Ludum Dare #37compo
Open-Plan Office Distractions
Observe the numerous distractions provided by a shared one room office space.
Will your team persevere, despite constant phone calls, ambitious project deadlines, and wandering managers?
If your team delivers on time, they will unlock golden tokens of management esteem, which can be used to bury past mistakes, or to create a more pleasant work environment. And if you complete enough projects, your team will grow even larger.
Miss your deadlines however, and you will earn the ire and black marks of the management team instead. Five such marks, and your team will be disolved!
How many projects will your team survive under such conditions?
The game is an affectionate spoof on working in an open-plan office environment. This is an "indirect control" / "simulator" style game, where you do not control the office workers directly. However, you can unlock upgrades to the work-environment (and neutralize black marks) using the "golden markers" that your team earn for completing projects on time. To do so, click on an upgrade icon (costs 3 golden markers), or on the black mark icon (costs 2 golden markers). Press space to toggle accelerated game speed.
The game was made in Java, using the LibGDX framework. Java is required in order to run the game.
*EDIT - clarification of the controls:*
You cannot control/interact directly with the office-workers, the game is mostly an idle game (you can tap space in order to toggle faster speed).
However, when projects are completed before (or slightly after) the deadline, you earn management goodwill (golden markers). You can use 2 golden markers to eliminate a single black mark (by clicking on the black mark icon).
You can also use 3 gold coins, to buy one of the three upgrades, by clicking on its icon: The phone (phone calls create less noise), the shoe (new expensive but uncomfortable shoes for the manager, making him walk more slowly), or the dice (bigger chance of a project getting a positive modifier, rather than a negative one).
*EDIT 2*
Bugfix uploaded: In some rare cases, specific resolutions caused the buttons to sometimes malfunction. Thanks to Saiodin for reporting this.
I have also re-enabled the debug-mode for triple speed, since a lot of commenters considered that a feature. Toggle the faster speed by tapping space :)
Will your team persevere, despite constant phone calls, ambitious project deadlines, and wandering managers?
If your team delivers on time, they will unlock golden tokens of management esteem, which can be used to bury past mistakes, or to create a more pleasant work environment. And if you complete enough projects, your team will grow even larger.
Miss your deadlines however, and you will earn the ire and black marks of the management team instead. Five such marks, and your team will be disolved!
How many projects will your team survive under such conditions?
The game is an affectionate spoof on working in an open-plan office environment. This is an "indirect control" / "simulator" style game, where you do not control the office workers directly. However, you can unlock upgrades to the work-environment (and neutralize black marks) using the "golden markers" that your team earn for completing projects on time. To do so, click on an upgrade icon (costs 3 golden markers), or on the black mark icon (costs 2 golden markers). Press space to toggle accelerated game speed.
The game was made in Java, using the LibGDX framework. Java is required in order to run the game.
*EDIT - clarification of the controls:*
You cannot control/interact directly with the office-workers, the game is mostly an idle game (you can tap space in order to toggle faster speed).
However, when projects are completed before (or slightly after) the deadline, you earn management goodwill (golden markers). You can use 2 golden markers to eliminate a single black mark (by clicking on the black mark icon).
You can also use 3 gold coins, to buy one of the three upgrades, by clicking on its icon: The phone (phone calls create less noise), the shoe (new expensive but uncomfortable shoes for the manager, making him walk more slowly), or the dice (bigger chance of a project getting a positive modifier, rather than a negative one).
*EDIT 2*
Bugfix uploaded: In some rare cases, specific resolutions caused the buttons to sometimes malfunction. Thanks to Saiodin for reporting this.
I have also re-enabled the debug-mode for triple speed, since a lot of commenters considered that a feature. Toggle the faster speed by tapping space :)
Comments19
Overall: 4/5. A very nice game.
Innovation: 5/5. The best twist on the theme I've ever seen. Oh, and it's an idle game!
Fun: 4/5. Watching the workers disturb each other was fun. What about a fast-forward control?
Theme: 5/5. Like I said, a really good twist.
Graphics: 4/5. Simple and clean.
Humor: N/A. I'm bad at rating humor in games.
Mood: 4/5. One room office disturbancies nailed perfectly.
I have edited the game description above, to specifically mention the ways you can interact with the game/simulation
My largest of which is the fact that you either can't interact with anything, or you haven't said how to clearly. This is a huge problem as it causes a lot of frustration and confusion.
Secondly, throwing a wall of text at the player before anything else could very easily cause them to close the game first thing. You should probably tease, or promise some fun or something first.
Also, the text about their new project goes by far too quickly to read, which leads to being behind and not knowing what's going on.
Should allow the player to have more stuff to do ... like clicking of stuff
I would have also like to have more stuff to interact with, not used to idle games ^^'
@HawkSandwich, while the possible interactions are listed both in the in-game intro, as well as in my project description above, in my future games I'll make sure to highlight clickable elements more clearly :) As for the project description, only the "flavor" project description is hidden, so you did not miss anything related to the project completion criteria :) Thank you for your comments!
I have uploaded a new version, fixing the bug reported by Saiodin, and re-enabling the "3x debug speed" mode (toggled with space).
@Saiodin, thank you for reporting the bug! It was triggered in a very specific set of circumstances (maximizing the window on the intro-screen, combined with having a screen with a different aspect ratio). This has now been fixed.
Some sound could really buff the humour here and make the downtime a bit more enjoyable, but it's a pretty solid humourous entry all the same.