Medieval City Sim

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.18

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.03

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.37

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.32

Can you find the best possible combinations of buildings and to score the best results?

MCS is a minimalistic game made under 72h for LudumDare 45. Theme: Start with nothing.

The rules are simple. You have 42 turns (build choices) after which the game will score the board and will show you the score. Post your results in the comments below! Let's find the best combination of buildings!

How to play:

- Select a building from the list of available buildings
- Read the description of every building and how it will score at the end
- "A" means adjacent (orthogonal + diagonals), "R/C" means Row/Column bonuses apllied to the buildings in the row/column.
- Place it on the dirt spaces in the castle
- You can click on "SCORE CITY" button to force score evaluation and to reset the board

Credits:

- Font - Boxy Bold - William.Thompsonj - Collaborators: Clint Bellanger, cemkalyoncu, usr_share - https://opengameart.org/content/boxy-bold-truetype-font
- Kenney Assets - https://www.kenney.nl/assets/bit-pack

Tags: #city builder, #high score, #medieval, #pixel art, #short

Genres: puzzle

Tools: Unity

Comments44

Kanonix6 Oct 2019, 21:49

I made a score of 114 ^^
I don't know if it's great or not, but I can say that I had quite some fun playing your game :)

However, I think it would have been a bit better if I could erase some buildings or, even better, if I replace an older building with a new one, that it doesn't count in the building's counter. Because I lost some points because of that :p

Good job anyway in such a short time !!

Zlat7 Oct 2019, 05:28

164 points. Nice game, but it will be nice if you can replace buildings...at the cost of builds/turns of course. Good Luck!

coffeedrinkersauthor7 Oct 2019, 06:28

Ah, thanks for the nice comments. Glad you're having fun. Just to clarify, you can replace building at the cost of turns. Select the new building and click over the old one. Sadly, you can replace your old house with a new one... an issue which will be fixed.
My personal score atm is 231. ^.^

Bredera8 Oct 2019, 09:41

I got 140, cool little city maker. I love the art! good job!

coffeedrinkersauthor8 Oct 2019, 11:09

@bredera Thank you, was really fun working on this one. After the jam, probably would expand it more with more buildings, obstacles and etc.

oskanberg8 Oct 2019, 11:51

Love the novel concept, and the art is fantastic.

matharoo8 Oct 2019, 11:56

Pretty interesting. I love the concept and the art is good! A game like this but on a larger map would be awesome.
Explanation of the point system could be done better, was a bit confusing.
Good game nonetheless.

coffeedrinkersauthor8 Oct 2019, 12:23

Yup, UI needs more work. The scoring information was a bit tricky how to be explained. During the development, we had this table with the building interactions... sadly there're no space on the screen, and this tooltip was the best idea we came up with. @matharoo thanks for the feedback, after the LD we will experiment with bigger grid.

zc745608 Oct 2019, 13:15

Good game.
First time 171!
Maybe give me a little map to let me know the rule well is better.

netmute8 Oct 2019, 14:25

I love small puzzles like these, well done! But I had a hard time figuring how the buildings affected each other.

In the end I managed to get 143 points. Yay me! :sweat_smile:

KrisDev8 Oct 2019, 19:43

Game is dope dudes

Ekaterina9 Oct 2019, 02:43

Cool simulator! I really liked it, simple but interesting)

Savvy Community9 Oct 2019, 10:48

Really interesting concept and a cool retro style!

HappySnake9 Oct 2019, 12:09

147 but also my city looked ugly because i placed stuff in weird placed :)
really neat idea for a game and very unique. Could do with building into the scoring with a little tutorial + some feedback and polish for placing things and scoring would make this really cool. I like the art style too :)

Drestin9 Oct 2019, 12:09

The replace-building bug is annoying.
But I like the concept and its simplicity, while making the game fun.

Caberu9 Oct 2019, 12:10

167! I like the minimalist style even if it's a little bit blurry. Really cool!

coffeedrinkersauthor9 Oct 2019, 12:44

I'm glad you're all having fun. Tutorial, UI, score predictions are on the list after the LD. Thank you for the feedback!

Danny888819 Oct 2019, 20:25

177! The rules were confusing at first and I'm still not sure if I completely understand how everything works. There is a small bug where if you try and replace a building where one is already placed, it subtracts from the avaliable building count.
I really liked the graphics but I feel that import settings messed with the quality of them.
Cool game!

Jahwffrey9 Oct 2019, 21:21

I really like this idea! It's a non-simple optimization challenge, but I think it really needs work. As it stands you are simply dropped into things and given a flood of numbers with no feedback, and then when you finish you have no idea if you did well or not (is a score above 100 good? I dont know!). It would heavily benefit from, for example, indicators of what is making your score go up and down or showing what your score is while building. Really it all boils down to feedback - turning this monolithic scoring thing into something human readable and an enjoyable, open ended puzzle. Great potential!

coffeedrinkersauthor9 Oct 2019, 21:45

@jahwffrey Thank you for the feedback. After LD ends, I'll come back and finish this project with the added polish it deserves. Thanks again!

