They were pretty nice, although they do look like color-swapped versions of one another.
I’d have gone for different hair styles between the three
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They are color swaps. I didn’t have time for the jam to make them different. Making them more visually distinct is my plan post release.
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i like the sprites as trying to make figure out how to work with them makes my head hurt
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Wow, as homespun management games go, this is hugely ambitious! The premise tickles me as there’s something about the upbeat music that makes me picture these plump, sexy dragonesses mulling over municipal blueprints with hard hats on - it’s civil engineering: dragon style!
Such ambition is not without its issues, mind you - not least of which being balancing the difficulty curve in stabilising your early town but also the amount of bugs or errors that can crop up within such complicated systems (I note that “gold” and “town wealth” oftentimes appear swapped when being referred to, for example). Little oversights that can steadily compound based on the overall complexity of the project. It’s not a small undertaking to ensure this all is running smoothly and correctly.
That being said, the presentation is lovely and I am delighted to hear that you’ll be following through on this project post-Jam. I’m a sucker for games like these so this could well stand to be one of my favourite games on this site if it continues!
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Man I just remembered I should actually say stuff about the game.
This concept is RIGHT up my alley. I have always thought stuff like the ‘management’ genre has the best potential for a game FOCUSED on weight gain, as opposed to a game just FEATURING weight gain. This doesn’t put the fattening front and center, and it’s a detriment more than a goal, but it’s still an idea I love.
But it honestly feels like all the building and managing barely affects anything? Like no matter how many things I build to raise the stats, they NEVER stop going down, and then the other dragons get pissy about it and fight me, and it makes the stats tank even more, and I can’t build anything to make up for the losses because production’s gone to shit, and it just goes further and further into a failure spiral until the humans show up and I lose before I can reach month 50. It feels like all the buildings would need to be like at least twice as effective to make any kind of dent in this.
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hello, sorry for the inconvenience, could you give me a guide for the game, I can’t get the weight of the population to go up and I don’t know how to manage control and happiness, please
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Did you build villages to assign workers to the posts?
i think ive refined my initial gripe with the game: it isn’t open ended in any way at the beginning, forcing you into having to rush the wall and the money/resources to build it before loosening up at all
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I could sort of rush the wall by getting two stone miners* out and haivng them run ragged with an entertainment building to offset the Happiness loss. I had two markets selling off the excess iron, which gave the town decent wealth (I note that each market mode added to “town wealth” whereas the description referred to the revenue as “gold”) and allowed me to shake 'em down more frequently. Unfortunately this was all costly in terms of manpower and both my Control and Happiness also went down the toilet.
On the subject of Control I do feel it drains pretty quickly and through no fault of the player. When you’re so focused on immediate early objectives like resource buildings and walls, the last thing on your mind is guardposts, especially with such little manpower at your disposal. I like how the wall construction is a solid, early game objective so why not use it as a story beat? Perhaps a simple solution is that Control is essentially frozen and doesn’t come into play until the walls are built. It makes sense that the populace are still cowed and terrified by the impressive might of the dragonesses who have swooped in, especially since the town itself is so helpless from outside forces. It gives the player slightly less to worry about early on and doesn’t impact productivity quite so much.
Perhaps a cutscene once the wall is built shows some of the citizens plotting with the mayor how to undermine and subvert draconic rule now that the town’s security and future has been better established. Maybe they can bring the dragons down from within? A resistance movement! Control will henceforth start ticking down as a result. Sneaky, silly humans!
It does shaft Malin’s bonus in the early game though, alas… Perhaps it can be replaced with some other small effect until the walls are built.
*Minor quibble, but the “stone miners” and “stone mine” could be more correctly referred to as “stone cutters” and “quarry” respectively.
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Obviously. I had my guard posts and restaurants constantly fully staffed and built multiple entertainment centers and nothing ever helped. Whatever the equation going on is, it’s not balanced. I don’t see myself playing this again without the ‘infinite resources’ debug cheat unless that changes.
Population weight goes up when they have a lot more food in the stockpile than what the population can eat, throw feast for the whole town, or have a cook assigned at a restaurant (current build is bugged, only 1 person should be staffed at a restaurant as it is. This is fixed for the next update). Population weight will go down if you can’t feed the town that month, or if you have an average amount of food and their weight is 150 or higher. It needs a bit more refinement, like a lot of things in the game.
Happiness is increased by building entertainment buildings, using the green dragon’s job (only if you aren’t her), just being her increases it by +2 every month, if the restaurant is staffed, throwing a feast for the town, the relaxed work mode for a building type that is staffed, or having people be unassigned. Doesn’t decay over time but will start to decay if town wealth is low and/or control is high.
Control decays over time but can be increased by “establishing control” by the dragonling, or by using Malin’s job if you aren’t her, Malin does increase control by +2 every day (though in the early game it’s more of an offset to the decay). It is reduced by the relaxed work modes and unassigned workers more quickly.
