The base gameplay is working and it's playable and kinda enjoyable for a while. I hopefully will spend some time expanding it out and making the late game and combat more interesting.
Please read the instructions below since they're not really explained in the game:
Instructions ------------
Goal: Sacrifice 100 souls to the Serpent Totem in your starting town to summon the Serpent God before you are overrun by invading colonists (represented by the red at the top of the world map).
Gameplay --------
Each turn you get 3 actions per town (upgraded towns get 4 or 5 depending on the size), and 1 per army.
Spend your actions by activating "Site abilities", click on a site, then click on the ability on the right panel to activate it (you must meet the requirements, usually a number of followers (blue figures)).
Undo a move by right clicking.
Most Site's can only use one ability per turn, unless the ability is marked as "multi-use" in which case you can use it as many times as you like, provided you meet the requirements.
You can build new Buildings on empty sites with 3 followers, or 2 followers worked to death.
If you're out of space, you can Expand your town from the Serpent Totem or Village Square with 10 Followers and 3 actions, this will also grant an increase in Action income.
Activate Relocate to pick up and move units between any number of sites (or place on the world map adjacent to your town to make an army). You can hold down the button to suck up lots of units or drop lots of units. Once you're done, click the Relocate button again to finish. (This whole process only uses 1 action point, but use it wisely)
You can also use Shamans (purple figure) directly, click on one and it'll show a list of Shaman abilities, these work much the same as Site abilities, but they can also require a number of souls, a Shaman can gather souls by killing followers and the like, granting them more powers. If you have a Shaman gain many souls from killing, they can be later sacrificed to the Serpent God by sacrificing the Shaman at the Serpent Totem.
However, sacrificing increases Rebellion in the town, for every Rebellion over 5, a new Rebel (red figure) is spawned in the town, and rebellion will go down slightly. But each turn that ends with a Rebel in the town, the rebellion will increase by 1 per Rebel. You can deal with Rebels by building a Temple and Re-educating them, or building a Barracks and training Soldiers (green figures), if a Soldier ends their turn on the same site as a Rebel, they will kill each other. Temples and Watchtowers can also help reduce Rebellion before Rebels are spawned.
Once you're out of useful actions, End the Turn in the bottom right. However, the Serpent God requires at least one sacrifice per turn, if you fail to provide this, she will make your followers Sick (black figure) and you'll need to heal them.
This game is amazing! If it had a save function, I would play this even after the jam is over. I wish I could play more, but I want to get onto rating other games.
I think the method of unit-based actions for each tile is a very interesting approach, and the building tile system is both easy to use and fun to manage. The rebellion system also serves well as a secondary goal for the player, and the limited number of actions per turn makes the game feel almost like chess; the player has to plan and carefully consider their moves before doing anything, which I think really makes the gameplay satisfying and interesting.
If you update the game at any point, especially if it's to add a save system, please let me know!
Very intriguing game. I don't quite understand it all, but I was curious enough to continue playing. The cost and actions are all pretty complicated. I built 3 homes, a healing tent and a training hut but now my population seems to get sick quicker than I can heal them. I wish I could choose who to sacrifice so I can kill one of the sick people instead of losing a healthy person to the sacrifice :smile:
@bart-huylebroeck yes, that's a good point, I should allow you to sacrifice sick people and maybe rebels, and also make the sickness spreading a bit less crazy. Thanks for the feedback!
@feilkin it definitely requires reading the instructions unfortunately, it's rather complicated. I'll try to make a tutorial system to guide you through the first few turns or something.
Cool game, graphics where really cool. I think a little bit more handholding / tutorial integrated into the game would make this much easier for people to pick up and get involved with but great work!
It's nice to see such a complex and deep experience, very ambitious for the time period. The mechanics were all really cool, though I feel there might have been some balancing issues. After I'd figured out what I was doing I pretty much never had any rebels or sickness. Maybe some kind of random event system would be nice, otherwise it's too easy to figure out a plan and stick to it unchangingly. At that point it becomes less about strategy and more about carrying out repetitive actions.
Once again though, the fact that you even got all these mechanics in in only 48 hours is amazing. Great job.
@chao thanks for the feedback! I actually had the same thoughts about a random event system (I'm adding that now), a "Destiny" deck of cards are drawn each turn (they maybe have random events or random demands from the Serpent God that you must fulfil) that you can use a Seer to peer at and rearrange or discard.
Very deep! @impbox , have you by any chance read Keith Burgun's articles/ books? I see so much coherent game design on your part all the time, it would make sense. Or you're just a talent, that works too. In any case, top marks, and thank you so much for spotting my publishing mistake
@impbox I'm totally checking that game out. I don't know if you messed it up, you know how ludum dare forces you to do everything at once. I too think it's a little unbalanced but the core is very very sound
:thumbsup: I really liked the pacing of learning in this game (I wish there had been more game so I could have learned a bit more about armies, after beating it the first time I started a second game to experiment with moving people around the map).
:point_right: This game reminded me a bit of Royals, but of course had a different way of managing followers.
:star:Overall excellent job, I really enjoyed playing this!
I think the method of unit-based actions for each tile is a very interesting approach, and the building tile system is both easy to use and fun to manage. The rebellion system also serves well as a secondary goal for the player, and the limited number of actions per turn makes the game feel almost like chess; the player has to plan and carefully consider their moves before doing anything, which I think really makes the gameplay satisfying and interesting.
If you update the game at any point, especially if it's to add a save system, please let me know!