LdDB
Ludum Dare #40compo

Power Play

by lawzy93
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.55
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.19
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.94
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.05
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.00
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.26
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.64

Power Play

My first attempt at a Ludum Dare.

For Ludum Dare #40 - The more you have, the worse it is.

The Idea

You start as a slave, hoping to work your way up in the world, maybe even become king. But what will you do to get there? Will you work hard and honestly claw your way to the top or will you let your power and influence corrupt you on the way? What lines would you cross to get to the top?

The game's goal was to test if the more power you have, the worse your morals would be.

What's In The Game

- Day Progression
- Work Level and Impacts for Slave and Workers
- Extra Actions 'Engine'
- Pick a Name when not a Slave
- Get offered a Promotion to Worker
- Offer to Bribe a Manager for a Promotion
- Simple AI
- Complete Work Level each Day based on Laziness
- Can die
- Map Generation
- Visible Buildings
- Visible People
- Zoom out from Plot level to Town to Kingdom
- 256 possible Plots
- 4096 squares
- Working Status Bar
- Ability to Die
- Hand Drawn Art

What's Not In The Game

- Proper Gameplay
- Needs more (read BASICALLY ALL) extra actions to test use of power
- Needs implementation of Manager, Owner, Lord, and King
- Needs the ability to progress between, or be kicked back in Jobs
- Complete AI
- Need to be able to complete their own extra actions
- Build Mechanic
- Part of the extra actions plan was to have a build mechanic to open up more options

- Ideas included:
- Other Buildings
- Slave Quarters
- Prison
- Torture Chamber
- Public Whipping Square
- Public Execution
- Day Spa
- Lava Lamp Factory
- CSS for Portrait Views
- Currently looks horrible if screen height is greater than width
- Better Input/Info Panels
- Needs custom dialogue box
- Needs the ability to see influence and power over AI's
- Needs the ability to check status logs (For now can be viewed in a dev console using `status_log`)
- Any Audio Whatsoever (This was very low on my priorities list)

Post-Jam Updates

I'm planning to continue working on this game and have created a little menu screen to allow people to chose the original compo game or the post-jam updated version. (This was done after submission) Feel free to review the Compo version, but note that it is far from complete. The Post-Jam should be a much more enjoyable experience.

Post-Jam plans can be seen at https://github.com/Lawzy93/power-play/projects/1

Better Pop-Up Dialogues

- Popups are no longer web browser default one and look much more a part of the game.
- This lays the foundations for Influence and Power View and Status Log View

Status Log View

- Click on the status bar to view all previous statuses

Portrait View CSS

- The game now scales well for all view window sizes

Influence and Power View

- By clicking on the scroll icon you can view your influence and power with others.

screenshot
Tags: #meaningful choices
Genres: interactive fiction, role playing

Comments27

4 Dec 2017, 06:34
Seems like way too overly ambitious of a project for a weekend game jam. Lack of completed functionality is unfortunately very evident.
Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy4 Dec 2017, 06:41
Interesting concept. Would be curious to see this fleshed out in your original vision. Is there a way to earn gold in this one? I can't figure out how to earn any to attempt a bribe. reminds of a house of cards, but probably because your take on power and morality.
McFish4 Dec 2017, 06:42
Fast loading time and responsive layout .. that's a big plus. But the game is quite hard to figure out without reading instructions first.
RNGSilvercraft
RNGSilvercraft4 Dec 2017, 06:53
Is that an Iron maiden reference?Anyway,Cool idea for a game despite being a little complex.
lawzy93author4 Dec 2017, 06:58
Thanks for the feedback all, I totally agree that it was too much of a stretch for 48hrs.

I'm planning on continuing work over the next few weeks with updates on a separate GitHub fork (or whatever the term is). The game will be amended to show a link to the updated version if anyone is interested.
lawzy93author4 Dec 2017, 06:59
@mark-kennedy - Currently there is no way to make money as a slave, You are paid as a Worker, but there is no option at that point to do anything with the money.
wh05herlock4 Dec 2017, 07:18
This looks really cool, and I like the idea. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much you can do at the moment :(.

