Student Loan Simulator 2017 Ramen Edition

by smbe19
co-authored: @shujal
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.15
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.75
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.27
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.92
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.00
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.96
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.76
Play as an aspiring young student. Experience the joy of taking out a loan to pay your bills. :ramen:

promo001.png
Features
--------
- Fast, engaging gameplay
- More than 1800 different companies sending you bills
- 40 different credit institutions to choose from
- Online high score: compete against the best from all around the world
- HD Textures
- More than 600 lines of hand crafted Lua code
- Made with Löve

promo003.png
How to play
-----------
- Choose a bill on the left to open it
- Click the pay button to pay the bill
- Should you run out of money take out a loan using the button on the right (the percentage is the interest you will pay on this loan)
- Make sure you don't miss the due date of a bill
- If you miss a due date you will get a notice (with some added fees)
- If you miss a notice the company will impawn something worth twice the bill amount
- Don't run out of money, otherwise you lose
- Beat the high score

Team
----
- Art: Matteo Signer
- Code: Benjamin Schmid

promo002.png
Installation
------------
The HTML5 build does not support high scores and might have some bugs. Use the downloadable game for the best experience.

To run the game download Löve for your platform and then open the downloaded .love file with Löve. For Windows you can also download a complete bundle which already includes Löve.

Post Jam Fixes
--------------
- Forgot April in calendar
- Fix dialog title background

screenshot
Genres: simulation
Tools: LÖVE

Comments20

gatinmnsok5 Dec 2017, 18:53
THEY TOOK MY PET SNAKE :@

My tactics were to just take out a bunch of loans at a lowish interest rate and then pay of the bills.
But in the end, I was buried under a pile of them.

I also played this game with löve :)
Nava5 Dec 2017, 18:53
Nice entry!
But it goes from fun to depressing really fast! hahah
At some point I missed a way to pay multiple bills with one click.
Good job :)
the_ShaderMaster5 Dec 2017, 18:54
Great concept!
Like the straightforward no-nonsense graphics!

Still feels like it lacking some gameplay elements however :(
Riker Greenslade5 Dec 2017, 18:57
Nice game! It really clicked for me the first time I got a massive amount of payment notices for the loans I took out - that huge flood of invoices really brings on the panic.
corc0
corc05 Dec 2017, 19:03
This feels too real. Ouch.

Mechanically: stacking the bills the way you did was brilliant. Makes them hard to access/keep track of (much like real bills).

It feels like a complete, working system, which is a big deal in 72 hours. I can't say it's fun, but you really did realize your game's premise in an effective way. Nice!
unit684
unit6845 Dec 2017, 19:04
Nice work, I can relate :D

In the WebGL version it was a bit difficult to click on the letter I wanted. Otherwise, I thought the game looked great and played great! I loved the sense of urgency and trying to balance interest rates with paying bills was pretty hectic!
5 Dec 2017, 19:04
It's a good concept for the the theme, but for me it lacks on the gameplay front, I don't feel really playing just clicking.
interpol
interpol5 Dec 2017, 19:06
The loose is inevitable, like in real life. Cruel!

I would like to see more gameplay features. And is the loan % completely random?
If so, a high score is bound to your luck with %.
LimeniusTeam
LimeniusTeam5 Dec 2017, 19:07
The most original I have found so far, and probably the one I have played for a longer time. :) From a simple concept you created something very enjoyable. Congratulations! A bit tricky to click on some of the bills sometimes, but that is a minor detail. Well done.
profan
profan5 Dec 2017, 19:10
I love this, I played it locally as well just fetching the löve file...

Depressing indeed, absolutely buried under both loans and bills at a certain point!

Great work though, surprisingly fun, definitely takes the mind off ones own student loans for a while.. ^^
Rixium
Rixium5 Dec 2017, 19:11
Pretty good, and has a sense of strategy. Interesting take on the theme, but some music and sounds would have been great. Cool game.

I made a mistake trying to cheat with more loans. I don't think it helped. :)
Oceanosaurus
Oceanosaurus5 Dec 2017, 19:21
Damn it's hard to be a student on a loan! Pretty cool concept, definitely fits the theme... the bigger the loan the worse it is! Miss some restart button to try again without having to reload the page (unless I've missed it!)
daul
daul5 Dec 2017, 19:32
Fun little simulation game! Really puts into perspective how interest adds up and while it may seem like a good idea initially to get more loans to pay off others, the effect is devastating in the future. Nice job!
smbe19
smbe19author5 Dec 2017, 19:32
@interpol The interest rate follows a sine curve between 5% and 30%, with some noise added. In my experience the interest rate doesn't matter at all as the number of bills is what gets you and not the amount of money.
josefnpat
josefnpat5 Dec 2017, 20:54
Whof, without any way to earn money, I just took out loans when they were low, and hoped for the best. Nice job, utterly hopeless!
Mr.MadCat
Mr.MadCat6 Dec 2017, 20:28
Interesting idea.
I found it a bit lacking from a gameplay persepctive, but I think it does show pretty nicely how devastating loans can be.
PeachTreeOath
PeachTreeOath7 Dec 2017, 05:41
This is a very creative idea! It kinda reminded me of Papers Please and could have benefited from similarly depressing music and sounds. My only disappointment was not getting to see all the dogs I lost and various other impounds in my frantic bill paying. The popup hell was also a nice touch. You really put a lot of effort into this, Congrats!
fluidvolt
fluidvolt7 Dec 2017, 19:57
Nice game -- very stressful to play! I like the simple graphics and the items they take... did I see a Pet Fly? This would really benefit from just a few sounds -- paper shuffling, maybe a ticking clock. Also, it would be cool to see the items that are being taken fly across the screen or something. Maybe for a future version. Good work on this!
Moski
Moski9 Dec 2017, 18:11
They took my favorite game and my laptop. But then, my pet fly? You monsters! :(

For a game with such a simple premise, it got quite addictive. You should really polish this up and aim to get it on mobile devices, where I'm certain that the gameplay is very fitting. Juggling between paying and getting loans was fantastic, and the later game became very frantic. It's very ponzi to take loans to pay up for earlier ones.

If you do decide to continue with this in the future, consider some slight to feedback for the players. Having the debts display some sort of bar or make them shake as they're a few seconds to expire would really help the player prioritize. The "Notice" sign is a great step, but in the later game, just a bit more could have been highly appreciated.

Great work on creating a debt perpetuating simulator. Lots of replayability if only to see how many things they can impound. I'll really miss my pet fly :( In behalf of my team, we're looking forward to playing your future projects. Just let us know :whale:
Somnium
Somnium27 Dec 2017, 18:57
I can't decide whether I think that the game is funny or bleak. Perhaps it is both.

A frantic clicker game - the "are you sure" prompts, with varying placement of the buttons, added nicely to this. A lot of the difficulty was from having to move the mouse back and forth, so perhaps some more mechanical depth could be added in a later iteration.

The theme was spot on as well.

The graphics were nice and clear, and the pseudo-random text was varied enough to keep up the illusion.

>Pay the pile of bills,
>spending tomorrow's money.
>No, wait, that's my dog!

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