New Harmony, Indiana
A downloadable game for Windows
January 1828
Today I arrived at New Harmony. Mr Rapp handed me the deed to the land and real estate. I am amazed at the beauty of the place. Most of its inhabitants are hardworking families with a desire to progress. I have been visiting them these days to give them everything they need to work and produce: goods, tools, money. With God's help we will make this a cooperative community, where there are no exploited workers. There is no need to make a revolution when your workers find joy in their labor.
-Robert Owen
Code:
Clumsy Snail: https://magno-m-s-silva.itch.io/
Story and historical research:
Algieba: https://algieba15.itch.io/
Art:
Sam Scribbler: https://sam-scribbler.itch.io/
Music:
Nobarr: https://sul-iac.itch.io/
Download
Install instructions
Just unzip and run the .exe file. You can change the gameplay with the csv files on the gamefiles folder.
Comments
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First off, this game nails the isometric pixel look, and aside from a few minor and understandable bugs it runs very well for a game of this complexity. The in-game UI is sufficient to communicate the data that I need as a player, but it is not overbearing, which is nice. I think a huge challenge in designing these types of games is teaching the player how to play them. As much as I like learning by doing, it is nice in a resource manager to have even just a brief overview of what is going on before you start clicking buttons and ruining the economy. The mood music is great, and I appreciate the effort that went into the writing and atmosphere building in the text.
QOL notes - the game immediately quits on ESC, and on the first decision screen, since the player has not been introduced to the decision phase yet, it is actually a little confusing how to proceed (especially since there's a giant NEXT in the corner encouraging you to click it. Maybe I'm just dumb.) Also, I'm not certain if I beat it or if it bugged out, there was an abrupt end after approx. the 6th or 7th decision.
Also, some free QA testing - I believe the building resource UI (in the top left) bugs if you select an instantiated piece and then select build option, and sticks on one of their values. Also, there are some selection conflicts when buildings are close together.
Great job all involved!
Thanks for the excellent comment!
There are some changes I felt we needed when playing the game but I ended up not writing them up and not adding them specially since I was super tired but I'll get to it eventually. And you're not dumb, I forgot to add a message to direct the player.
You beat the game at turn 14, March 1827. Did the game crash? Did it show an error message? If your decision made a resource go negative that is a game over and you have to restart tho.
I didn't understand the UI bug tho, that one is new to me. Did it freeze? Dir it overwrite number on top of each other?
The selection conflict is probably because the system tracks the tile you're hovering not necessarily the building. Since some buildings can overshadow a different tile you might get a selection different from what you wanted. At least that's my best guess.
I replicated the UI bug in question. This occurs after I select the concert hall on the board, and then select a new building from the building picker. As you can see, the prod/con vals for the new building are written underneath the existing values for the concert hall. Perhaps because the UI prompt comes from two separate systems (board vs. resource picker), it does not know to close the first one out when it receives new data from the second? If this is the case, I would recommend that the UI element be activated using an event-based system, so that it isn't directly instructed to display from the on-board objects or building menu. IDK your architecture though so that's just a guess.
As for the day progression bug, I believe the game crashed after making a decision around day 6 or 7 (it was related to meeting teachers or something) - I did not receive the standard 'game failed' message, the .exe just terminated. I can't replicate this though, sorry I don't have the actual details.
Yeah that's probably it! Excellent catch, thank you very much.
Hum... the game crashed... I'm not sure what happened then... I guess I need more QA