This will probably remain the same, although I might refine the scenario into being the more direct tutorial that can still be failed if the advice is ignored. The set up needed for the wall is important as it sets the town up better for resources and gives you the secondary goal of raising the other stats back up from it needing to be built. However, the stats get tanked so hard right now it is near impossible to get it back up, that I will be changing.
I don’t think i’ll be freezing control as a stat until the wall is built, but I think I’ll make the control decay start slow at first and have it start picking up in speed until it is what is now. This gives a grace period to build guard posts and be ready for it. This, coupled with the fact that I have now doubled the output of guard buildings (both from the workers and just having the building itself). The narrative reason for the increased decay rate being something along the lines of the situation becoming more mundane the longer this goes on, so a larger effort is needed to keep them in line. I might use the population trying to subvert you for something else though.
Also, I’ll revise stone mine and stone miners name’s over time, it’s just not a priority at this moment
I am increasing the output of the guard towers for now, and if it’s still not enough I’ll increase the output of the entertainment areas too. Also since the control decay starts at -2 instead of -5 now, hopefully that should buy enough time for the economy to stabilize before it goes to hell.
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I did read that bit with population gaining weight by default of there is excess of food. And yet, in-game, that never seems to occur even if you have a ton of food in excess. Either I was missing something, or there’s a bug.
Didn’t get far in the game. The game is a fun city sim, but has many flaws of balance.
- It’s extremly hard to balance what you need each day. You do one action and you lose 20 happiness. Control is almost impossible to maintain as it goes down each day unless you have -100 happiness; which is not ideal in any scenrio.
- Wealth in game is almost impossible to get. As you loose control easily, you can only get 25 gold as you instantly go below 50 control.
- You can continue playing, but it’s negative effects of the other two dragons. You basically lose there trust instantly when playing as Queen.
- And to make it worst; needing the damn wall. It cost so much resources which you barey have as you need villages to assign to mines and farms.
- Markets are somewhat ok. They do the job, but the inbalance of everything else makes them useless.
- The most agravating part of the game is PRODUCTIVITY. Every small thing effects it. It almost nevers goes over 5 unless you force them. 5 is stand still in the game. 4 is barely making each month. 3 you loose the trust of Serin quickly. Anyhting below that and your fuck.
The game can be extremly fun, but everything fights each other. You can’t have a profit in the game. Resources are difficult. The villigers never want to work regardless of what you do. The game is a disaster when managing anything. And once you build one building it’s a struggle through the rest of the game. I know the game is still being balanced and being fixed. But as it is right now. It rage inducing gameplay. Hope for the future of this game as it has promising replayability.
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Well I’ve got good news, the changes I made seem to have made the balance closer to what I wanted it to be in the first place. Still needs a little tweaking though, but I’m at month 50 with a decent happiness, wall, resources, but low control (though that could have been my fault, especially since I started before I made it so guard posts no longer NEEDS iron to produce control, but now it provides 1 control per person working there, and another +1 if that person has the iron needed to function. So for 3 people and 3 iron a day gives a net +1 control per day once the control decay is at maximum).
Productivity does fluctuate a bit much to be used for Serrin’s opinion, so I might make the court’s weight levels affect here opinion instead.
I’m also thinking of making control have an effect on tax money (the tiny amount of free money you get every day), but only in favor of the player, so the +2 gold you get now is the minimum you can get at basically no control.
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yes yes wonderful news good sir
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On a different topic, how do you see The Dragon Court playing out? Policy making ala Frost Punk? New actions to discuss and unlock for your fellow dragons, shaped or impacted by their opinion of you?
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I was thinking of it primarily being like the game “Yes, Your Grace” where petitioners would show up with a problem (randomized in this game, unlike that one) and you would get a choice to increase one resource/stat at the cost of another. I was also thinking of having some of the rarer events start a mini quest of sorts. I also want this to happen with the “gift” option as well, although the bulk of the gifts are just purely beneficial, since that is the gameplay effect of opulence.
I do want some policy events available at the mayor’s house (the big purple roofed building) too.
I want the interactions between dragons to trigger inbetween months when you meet certain conditions
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Heh, and your two subordinate dragons can weigh in with their own colourful opinions. No, Malin, not everyone needs to be smited with extreme prejudice. -_-;
Since there’s three dragons it makes any decision-making a snap since decisions can always be broken with a simple majority - of course you could override the Court with an unpopular decision since you’re in charge, at the risk of upsetting the other dragons natch. Perhaps favours and opinion greasing can help swing them to your side - or heck, if they’re fat enough just distract them with food!
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Yep, I want them to chime in with their opinions during these events. I like your ideas alot, I was going to go for something more simple, but now I think I want to do something a lot more like what you’re suggesting.
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