Marcin J9 Oct 2019, 21:54

Graphics scaling is a bit off and it could use some sound effects when you're placing buildings. I still played it for quite a bit because I like city builders and min maxing adjacancy bonuses and stuff in games :P

Stefanie Leitch9 Oct 2019, 22:01

I got a score of 78. TBH I'm terrible at puzzle games, but the graphics were great and the concept was interesting. Good work!

Barbiche10 Oct 2019, 10:47

Your idea is really great! It is really interesting, and overall a really good job. Points to be reviewed are already in other comments :)

Yohsk1310 Oct 2019, 12:01

211 o/
I'm pretty sur you can do more but I don't really want to get rid of my straight road crossing the town. Nice little game of optimisation mixed with city positioning :) well done. (but yeah, I agree with some point above, like having a clearer explanation in game on adjacence/row bonus, perhaps some score feedback ? I don't really know :p)

Interressing puzzle game. I'm getting back on it to beat your 231

coffeedrinkersauthor10 Oct 2019, 12:05

@yohsk13 Solid! Would love to see screenshot of the 211 score! :D Don't know can you send me a PM with the shot... Go, beat my score! :D

Demuss10 Oct 2019, 12:15

Great job. Little, cute, well made puzzle that just works... not really my type of game but i did enjoy it anyway

Yohsk1310 Oct 2019, 12:17

@coffeedrinkers I don't know how to send pm, but I can post it here ^^. And here is 239 :v:

However, I noticed that the inn is supposed to have a -1 adjacence malus with the market, but in fact get none of it (you can put one in next to a market and get away with a score of 0)

coffeedrinkersauthor10 Oct 2019, 12:19

@yohsk13 Ahhhh, I see what you did there :D... Why didn't you place a second graveyard? (+20pts)

NavrcL10 Oct 2019, 12:31

Cool simulator.

Yohsk1310 Oct 2019, 12:35

@coffeedrinkers I honsetly didn't see there was a bonus for that ^^ If you replace the park on the right to the other graveyard and then the houses around the new graveyard by parks you can go up to 246. But the graveyard bonus is usually eaten by the -5 maluses on most building, making it hard to place

coffeedrinkersauthor10 Oct 2019, 12:50

@yohsk13 I'm not sure, but I think with the current buildings and grid - 246 is the optimal build. Just for the fun, the current record for worst build is -426. :D

kirroyal10 Oct 2019, 22:11

Fun puzzle, 190 was my score so far ^^ I like the symplistic art style. Could use some background music, more tiles and some instant feedback and this would be neat little mobile game! Good job.

Wevel11 Oct 2019, 11:03

My best score so far is 181, its an interesting puzzle. It would be nice if you can change a building, without it taking up an extra building.

QuadApe11 Oct 2019, 13:50

That's a neat idea! And these cute pixel assets were a good choise!

Karanveer11 Oct 2019, 15:13

Yo so is a score of 140 good? I enjoyed it, just was wondering if this game was ever to be published it would have been a good release with some more custom art , mechanics were on point. Kinda little medieval maker!

Karanveer11 Oct 2019, 15:27

sorry i meant -140 lol. My second attempt was even worse

coffeedrinkersauthor11 Oct 2019, 16:06

@karanveer I'm planning on expanding the game with more buildings, bigger grid and etc. One step at a time. :D And thanks for playing.

Karanveer11 Oct 2019, 16:25

nsadie11 Oct 2019, 19:52

Is this inspired by Islanders? I enjoyed it, got 139, would have liked some sort of visual feedback when you place buildings and variable grid sizes could have been cool as well. Good job!

redmountainman111 Oct 2019, 20:08

loved this one, hiscore was 258 :D

coffeedrinkersauthor11 Oct 2019, 20:30

@nsadie Yes, I really liked the Islander (and as a big fan of boardgames) I wanted to try something like this. I've planned to add most of things that you mentioned after the LD. Visual feedback is really crucial for my game and... I completely forgot about it and tried to balance the buildings.

@redmountainman1 For you build, you know that if you have 2 hospitals/2 graveyards you'll receive +20pts?
Congrats on beating @yohsk13 score. :D

p-r11 Oct 2019, 21:24

got 153, but will try for more. interesting and entertaining

itsdanidre14 Oct 2019, 22:35

Woah. Looking at these comments, some of these builds are hilarious, yet cheeky.

I'd have never thought I could get away without including a graveyard. I like the game, and it's a great idea. But it would be good to know how I'm being scored a bit more lol. Just stats everywhere isn't good for my more visual than analytical (at the moment) brain.

I also thought 92 would be amazing since it is close to 100%, but these comments prove my score minimalistic lol

coffeedrinkersauthor16 Oct 2019, 17:32

Heya @itsdanidre, thanks for playing. Yes, the UX was forgotten for this entry and it's a mistake really. But note taken, if i'm doing city builders again with scorings, UX and proper score explanation is a must.

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