Bound Balance

by imwonderr

co-authored: @enreh, @victor-perotto-pioner

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.66

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.34

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.68

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.09

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.49

About

Take charge of the balance between human civilization and the nature around it. Ensure the survival of humans by carefully positioning and handling tiles in a limited grid and use your godly powers to help them grow and develop. How long can your humans survive?

---------------- PLAY THE POST-JAM VERSION HERE! ----------------

---------------------- PLAY THE JAM VERSION HERE! (RATE THIS ONE!) ----------------------

:-------------------------:|:-------------------------:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tools and Assets

Programming: Unity

Art: Photoshop and Blender

Audio: Kenney, available at www.kenney.nl

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Versions and Patches

The embedded version is the jam version. You can also find a link to that version below (itch). The link to the post-jam version is also below (itch.io, windows and web).

Current version: 0.1.1 - Post jam initial update

0.1.0 - Initial launch

Changelog

Version 0.1.1

GAME BALANCE CHANGES

--Lightning strike changes - Lightning Strike decreases a Village's resources by 1000 for the first cast. That value is increased by 40% for each -subsequent cast affecting this tile. It also decreases the rate the Village obtain resources from neighbor nodes by 25% for 8 years.

--Nature's Boon changes - Nature's boon instantly increases a Nature Tile's (Forest or Lake) resources by 800 for the first cast. This value is decreased by 10% for each subsequent cast affecting this tile.

--Game starts off slower and easier.

--Late game is a bit harder to manage.

--Removed all known infinite gameplay edge-cases.

UI CHANGES

--Tutorial UI Overhaul to better explain how game mechanics work.

--Skill tooltip text updated to better reflect the balance changes.

BUG FIXES

--Fixed flickering on animation end frames.

--Fixed WebGL running on wrong Pipeline Settings.

ADDITIONS

--Water shader

--Change to Dead Tile Animation.

--Added Music

--Leaderboard

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Members

Gabriel Concencio - Programming, 3D Art and VFX

Victor Perotto P. - Programming and Game Design

Guilherme Peixoto - Concept Art, UI and Illustration

Tags: #singleplayer, #top-down

Genres: strategy

Tools: Blender, Unity

Comments45

yammming3 Oct 2023, 00:20

i got to 387 years! Really love the graphics on this, and the sound is pretty good. For some reason the game played a bit slow on my computer, but that's probably more because of my computer than anything on your guys's end. I was a bit confused about the lightning, but everything else made sense :) great job!!

TheLastSlowpoke3 Oct 2023, 00:23

Beautiful art! I love how the tiles jerk a little when placed etc. xd

Derek Glennon3 Oct 2023, 00:23

Looks and plays great! Definitely was confused on the first play through, but started to understand the second time around. Good way to connect to the theme. Nice job!

Esther1283 Oct 2023, 00:23

So Fun! My Humans got at least 2000 years

dasPanjo3 Oct 2023, 00:28

What a beautiful game. The art is so awesome that I just had to play this. Unfortunatelly I have no idea what is happening in the game (even after reading the help bubble in the main menu), so I just placed random objects and ended up with an unlimited years thing?

All in all the game looks awesome and the sounds and placing items is super satisfying. Great job!

Thierry3 Oct 2023, 00:45

The game has a really nice aesthetic, I like it very much. However, I can't figure out how to get past 300 years.

foufoufou3 Oct 2023, 00:48

Great idea and cute low-poly blockings~ It would be great to have tips of how to survive longer.

Don Juan Javier3 Oct 2023, 00:49

Unfortunately the game is unplayable due to a graphics issue. Premise seems really cool though!

Eli Heinrichs3 Oct 2023, 01:20

I loved the simplistic gameplay and the visuals! the game has a great aesthetic and though was difficult to beat was enjoyable. good game!

LDJam user 1311453 Oct 2023, 02:06

LOVE this style. Not sure what the lightning strikes did. Would have liked to see just one more option of tiles to place. Terrific job!

Victor Perotto Pioner3 Oct 2023, 02:24

@yammming Thanks for the feedback!
Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to implement a little more information, but answering, lightning has the power to reduce the amount of resources collected by humans for a short period of time.Thanks for the feedback
Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to implement a little more information, but answering, lightning has the power to reduce the amount of resources collected by humans for a short period of time.

