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Turtle Tycoon (V4 Polish)'s itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Art / Aesthetic | #1 | 4.778 | 4.778 |
Ready to Release for Money! | #4 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Music & Sound | #4 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
Can't Wait For The DLC / Sequel | #4 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Overall | #5 | 3.867 | 3.867 |
Gameplay / Fun Factor | #12 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Concept Jam Submission Link
https://punkerella-summers.itch.io/turtle-tycoon-working-title
Prototype Jam Submission Link
https://punkerella-summers.itch.io/turtle-tycoon-protype-working-title
Production Jam Submission Link
https://punkerella-summers.itch.io/turtle-tycoon-production
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Comments
I think you have so much room to expand what you have created so far. The turtle world you have created look great. I love the feedback sound affect when something is ready to go however, I don't feel compelled to explore as the first upgrade you are prompted with take 5 mins of just straight clicking to get or 5 mins of running between cloud dumps to get a pair of wings. Maybe adding in collection cap, so you can collect up to 20 or so of each item with room to upgrade that cap. This way you have about 100 seconds to roam around before you feel the need to come back. I know this sound like overkill, but I would greatly reduce the time lock on anything you put in for the first 15 or so mins of game play so that players get a feel for the game and get invested before you time lock things.
I first three times I played I spawned in the water under the turtle so I had no idea I was at the home base. I saw all of the stuff ahead of me and took off. I'm not sure if you are going for a make your own fun kind of vibe or knowledge based mechanic or not, but this could stand to have a bit of a tutorial as I immediately took off in the other direction to the other island without any knowledge of my space. I'm not sure if this my screen's resolution issues or not but the buttons at the bottom are barely noticeable since they are half cut off for me. I click on the first one and realize it takes you home, but because I had never been home in my mind so my thought was "how would I have ever found this on my own".
I also think making the world have more diegetic UI will make it play more smoothly. For example, instead of the popup UI for the rainbow/cloud collection just clicking the rainbow or hitting a button near the rainbow or once you get into a certain proximity will pick it up. This will at least speed up the collection so you don't have to go from wasd/arrrow to move mouse back to wasd/arrows. If there was more of a choice than pack this up or don't I would say the switch to the mouse is fine, but I'm doing arrows with my right hand and mouse with my right hand so there's a lot of back and forth for me.
Ya, there is still a lot to do on this one. In this initial version of the game there is actually nothing to explore unless you are playing with friends. The only things in the larger world are the npc (or other player) tycoons and the wing store. But in later versions we will work further on both the starting balance and the larger world.
We are pretty sure the spawning under the turtle is caused by having a slightly lower framerate or connection at the start of the game (that is why we didn't spot it until other players were trying the game on different devices). Hopefully we can come up with a solution, maybe even just having a little loading screen at the start so everything has a chance to pop in before the players is dropped on the turtle.
Also, I know it isn't mentioned anywhere right now, but you can just hit "E" on a tile that is ready to collect it. We will surface things like that farm more visibly when we get back to working on this :)
Thanks so much for playing and commenting! :)
HAHA...I didn't even think to try the 'E' key
Lol, its our bad for not getting far enough to surface that stuff. When you visit a neighbor's tycoon, it buffs their production speed. We didn't manage to call out that either XD
The game feels really whole. I like the player controls.
Thanks so much! :)
It's a very fun idle game. I could easily see myself having it open while I do other stuff on the computer and check back in on my turtle every once in awhile. It looks like you've got this comment a bit, but I think the cost to start needs to be decreased a bit. You have to spend a good chunk of time just walking over plots of land and pressing E until you get enough rainbows.
The art and music are great and convey chill turtle and fairy vibes! Nice job!
Thanks for playing! And ya, we froze work on this game since the jam ended... but we will spin off a new version and on that one we will work more on initial balance, progression, and all the rest :)
I know I've said this before, but I really like the graphics and the sound, as well as the general theming & world-concept! I think the part of playing I've enjoyed the most actually is visiting the other NPC fairies' turtles and hiking around there, partly because the little forest is a pleasant space to wander, and partly because it's fun to try out different loops through all the cleanup spots. And the framing of "helping" the fairies that way feels nice too. It's super chill and cheerful!
I also agree with what others have said: setting up the initial collection of 4 of buildings feels a little rough--it feels like I'm waiting to get started, and when I see the cost go up for each consecutive grass plot my brain sadly translates that into extra waiting. Once the initial cluster is set up there's kind of a fun whack-a-mole pattern that emerges with gathering the output, it just takes a little while to get there. Leaning more clicker-style with clicking-to-speed-things-up might help with the intro, as much as tweaking the initial costs. It might also be neat if a tutorial NPC gave the player "free vouchers" (or maybe just loaned out rainbows) for each initial building in series, so after you add a building you can go back for the next voucher (or rainbows) until you've built the full set. (Afterwards, maybe you could optionally pay this helpful NPC back and get a little cosmetic bonus as a surprise thank you.) I know dev-wise that might be a bit of a stretch though!
