Saving GAFAM City!

by pandalk

co-authored: @mastoast

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.71

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.57

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.33

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.14

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.14

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.76

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Welcome to GAFAM City, where it's always raining and super heroes replace the police (they were cheaper).

You just got hired as a dispatcher an (unpaid) position where you send heroes to deal with the city's problems.

Controls

- Left click on a hero -> select it

- Right click on the map with a hero selected -> send it there, they'll do the rest.

MEET THE TEAM

Aguaman

A coward with water based powers, do not send him fight bad guys, he'll just hide.

Milkachu

A jaded veteran hero with no patience for either villains or civilians, do not send him deal with the later ones.

Grey Jeans

A Happy go Lucky hero who loves people and everything shiny, including fires, she won't handle those well.

The Challenges

- Fire -> Extinguish it

- Criminals -> Beat them Up

- Civil Unrest -> Make them go home

Tags: #ludum-dare-59

Genres: simulation

Tools: TIC-80

Comments17

LDJam user 37223121 Apr 2026, 03:14

I like the concept, and the pixel art is just splendid! However would like to see some progress in the game and maybe some statistics. Overall its a great start!

tenthousandfireants21 Apr 2026, 03:21

This was really cool I liked the selecting and managing who to send where, this has a lot of good play time value. bookmarking it!

Purrseus21 Apr 2026, 09:47

Graphics and audio are FIRE :fire:

I love how the heroes have different personalities and squabble!

Eric Nguyen24 Apr 2026, 17:38

Good difficulty curve, it was fun to multitask and trying to remembered who was good for what tasks. The writing was super funny as well. Also I love that you used TIC-80, have you tried out picotron yet?

god138524 Apr 2026, 17:45

Audio + Graphics = great design. Thank you, a bit repetetive, but stil fun

ghostmaple24 Apr 2026, 18:02

Every little piece - audio, writing, art, effects, capitalism - helps elevate the rest into something bigger than their sum. Nice work!
(And composer, get that tune on Soundcloud please!)

JoeShanahan25 Apr 2026, 10:30

So much about this to love - the graphics, the music, the writing, and the UX is really good too. The game loop is a great start too, but needs a bit more depth. It'd be good to have decisions over which areas to respond to, maybe some take longer but have bigger consequences if not dealt with. Right now it seemed like I just always send the team member with the right colour to the spot with the smallest timer. But all that said, this is still a super polished entry, very impressed by it.

Mastoast25 Apr 2026, 12:35

@eric-nguyen i watched some videos about picotron, it looks fun, but i never tried it. I think Pico-8 and TIC-80 are currently the best way for me to make games with limited scope for 3 days game jams.

@ghostmaple here you go https://soundcloud.com/user-568281513/saving-gafam-city

Stratcat6626 Apr 2026, 09:31

The game look is simple, but I like the dialog of the heroes, the graphic, the atmosphere and especially the music!

IRKAR26 Apr 2026, 09:48

I love this arts! but would be cool if make choose characters with number or keyboard also i am stuck in this moment but in overall cool game. Good job!

LDJam user 26893426 Apr 2026, 10:15

This is a nice piece. I like the art and sound direction you took.
Original idea to fix things with heroes, a cool game you made !
I admire you did a lot of small thing that make it feel so good. (Learning a lot). Thank you 🙏

Wouter5226 Apr 2026, 19:59

Damn that sountrack is a banger! What a fun game to play. We've even beaten mr capitalism (or at least, the 'thanks for playing' screen came up when all heros were on top of him)

I had a fun time jugling the characters around and to read the newspaper. Somehow it made me feel like the olden days with simcity :smile:

daniel27 Apr 2026, 00:10

TIC80 game, awesome! I don't think I've seen a ludum game using it recently. I really like the art and style within the limits of the engine. I couldn't pay much attention to the flavour text at the bottom while moving the characters around, with is too bad since it looks like you put some effort into writing a bunch of dialog! The backstory and hero profiles are a nice touch too.

VenomousMouse27 Apr 2026, 11:53

Very cool game. Nice take on dispatcher simulator with the aesthetic of old sims.

LDJam user 24319328 Apr 2026, 08:30

My only issue is that Milkachu is white despite having red color sign while Grey jeans is yellow despite having green color sign. These make it less intuitive to know who to send where.
That being said, it's nice dispatch game.

LDJam user 4236937 May 2026, 14:10

Makes me think of dispatch, but old school, really nice :)

P1x3lc0w7 May 2026, 14:57

Very cool! Loved the art and the music, very well done! In terms of gameplay i feel the basics worked well and were fun, but lacked in terms of challenge a little. One way i could think of to try and make things a little more challenging would be to have multiple screens (tough i don't know how challenging that would be with the platform you used) so you can't see everything at once; or having different types of terrains for movement; or perhaps having active abilities (such as a teleport maybe) so you have some resource management. I also really like the dialogue at the bottom (tough i found myself not paying attention to it sometimes). Really great entry overall, very well done!

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