Teamelon3 Oct 2023, 04:18

The game concept is interesting, at first glance looks pretty much easy: plant trees, strike humans, but in this game they are like in reality - devour all that can reach in a blink of an eye. Didn't keep track of one small village and all map is one big village. This game captivated me for some time, 'cause I couldn't last more than 5 seconds, so I spend near a half of an hour in this game trying to survive a bit longer. So it only looks easy, at least for me, maybe I'm not smart enough for this)

The visual is pretty and well animated. Liked that exist some different maps and every try amount of your start tiles are randomly generated.

Conclusion: "Despite existing a lot of similar games already, this one has its own peculiarity and respectively some potential for a decent time-killer, I guess. Nice idea".

Yurain333 Oct 2023, 04:42

a fun game. Cute design

osh.studio3 Oct 2023, 08:36

Beautiful looking game with really good UI, sound design, and also just a fun game. I want to make a similar style game for this jam but in the end went in a complete different direction, so I'm glad I got to live out that idea through you guys. Well done :)

crylica3 Oct 2023, 11:04

Incredibly well polished game, the art and visuals are amazing! Reached Year 1000 and still going. It's interesting that the gameplay/meta is to starve out the humans as long as you can while nature grows. There's a few minor visual bugs (firelight flickering, and sometimes the newly placed tile clips into the base tile). This is an incredible entry for a 72 hr jam, good job to everyone!

Chailotl3 Oct 2023, 16:08

I figured out that you gain enough god points to indefinitely regenerate a single forest next to a single human colony :) The game was pretty fun, and I loved the low-poly tile graphics!
![cfzlMA9[1].png](///raw/9d4/95/z/5f4ab.png)

LCStark3 Oct 2023, 18:20

A really fun and well made game! It takes a couple of tries to get use to all systems, but after that it becomes really addicting to try and keep everything running for as long as possible. One false step and those pesky humans will expand themselves into extinction. I love that every run has a differently-shaped level and different amount of tiles to place before you start - it makes replaying the game more interesting when you find yourself in a different set of circumstances.

It could use a little bit more feedback on the skills. I got that the lightning strike reduced the resources the villages use, but it didn't work consistently - when the village was growing it reduced the growth by some amount, when the village was decaying it made the decay quicker, but when the village only had +1 growth it did nothing.

One thing that I'd perhaps add is keyboard shortcuts for the skills. I found myself pressing 1/2/3/4 all the time to try and select the skills quickly, then had to click them because I remembered it doesn't work that way.

Eventually, after 4 or 5 tries I've managed to create a situation where I think the level is stable and will last forever:

On another run I got more of the map destroyed, but I managed to keep a single T3 Village alive for quite a while. :)

Oh, and it a really nice feature that you've added the time speed up that stops at the next event instead of just running until disabled - makes it much easier to react to anything you might have forgotten to check in time.

And great job on the graphics! The artstyle looks really polished. I love a good hex-map game, but when it looks like that I simply love it. :D

Traq Kay3 Oct 2023, 20:26

The game is really well polished and really nice, maybe a bit too hard to keep playing with a normal amount of tiles. It's really fun and the concept is really nice! What I would really like as a quality of life is to see the number of resources directly on all tiles and not have to check every tile by hand. Well done!

carlinhu3 Oct 2023, 20:38

Really cool game! Great design and super cool feedbacks.

Phillip Scott3 Oct 2023, 21:23

We have similar aesthetics, board game esk hexes :heart: Liked having to balance the two sides. Nice game overall and well done

Edom Games3 Oct 2023, 21:40

Interesting idea I like it overall. Interesting idea that can definitely be expanded on. The one thing I felt was missing was a little UI on the map itself showing the resources remaining instead of hovering over each tile. But that's a simple add if you decide to pursue this further. Overall good job!

yrlshchk3 Oct 2023, 21:58

The graphic design is awesome for an LD game + I really like the concept of balancing things out. Would be nice to have a little more detailed guide on tiles and spells.

Alexascher3 Oct 2023, 22:02

Cool artstyle and VFX. The gameplay itself was quite confusing at first, but in the end I've managed to get to 2600 year.

kleinzach3 Oct 2023, 22:59

Great looking game, though I had a bit of a hard time understanding what was going on. Maybe a little more visual feedback as to where the resources are flowing. I'm not really sure why some things were happening, such as when tiles turned black or when villages expanded to nearby squares, and while I'm sure that there are reasons I would love to see it spelled out a bit more.

candyyy07284 Oct 2023, 01:48

so interesting and i like the special effects!!!

Rincs4 Oct 2023, 08:31

Isometric hex always looks so cute, you guys nailed the art and graphics. I loved the game, clearly needs some balancing issues, but I still had fun!