The other comment on allowing a bit of accumulation per generator would also be nice. Without any accumulation (and until there's auto-collection), it feels like my role is to be a very important cog in the machine at all times, and if I take a break then everything will grind to a halt. Allowing a bit of leeway there would make it easier to be social or explore during the early part of playing (before you can afford the tier of generators that auto-collect). Maybe the level-1 generators let you have one collection waiting and only halt production after two are waiting, and level-2 lets you have up to three waiting. Or maybe the production rate could slow down as more collections are waiting (0 = 100% generator speed, 1 = 75% generator speed, etc) and the slowdown effect reduces with each upgrade. Just a thought!
A couple more wishes/ideas:
- Scheduled downtime ("break time," "fairy holidays," day/night cycles, etc) could be a fun & chill route to explore, just to encourage exploration, being social, or just taking a break yourself.
- Foraging loose objects (finding colors floating by / landing on your turtle) could be a fun little distraction that also helps the world feel more alive.
- It'd be fun if wings could let you fly around a little!
A couple more things I enjoyed:
- Changing the cosmetics to be mushrooms and flowers and caterpillars, to make a little wilderness garden.
- The wing varieties, especially the moth-like wings option!
On the whole this is a very nice casual jam game and it feels like there are a lot of directions you could take it. (Also it makes me want to make a game about small creatures around a puddle outside.)
Good job!
Thanks so much for the feedback! Many of the things you mentioned (day/night, happy interruptions, flight/gliding, more reasons for exploration) are already on our list of plans to tackle in the future, they were just way out of scope for a jam. I haven't decided if I want to solve the initial machine problem with just an override that lets me set the cost of those without obeying the curves in our data, or with something more NPC like (as you mentioned). If it looks like people on dot big bang want to play this, then we will probably go with whichever choice Chaklapak says is going to be easier on him, lol.
This game was mainly an experiment in getting something that took a bit longer to play through on dotbigbang.com (hours compared to minutes), as we have only done very small games on the platform so far. A roblox-style tycoon seemed a good fit as we can control the total object count in the game fairly easily while still having long game play. Its a genre where we still have a lot to learn, but I am looking forward to the adventure XD
Thank you again for taking the time to comment, its appreciated :)
A casual idle game. My only concern is that the initial mixer-buying is pretty expensive. Having to buy 4 buildings while eeking out 1 rainboy every few seconds kinda sucks.
Besides that, I like it quite a lot! I could see it being a hit, especially with the multiplayer content.
Thanks!
We will likely take what we have learned and do some more tuning/balance on everything on a different version. This one uses a formulas for the machine costs, so changing the initial machines changes the whole line. I think I probably just want to be able to override it for the first few machines.
Thanks again for playing <3
Very casual game. I love the art and aesthetic which I'm assuming was the focus here. The multiplayer aspect is also very cool. I need to make an account to really get a full play experience.
Some things I'd want are some way to increase my currencies without strictly waiting for timers. It feels like a clicker game so I'd like a way to "click".
I also think having different ways to interact with other players bases would be neat. It started to get old pretty quickly just running around clicking the same button on every plot.
I did run into a bug. I softlocked the game by teleporting home. I wasn't able to move afterward.
Some quality of life improvements I'd suggest are having the initial plant be a production of some sort. Even if it's just moonbeams or a color mixer currency or even like a quarter of a rainbow would be good I think. Either that, or just skip straight to one of the color producers or mixers.
Also, I think production should be able to accumulate. Waiting for a single rainbow for five seconds at a time is rough. The time is short so I felt like i should just wait there. I wanted to explore but then my base would become innefficient.
The aesthetic is wonderful, love the low poly graphics and everything. And again the multiplayer aspect is super impressive.
Great job :)
Thanks! Ya, there are definitely a lot of features we will shift/add in the next iteration of this. For the sake of the jam we had to focus on just the core loop and making sure multiplayer and NPC tycoon stuff was working properly, we actually weren't sure we could get the cosmetic skins, neighbor visits, and rebirth stuff in at all. That stuff still needs of a lot of work.
I am actually hoping to strike a balance so that you can click on your own spots to boost production or something, or just idle if you prefer to play that way. But it will take a lot more messing around for me to get something like that feeling good. You can actually get a level 3 machine of each color and a mixer within 15 minutes of play or so, and those are automated so then you are free to explore while still building up rainbows :)
The dot big bang platform is multiplayer by nature, so its a great base for stuff like this, but it is a challenge to figure out the networking and such on all the parts so that everyone sees what they should and the NPCs load up when there aren't enough players for the slots. (It is my husband who does that part, lol... I just do the art/design part.)
Thanks for playing and for the thoughtful feedback!