My all-in on Communism playthrough proved to be a disaster for all of Geckokind. May history forgive my ill-fated 4 day reign as supreme monarch of the Sky Geckos.

I actually kind of like this style of game, so I feel like I can provide some constructive feedback.

First off: The art was very nice! I think utilizing AI here was a great idea! 😄

However, the gameplay felt a bit lacking. For most playthroughs it was impossible to maintain balance, since a faction that came up exactly once in a choice revolted on day 4. So the only choice I had as a player was which faction was going to oust me. If I got lucky enough to get two events that affected two of the same factions, I would be able to maintain balance by increasing them once, and reducing them next time. However, I feel like it really shouldn’t be up to RNG whether the game is survivable past day 4.

I feel like this wouldn’t be that much of a problem if there was a way to quickly restart the game, skipping all animations.

That is not to say the animations are bad, they are actually very nice! It’s just that having the ability to skip them would cut down on the wait time for restarts.

Overall, I see a lot of potential with this game, and it is amazing how much you managed to accomplish in just 30 days! I feel like with a little bit of tweaking (making faction buffs and debuffs have less of an effect, and adding animation skip), this would be an experience I would come back to! 🙂

Reminded me of Reigns, but with cute lizards instead
Had fun, even when I lost pretty quickly, didn't anticipate a meme ending 

Camera feels so good to use and it's entertaining to see how they move

Congrats!

I'm sorry, but it's not really my cup of tea.

In the preview of your game, it showed that last screenshot, so I was really hyped up for a visual feast, but then once the game loaded... it showed the actual art style and I was very disappointed to be honest. Why do you use that last screenshot as your preview just to hype up potential players about amazing graphics when that is clearly not the used art style. It seems a bit click-baity to be honest.  Anyway, once ingame, the green scenery looks cool, but the rest is just decent, it all kind of lacks charm. I think you mentioned that nearly all art assets are AI generated, so it just lacks that human touch and feels loveless. To add to that feeling, there is that very strange AI voice. Now, I know it may seem like I'm just a big adversary of artificial intelligence, but that's really not the case: it has its place, but I was really not a fan of how it was utilised here. Potentially because I had such vast expectations of seeing the thumbnail screenshots.

Now to the positive: 

I love your camera controller. Movement felt smooth, rotation worked, too and it really felt like one of those city builders. Definitely a great job on the scripting side there.

The leaderboard was a nice touch and I admire how you set up and entire backend just for that service in a game jam entry! Honestly, I've seen a few entries in this jam that do this and it's quite remarkable. Do you use your own machine, do you buy a host somewhere or how do you utilise this service?

I also liked the scene transitions and the other "little things" that add liveliness to your game like the clouds' movement etc. It just adds that sense of charm to games in my opinion.

Finally, I want to mention the scales animator which is just awesome. Hovering over one button makes it scale from one side to the other, stopping the hover makes it return to its default state, etc. Very good job!

=> To sum up, I hope I didn't come off as a hater or anything like that. Judging from the other reviews here, nearly everyone seems to really enjoy the art. But I just have to be honest and say that I was not a big fan of it, which may be caused by the thumbnail screenshot that felt a bit like a clickbait to me. The game is made with love, that much is clear by the charming little things like animations, polish, leaderboard, smooth scripting and so on, but that love is sadly strongly diminished by the use of AI art assets

I was shocked by the art of this game. I also like the gameplay.  Hats off to your work.

I liked the overall look of the game and I think the core-concept for a game is there, but I wish there was more for me to consider when making choices. Good job!

Crazy detailed game world in this entry, models and colors looked great. AI-generated content was used to pretty good effect too, that title screen is awesome.

I think on top of making decisions to drive the game world, it would be nice to be able to interact with the playfield or pawns in some way, kind of in the spirit of "Black & White" or other games like that - feels a bit detached otherwise. Great job on the entry!

It's a really well polished game. Loved it! Congrats

Amazing job! I love how you integrated AI generated content and the clever idea behind the gameplay. Just a quick suggestion: it was not very clear from the start what I should do and maybe I could use some tutorial. Overall, a great job!

Very impressive game, just simple enough to quickly understand and yet rich enough to keep me interested. Also, neat art style, although some of those generated images are a bit whacky :D Well done!