Anthony Katona4 Oct 2023, 15:58

very nice look and general feel in feedback/responsiveness/UI/fx! I loved the procedural element, it felt very inviting to retry on a failed build

PichiiParu5 Oct 2023, 00:21

The art is absolutely beautiful! The overall feel of the game is amazing

brandann5 Oct 2023, 00:44

love it.
played a few times before I got the hang of it, this was really fun and well polished. you guys did a great job!

Theotime5 Oct 2023, 00:52

Incredible! The concept to play against mankind is interesting, and the graphics are nice. Yet I think that for now it is more a simulation than a game: what is the goal ? Make human colonies survive as many years as possible ? Find the equilibrium situation with the highest human population ?
Also, the humans might be a little to glutonous - or I did not find the right strategy - because I could not manage to maintain colonies bigger than tier 1.
A small tutorial would also have been useful because the game dynamics are quite complicated.
Anyway I had great fun, thank you !

Ayxs5 Oct 2023, 17:15

The polish of this game is great! although for me, the game was quite unclear. I didn't really understand what I was supposed to be doing and the help UI didn't really work for me as it was still really unclear. I like the idea where you have to keep the population in check. I think a bit more explanation and tutorial would have come a long way to bringing this game home!

The graphics, animations, FX, UI are all very great! I do wish there maybe was some music in the background, as it feels quite empty in this way.

Spike Studio6 Oct 2023, 01:11

I think the base of the game is there, and the art, polish, and sounds are great, but it is very confusing to know what to do. I was kinda just clicking things and hoping something good happened, I think a tutorial or some better UI would help this game ten-fold.

Cam Moore6 Oct 2023, 15:03

I endured 154 years! I imagine thats very short how ever it made me feel accomplished haha. The art is really crisp and well done. Great work!

brandann6 Oct 2023, 17:52

@spike-studio I would be happy with just an explanation on itch or LD on what the power-ups do and maybe how to effectively use them. I have came back to play this game several times over the course of several days.

Enreh6 Oct 2023, 18:25

@brandann @spike-studio We are working on a few balance changes and we'll also be adding a tutorial either in-game or here/itch soon as well. We understand it's been the greatest issue with the game so far, and we appreciate the encouraging words!

Ategon8 Oct 2023, 00:35

Thanks for submitting the game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod timestamped to your game

nyxkn8 Oct 2023, 13:20

Very nice game. Ended up finding some balance and then nothing happened. Got to 5k years before quitting. The art is really pretty and game is smooth. Gameplay seems like an interesting idea, but it could use some better balance. Beginning is way too chaotic and it's really hard to understand what's going on. I never figured out what the lightning does, other than looking pretty. I think it's a solid entry overall but with some balance tweaks it might become a lot more fun.

Neowedge8 Oct 2023, 17:01

Nice game, it's very difficult to find the balance. My record is 726 years, and I think I can do it better, but not much hahahaaha. Great entry, congrats!

Papus Games8 Oct 2023, 17:43

Intersting, but I don't understand what does the lightging do.

dxk22948 Oct 2023, 20:17

Love the artstyle, I found myself playing multiple rounds for longer than I expected. The sound effects and UX combine to create some great gamefeel. I'm not sure I ever fully understood what lightning does (increases resource consumption of villages? Why would I want to do that?), but I had a blast! Great submission, one of my favorites so far :smiley:

Bredera9 Oct 2023, 16:34

Awesome game! Really loved the art style. It was a bit tough to understand what I needed to do. But the game was very relaxed and cool to play. The sound effects were simple but gave the game a lot of style and urgency. Awesome job!

bitCulture9 Oct 2023, 20:08

Beautifully minimalist aesthetic - I LOVE low-poly art like this and it's perfect for this kind of tile-based game (I also LOVE hex tiles!). Easily readable progression for the different tile-types without having to resort to progress bars or numbers, which helps maintain the dreamy diorama-like presentation of the play area. The bubbly and muted clicks of the UI sound effects are pleasant as well; not only do they fit the visual style, but audibly reinforce the it. Some chill music or ambient weather sound effects (or both!) would have bolstered the vibe quite a bit, but that stuff is hard to get to given game-jam timelines. All stuff that could be added with some polishing passes post-game jam. Overall, great work!

mofox11 Oct 2023, 03:29

很酷的游戏！

Jadener12 Oct 2023, 11:42

I love this game! ^^ Its a shame theres no late game options or objectives, because you can carry on easily into 5000+ years when you figure it out. I wanted to replay again and again, because its so good, but the game would reach end game point farming so quickly