Would be cool if you added a lot more things you can do and then submitted a post ludum-dare version so we could try the game with more features. :)
lawzy93author4 Dec 2017, 07:24
@wh05herlock I plan to, would love it if you are able to give it another go. Will comment on here with new updates.
btwj4 Dec 2017, 08:45
The idea itself has potential, but the game unfortunately isn't that complete. The programmer art in this case looks quite good actually. I hope you'll work on the idea in your own time (48 hours really isn't that long) :)
Strelly
Strelly4 Dec 2017, 23:49
It seems like an interesting idea but needs a bit more research, I couldn't heal even when slacking, I don't know if that's intentional, the graphic style is good imo, I think it was a very ambitious game. Good job anyway!
SammyB
SammyB5 Dec 2017, 04:56
You could see this as an overly ambitious entry that didn't quite make it, but maybe we all just got tricked into playing a clicker game :laughing:
bradur
bradur5 Dec 2017, 07:53
I liked the idea but the UI needs work. It's very hard to understand at first.
dusho5 Dec 2017, 09:33
as you mentioned, this needs more work. Challenge of 48h game jams is also to scale your ideas so you can finish things in time and still make it fun. This looks promising, though. Keep it up..
GistNoesis5 Dec 2017, 10:06
Unfinished game. I couldn't get any money. I didn't understand the point of the map. The art is childish but funny. Try picking up a less ambitious game next time. Ludum Dare is a good exercise to meet a deadline.
lawzy93author5 Dec 2017, 22:19
@gistneosis I have certainly learned my lesson in what can be achievable. Is there any real art to accomplishing that without knocking something together that's super generic?
Tiberiusuciu
Tiberiusuciu7 Dec 2017, 05:37
The game is fun, it reminds a lot of idle games I used to make years ago. I like it.

I was having a hard time understanding what the map was used for initially. Otherwise the game is fun!
Good job! :)
sorlok
sorlok7 Dec 2017, 05:47
Interesting concept, but the actual controls+UI were a bit confusing. I liked the potential tradeoffs between integrity and bribery!
almost
almost7 Dec 2017, 07:32
I spent some time trying to find myself but decided that I don't actually exist.

With more experience doing game jams you can become more efficient, but one thing that might have saved time would be to have fewer art variants (you have 2 building images, 3 tree images, and around 4 people variants. I think a manager role where you can force people that report to you to overwork and receive income based on their productivity would be interesting.

PS: when editing the game you can opt-out of audio/humor if you don't want to be rated in those categories.
lawzy93author7 Dec 2017, 08:48
Thanks for the reviews everyone.

@almost - you definitely should exist. You have red hair and will always be on the screen you start on.

A lot of the extra art was done on the final morning, I had a headache, a list of things to finish that was too long and didn't want to get out of bed. So I tweaked some of the art.

Thanks for the tip about opting out. May do that in the future.

Really appreciate the advice :)
lawzy93author7 Dec 2017, 08:52
@tiberiusuciu If you had trouble figuring out the purpose of the map, that's because, at the moment, there is none :( I planned to add a building mechanic to mix in some variety to the game. Hopefully will get it done in the next few weeks if you want to check it out.

Thanks for the feedback :)
SVR_Audio10 Dec 2017, 13:15
I played the compo version, pretty cool game, quite confusing at first, but after a while it is fun to play, the concept is really good, and the art looks so good, great job !
deathray
deathray12 Dec 2017, 03:02
Sounds like a neat concept but I wasn't sure what to do except keeping hitting "Next day" until I died. (_An allegory of life?_)
alexfalkenberg
alexfalkenberg13 Dec 2017, 18:59
Interesting idea, way too ambitious for the time we had available (but you know that now :)). Once I got to a certain point it became a clicker game, which was unfortunate, but I'd love to see more done with this. Gonna try your post-jam version later today. Have a great LD!
pvtroswold
pvtroswold17 Dec 2017, 21:08
I can't believe it took me this long to return the rating/comment on this game, I like the trade-off between your health/money, interesting concept. Naming myself made life feel so much sweeter (I'm a real boy)! I like the additional stats added in the post-jam. But it would have been nice to have more commands to utilize them more (e.g., "talk to manager"), to give you more control over your situation, or just to make you feel like you have, heh. Anyhow, I like what is there, it looks promising! Good job
Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord