Nimkip and the Quest to Build an Airship

I like the idea of everyone in the town pitching in to build an airship!

solid progression. not very playable in the small embed version though, have to make it a little bigger or full screen by default. Nimkip sounds are great. ​

Nice graphics and relaxing music. But there are some problems with the interface: Looks like some parts on the left and right side are cut off, and when a figure is at the bottom end of the card, the search icon is no clickable anymore. Also since you move most of the time, maybe good idea to implement a shortcut for it, like right click on the map after selecting the figure.

@avi Thanks! It was fun to put the systems together and come up with something cohesive. Thanks for playing!

@mocker Is there a way to full screen by default with webgl hosted games? I never knew you could do that. Agreed that the base resolution is pretty small to play on standard sized monitors. Game's definitely not easily playable that small. The sound effects made it in the game in the very last hour! 😆 I'm glad they turned out well.

@grateful-tomato Is this fullscreen? I keep having this issue where everything works fine on my browser, yet even @jackofcups has screen scaling issues where things go offscreen. I... don't quite know how to fix it. I tried hard setting the resolution in Unity, in the game's build settings, and on Itch, but it doesn't seem to cooperate. I'll keep looking into solutions for it. Also, you can scroll the camera by using WASD or the arrow keys, that will help you finish the game and get past issues with actions going off screen. DEFINITELY agree on the move part being more tedious than it has to be, and I like your suggestion. Thanks for playing!

Yes, was fullscreen. But looks also a bit cropped in window mode. Haven't done much for a long time with Unity, but I think there are different scale options. Looks like currently it is configured to scale proprotionally but so that either width or height fills the viewport and the rest gets cropped. I think there is also a proportionally scale option which allows to scale it so that if it doesn't fit, black borders are added. And then there should be a layout manager option to place the GUI elements at the viewport edges, independent of the size of it.

I like the Nimkip. The controls were natural to figure out. After 7 days or so, the hourglass would spin but the day would not end, the Nimkip population stayed exhausted. Double checking, have you tried on Itch, under Embed Options, Frame Options, enabling Full Screen Button?

Great job on this project! The visual style and audio fit together really nicely, creating an awesome vibe. Super impressive execution within the jam deadline! Left my ratings!
Feel free to check out our cat bomb-crafting game when you have time. You can try the updated alternative version I put together (fixed mechanics + working PC): https://naiper.itch.io/meow-bomb-by-naiper

Would love to hear your thoughts!

@chomby Whoops, in going crazy trying to figure out the camera nonsense, I had turned the fullscreen option off on the itch page on accident. It is reenabled now. Sorry about that. Also dang, I thought I fixed that issue with the day not ending... It doesn't happen too often but has a small random chance of happening.

It looks like the full-screen button isn't there on the itch page right now, so I haven't had a chance to play yet, but I may have a (long-winded) answer to your aspect ratio issues depending on how your UI is set up. Basically, Unity will always scale your game to fit your monitor's full height and width of the screen is purely dependent on the aspect ratio of the screen the game is running on. If (as an extreme example) you have an ultrawide monitor and your friend has a 4:3 CRT, your game might look fine on your screen, but the left/right sides might be cropped like crazy on your friend's screen.

Historically, *most* widescreen monitors have tended to be in a 16:9 aspect ratio (so if you develop for a 16:9 monitor, running in full screen will look right for most people), but that's not guaranteed. A lot of apple computers are moving back towards more square aspect ratios lately, and I actually use a pair of 16:10 monitors myself, because I prefer having that little bit of extra vertical real estate for software development, image editing, etc.

Sorry for the long background information dump before actually getting to the solution(s) to the problem 😅 First, you can set your webGL build to run at a specific screen size in the aspect ratio that you expect. If you go to your player settings you can set your game metadata, but there's also a collapsed section where you can set your webGL canvas resolution. If you set that to something that matches your expected aspect ratio, non-fullscreen builds may work better for you.

Second (and I'm sorry for burying the lede), I actually started the jam by working on a pseudo3d game using rendering technology based on the old Sega SuperScalar arcade cabinets, which was going to be very resolution-and-aspect-ratio-dependent, so I spent some time trying to solve this problem before pivoting away from that idea (for now!). I haven't 100% battle-tested this solution, but adding this script to your camera and setting that aspect ratio constant *may* make sure that things scale as you expect: https://github.com/Koolruz/unity-resolution-scaler

@koolruz Hey thanks for all the advice. You know, maybe it's just being in the super tired state that I'm always in at the end of game jams... but it literally never occurred to me that it was an aspect ratio change thing. I've made scalers in the past for different aspect ratios, but I was like.... I SWEAR that if I just hard-set the resolution in the project, settings, and on itch, that it won't do this. But I was very wrong. I made a quick screen resolution scaler for the UI components, even though that's not like... the correct way to do it exactly, but it should be putting the UI elements on the screen in the right positions now (I hope? I tried it on my phone which does a completely separate resolution and it's fixed there now). Thanks for the sanity check and all the help. Much appreciated! Also let me know if the fullscreen button isn't there for you still? I was positive I put it back before you left the comment, but I've made so many random changes at so many times that it's impossible to keep track of 😢

Yeah, it's back! I probably started writing my comment before you put it back (sorry!)

It took me awhile to get the public repo set up with my resolution scaling script, because I had to remember how to set up my git config for my seldom-used public-facing github account 😅

Edit: Though there are now *two* fullscreen buttons, one which doesn't change the game resolution but hides the itch UI, and one which changes the game's resolution. The UI seems to scale properly on my 16:10 monitors, except that the "Day 1" text gets cut off to the right of the screen. Everything else appears to be correct! :)

Hello! Do you think it would be possible to compile a downloadable version (for Windows)? The web version doesn't load for me unfortunately ;_; I tried with VPN and without VPN and I am not sure what the issue is. It would be great if I could just download the game and play it ^v^

P.S. I specifically voted for the theme Rain during the Theme Voting in hopes of getting a continuation of the Rain Saga... Damn it! xD

@kanity I added a windows download .zip to the itch page. Let me know if that doesn't work and I'll try something else! Also it's funny, I don't think either of us suggested "Rain" as the theme, but we definitely voted for it 😆 I was surprised it did as well as it did!

Fun, I like the simple and intuitive controls, always good when a game doesn't require a ton of explanation. Cute art style. Good work!

@t-c

Thank you!! It worked :)

And the Rain theme... It could be fate!! I guess I'll have to wait until next jam in hopes of the new part ;_;

On topic of this game though! xD Right away I wanna say I *love* the sound the Nimkip makes when I click on it >v:) It was very enjoyable and I wish I could play it longer =P But ofc that will have to wait until you make it into a complete game and publish it on Steam! :D (along with the whole Rain saga obviously)

This was charming and peaceful! I was actually really bummed out when I won, because I had planted an entire swarm of Nimkip and it was really satisfying sending them out into the world to gather resources.

I absolutely loved the audio - I know that I'm repeating myself by saying this, but the sound effects when you picked up wood/stone/gears was *so* satisfying. The music was also really relaxing and helped me get sucked into the calm gameplay loop.

In terms of constructive feedback, I only have a minor nitpick which came from my playstyle of "plant as many Nimkip as physically possible" 😅 By the end of the game, I had so many Nimkip that I couldn't keep track of who had or hadn't moved yet, and I ended up wasting most of them. It would have been really helpful to have some sort of indicator by the "end day" button letting you know if there's nothing else to do, or if you have more Nimkips who can still act.

Overall, well done! :)

These litle guys building themselves an airship is such a nice idea. I like that poking around old ruins is what helps their town grow. That tiny steamship is adorable.

I left my ratings! If you get a chance, please check out and rate our game too: Robot Workshop.

