The nuclear power plant is damaged! The radiation is spreading and it won't stop. Our only hope is to surround it with a wall.
__How to play__
The radiation spreads in every few turns. A countdown is over the power plant. The whole radiation area needs to be inside the wall in order to win.
In your turn you can do one of these actions:
Click on an empty tile to build a wall. The available number of walls is the minimum of the number of houses and number of factories.
Click on the helipad to command a helicopter to drop sand and boron on the reactor to delay the spread with a few turns. It goes on cooldown for a few turns.
Click on a house or a factory and then on an empty tile to move the building. The tile will be inactive for a few turns and won't count into the available walls until then. Only one evacuation can be active.
Changelog: - 2022.04.04.: Added WebGL version to itch.io page
Definitely enjoyed this! Did a really excellent job, between the music, sfx, and stark atmosphere, of making me feel the tension and horror of radiation--which is something I love. Very "this is not a place of honor." The number one problem is communication with the user: the tutorial was unclear & also just lacking important info, and I had to figure out what most stuff did with trial and error. I wasn't even sure if I won (it just said "Game Over".) That said, the actual puzzle aspect of it was fun to try to figure out--don't try to build a small tight wall!
I love the sickly yellow-green for the background, very appropriate for a game about radiation! The abstracted models for the buildings works quite well with the isometric tiles as well visually. The background music is spot on as well.
I think I agree with @jess-from-online that communication with the user could be clearer. I also had a problem unzipping the game using the Windows file manager - although I could using 7-Zip.
I wasn't really able to figure out whether was I was doing had any effect on the outcome of the game. Also the feedback for what action I was performing wasn't well indicated. When moving houses I often dropped walls instead.
The art style and sounds were definitely a highlight though. Very consistent and made a great mood.
I like this game a lot actually. As everyone has said, the art direction is impecable, and it definitely has the sound design to accompany it. The mood it creates is absolutely perfect for the theme!
This was a great entry! It felt like a puzzle I needed to crack. I was a little bit confused at first but after a couple of restarts I got the hang of it. Maybe having the radiation go _around_ walls as it spreads instead of ignoring them would add more strategy!
The art was well chosen. Made me feel like I was truly in a strategy room on an old 80s computer trying to plan out how to save the region. I'm not sure if it's possible to win - after all the theme is "delay the inevitable", but I never did find a way to hold off the inevitable end.
I don't really agree with what other's have said about the clarity of the instructions. Sure, they weren't the most detailed but a lot of games give you nothing at all. Your instructions plus a few failures and I picked up the game within minutes. My only complaint is I wish there was more 😏 This could easily be turned into a full puzzle game with lots of different levels.
The game did a great job of establishing a mood -- the music was maybe a touch repetitive, but damn creepy. I was pretty frustrated at first because I thought the walls would block the radiation -- I think they should, it would make the game more strategic and internally consistent (if you're building a wall around the reactor to stop the radiation, shouldn't the wall stop the radiation?). Once I got what was going on with the walls, I was able to win, and still enjoyed the game.
I absolutely love the music here. Very appropriate for the gameplay.
I think my biggest gripe is with various UI issues. It's not clear when you have actually successfully chosen a house to move, so I ended up repeatedly wasting a wall by accident and then just restarting the game. Similarly, if you actually click to close the help menu, it'll place down a wall, which meant that multiple times I restarted, clicked, and then had to restart again and remember to press a key instead of clicking.
But these of course are basically nitpicks. The rest of the game is pretty solid, although I agree with others that it could possibly be more interesting if the radiation spread was contained within the walls. That could enable some different kinds of puzzle designs, although I imagine the rest of the mechanics would have to be rebalanced.
Overall though I had a pretty good time playing a couple times and figuring out how to win. There's just enough mechanics that you kind of have to learn all of them through a couple attempts, but there's not so many that it's impossible to learn. Good job!
Comments21
I think I agree with @jess-from-online that communication with the user could be clearer. I also had a problem unzipping the game using the Windows file manager - although I could using 7-Zip.
Overall, very nice work.
The art style and sounds were definitely a highlight though. Very consistent and made a great mood.
Thanks for the upload!
I didn't realize at first that you can only have one building being moved at a time, so I ended up placing walls instead of moving buildings.
Otherwise it is really a great game. The graphics are effective, the audio is really nice, and I really like that green.
Good job !
I think my biggest gripe is with various UI issues. It's not clear when you have actually successfully chosen a house to move, so I ended up repeatedly wasting a wall by accident and then just restarting the game. Similarly, if you actually click to close the help menu, it'll place down a wall, which meant that multiple times I restarted, clicked, and then had to restart again and remember to press a key instead of clicking.
But these of course are basically nitpicks. The rest of the game is pretty solid, although I agree with others that it could possibly be more interesting if the radiation spread was contained within the walls. That could enable some different kinds of puzzle designs, although I imagine the rest of the mechanics would have to be rebalanced.
Overall though I had a pretty good time playing a couple times and figuring out how to win. There's just enough mechanics that you kind of have to learn all of them through a couple attempts, but there's not so many that it's impossible to learn. Good job!