Colony by Arscene

[raw]
made by Arscene for Ludum Dare 56 (COMPO)

Colony is a realtime colony builder card game.

Screen1.png

Screen2.png

Your goal is to maintain and expand a colony of tiny creatures using cards.

Controls:

  • Drag: Move the camera

  • Mouse wheel: Zoom in/out

  • Drag cards: Move cards around

  • Space: Pause / unpause

  • F: Fast forward / normal speed

How to play:

  • Each card can be either an Egg, Creature, Food, Location or Effect

  • Drag cards in Verb slots of corresponding type

  • Once a verb is full, it will take action after an indicated amount of time

  • Don't forget that you can pause the time using space

  • Buy new verbs using eggs

Tips:

  • If you want to understand how the game works by yourself stop your reading there

  • Creatures will be exhausted after 3 verbs

  • The pause button is really helpful, use it !

  • LAYing eggs is exhausting

  • EAT removes the starving status, it does not do anything else

  • Creatures can eat FOOD and EGGs

  • The pause button is really helpful, use it !

  • Creatures who are exhausted need to LAY

  • Creatures who are exhausted will die after 3 verbs

  • The pause button is really helpful, use it !

  • Creatures with a status take more time to scavenge and explore

  • If you want to take a card out of a verb use the green X button at the top right of the verb

Tools used:

  • Game: Unity 2022.3.49f1

  • Code: JetBrains Rider 2024.1.2

  • "Art": Figma

  • Font used: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto

You can find everything I made in the links below, even a log of my work.

Bug found: - Stacking cards in a slot will break the game (the card becomes stuck inside the slot) :(

Ratings

Overall 128th 3.63⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 157th 3.391⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 71th 3.804⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 267th 3.043⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 193th 3.413⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

Acdia
06. Oct 2024 · 22:03 UTC
Hmm, I feel like I'm in the possession of an unreasonable amount of things...

![stuff.png](///raw/aaa/f2/z/65d3c.png)
🎤 Arscene
07. Oct 2024 · 07:46 UTC
Congratulations !
SkyyStorm
07. Oct 2024 · 17:52 UTC
I enjoyed this! A very cool idea, with a cool system and UI. Simple yet interesting.
Clare_Chan1738
08. Oct 2024 · 01:45 UTC
Pretty cool concept and mechanics, I am not very good at the game but still found it enjoyable!
Clare_Chan1738
08. Oct 2024 · 01:45 UTC
Sviborg
08. Oct 2024 · 06:25 UTC
Great game with interesting mechanics and a simple but addictive system! 🃏 Card management is very exciting, this is my favorite genre. Although I am not a master in this game, I still enjoyed the process. Great concept that develops strategic thinking! 👏 A little polish and you can send it to the store. I would definitely play 😊
Game-mon
08. Oct 2024 · 13:58 UTC
Very cool game with involved strategy in it! Gameplay wise it's pretty cool, maybe a little bit hard to get started. To improve, I would focus on 2 things: 1) it doesn't quite feel like a complete game without audio, 2) graphics: don't get me wrong the cards look nice, but I think it would be cool to have the cards be less generic: you could have different creatures, different locations to explore (cave, jungle, idk) and it would make the game feel a little more lively. Plus people love collecting cards when there's a sense of rarity.

Anyway a very cool entry!
RilleP
08. Oct 2024 · 14:04 UTC
It was very fun for a while! But then it was just the same thing but more.
Jack D. Taylor
08. Oct 2024 · 15:56 UTC
10 Rimworlds out of 10, built a self-sustaining cannibal colony feeding on own eggs :D

![colony.png](///raw/eff/z/67f54.png)

Amazing game, I spent literally the whole evening playing it! It is like any base-building game stripped to the barebone mechanic, totally love the concept and visuals.
ElenaMisuBean
09. Oct 2024 · 03:31 UTC
i need larger brain to get further. great game
block97
09. Oct 2024 · 03:33 UTC
Really cool take on the theme. Never seen design taken in this direction. awesome work!
taotang
09. Oct 2024 · 09:50 UTC
nice game. I used to play stackland a lot. It's my type of game.
fusionnist
10. Oct 2024 · 13:50 UTC
I got sucked in for a little while, I totally get the appeal of this! The gamefeel is a nice bonus too :-)
JamieOK
17. Oct 2024 · 20:49 UTC
Really interesting presentation with the cards and windows. Feels very nice to click, drag and pop the cards around. The slow introduction of each card is very helpful, from hatching to exploring to laying and so on. I found there was a bit of a 'death spiral' that could occur, mainly caused by a healthy creature becoming exhausted or starving while in the 'lay' window and therefore, not producing an egg at the end. I also wasn't sure what to do with an exhausted creature to fix it, besides leaving them somewhere which felt like wasting time.
Overall, a great game concept and executed very well, I think I'm just bad at it :joy:
leckert
18. Oct 2024 · 03:56 UTC
Really awesome concept and game feel! It's clear that the systems in the game were thoughtfully designed -- I can imagine it would be compelling on a larger scale with more verbs as well. Loved the illustrations on the cards too lol
CrociDB
18. Oct 2024 · 13:08 UTC
It's such a great game for a compo! I really like it, especially because it's really well implemented and the feel is pretty good. Fun and a little challenging! Great job!