there to have been some reason to put thought into what goes where.
dhim
Oct 08th · 21:55 UTC
I enjoyed it! I become a bit busy quite rapidly, and you feel like managing it becomes overwhelming, but in fact, you can just let it go and everything is fine.
My youngest (2.5y) really enjoyed the art and wanted me to play longer to see the snails.
anima_animus049
Oct 09th · 13:52 UTC
really cute and relaxing game!! i love snails sooo much
Lsy
Oct 09th · 14:15 UTC
Very cute art! In gameplay, the difference among all the collections is price and earnings. It would be good to add more dimensions of how the collection affects the performance of museum, so that the players might be more motivated to collect them all. (Maybe extra reward of collecting a whole series of collections or increasing character's ability? I feel the speed a bit slow after opening floor 2)
🎤 Keith Wang
Oct 09th · 15:30 UTC
@naru @sergs-workshop @profugo-barbatus @jaco-van-hemert @dhim @anima-animus049 @lsy
Thanks for the compliment and advices. Some stuff like rewarding a combo was originally in the plan but ditched due to time.
Now that I know there are some snail lovers I might keep working on a post-jam version :) Thanks guys.
Lisek Gagatek
Oct 10th · 19:39 UTC
Awesome sounds, especially for ladybirds :p Cool game idea, very small but nicely executed. Although trying to get all 12 was slightly hard, I guess it would be cool if you increased the chances to get the missing collectibles. Also the pixelart looked a bit blurry, you should probably turn off interpolation in your engine (or export graphics with better settings.

So, to put it shortly - that's what Silksong would look like if it was good.
🎤 Keith Wang
Oct 10th · 21:41 UTC
@lisek-gagatek I am flattered for such a compliment. Thank you so much, definitely makes me wanna add more to it.
Nomelu
Oct 11th · 00:33 UTC
I loved this game. It was awesome seeing my collection grow and seeing the ladybugs enjoying the museum. I really liked that instead of having menus to buy/trash stuff it was a location you visited in the game and interact with. There was lots of empty space in the game though, it felt like the majority of the game took place in a small strip at the bottom, which meant that a lot of the time the relics/visitors/player character/money were all fighting for the same space and it was hard to see. Maybe if the relics were a bit bigger or the money was smaller. I enjoyed seeing the visitors little "amazing" and "worth it" popups. Fun game!
Threeli
Oct 11th · 04:04 UTC
Sorry I'm late to playing your project, today was the first day I could get back on the computer, but I'm here now so let's go!

I fell for this game pretty hard! I love the pixel art immensely. The setup is pretty great all around, though I have to second the criticism leveled by @nomelu. I think, as there's no real pressure for time here maybe you could solve this by having traders / merchants travel in different spaces or even have to go elsewhere to find them. Having said that, given the time constraints you were under here brilliant work! Loved this one and you for sure deserve more ratings!