@landosystems Thanks a bunch for playing! Usually the games we make for LD require a ton of tutorials and intros, lucky for this game, with the mostly mouse control scheme, just hovering over things for a small explanation worked as a tutorial of sorts.

@kanity Thanks for the extensive review! Please don't be mad, but I was the one who vetoed making the next part of Rain for this jam. We might put it on hold for game jams and try to make the real thing! I'm glad you liked the sound effects. I had to rush to make them in the last hour of the jam, so I'm glad they came together so well. All those videos I watched on learning how to make sound effects helped me with a couple of tricks to make them, and I'm glad they came together the way they did. The music was the last 15 minutes 😆 - I was almost resigned to publishing another silent game.

I played a lot of the Civilization series, that was my primary inspiration. Not having any enemies or time constraint I think helped give this one a more relaxed feel that I was happy with. I'm super happy with the boats! @jackofcups absolutely nailed it on that one. Same with the airship city. There are actually not 1 but TWO

!> elephants! (I was going to make this an elephant emoji but the hidden text still shows emojis 😆
hidden.

I was planning on having a 3rd way out in space (since there's no cap to how far you can move the camera) but completely forgot.

I regret not letting people keep playing. Another thing where I kind of knew I should have that in, but didn't have the time at the end. Thanks again so much for playing and rating our games! I'll be over to do the same for your game in a bit!

@koolruz alright, glad it finally worked! Thanks again for the help. Yeah I definitely regret ending the game the second the last condition is met. The game's actually still running behind the victory screen, so all I had to do was reenable taps and hide the screen and it would still be playable, but alas... so little time.

I'm glad you liked the audio! It came together literally in the last hour. In the past I spent a decent amount of time learning tips and tricks for sound effects, and these came together much better than they had any right to, for how crammed for time I was. I love sound effects, I think the way you make them and the things you can do for audio manipulation is super cool. I wish I learned more of this in the past.

And I totally agree!!! Even with only 5 Nimkips.... there really does need to be some kind of indicator of how many Nimkips can still act, or at least a "next nimkip" button you could press that would jump you to the next available Nimkip. I think it's a huge QOL feature that'd be a great inclusion.

Thanks for playing and leaving thoughtful comments. Much appreciated, and looking forward to see what you make next jam!

@youpz Thanks for the kind words! We really enjoyed the aesthetics on this game, so we had fun leaning into it. Also, definitely will get around to rating yours! I usually always rate any game made by people who leave comments on mine. I just do that a bit later in the jam. 👍

Nice Game! Though, I find that it took a long time for one single turn, but the experience is pretty plain.

I did not notice the resources needed to upgrade, so I wasted some time keep mining. Also, there were soon so many Nimkips that seemed unnecessary.

Generally, it feels like a good experience, the graphics are great, I just hoped to see more things during the process.

@t-c Keep me posted on the Rain's journey to a complete "its own thing" game then! And - do you mean to say that if I replay the game, the design of the airship may be different?:o (and now I want to look for the SECOND... you know... xD)

Space would for sure be ambitious! I think it's all right how it is though, without the space :) I do really like there's no pressure and it's more relaxing.

And the process of audio making really is so fun!! You can make so many interesting sounds interacting with the objects around your house, for example. I feel you though on having to do stuff in the last minutes, I was there too with my compo xD

@kanity I will! At the moment, it's nothing more than a budding design doc to actually get started, but hopefully it actually goes somewhere.

I didn't mean to imply anything about the design of the airship. That's definitely just a single image. "there are not 1 but 2" is supposed to be tied to the text in the spoiler.

For the 3rd, I meant to say that, since there are no bounds on where you can move the camera, you can just hold left for 50 minutes and be really, really far away from the main board. So I could place the 3rd to the right of where the board ends if you scroll for 20 seconds or something.

Definitely agree on making audio! It's something I find so interesting and unique that I could easily see myself in a different life having that as my job. It's neat how creative you can get with sounds, and how combining sounds and modifying them can make some really cool things.

One day, I'll actually have a relaxed final handful of hours on a jam. 😆