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Before the Ash's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #4 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Controls | #4 | 4.040 | 4.040 |
| Audio | #6 | 4.040 | 4.040 |
| Overall | #7 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
| Accessibility | #14 | 3.540 | 3.540 |
| Fun | #17 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
| Originality | #19 | 3.880 | 3.880 |
| Theme | #50 | 3.720 | 3.720 |
Ranked from 50 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4
Wildcards Used
One Hand
Game Description
Grow Pompeii into a prospering city before Vesuvius erupts
How does your game tie into the theme?
Grow your kingdom, your resources, and combat the growing fires!
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
vizvuz, paulmaaswinkel
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
3
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Comments
The art on this game is simply amazing. Great work ✨✨
Really great game, I had a lot of fun playing it !
Really fun lil game, with some gorgeous art
wonderful
Great visuals, easy to understand, and it's just as long as it needs to be.
Really solid game! Took a bit to understand, but it was discoverable which is nice! I loved the tile animations and sound effects. I did think the early game was a bit slow, and I found myself a little fidgety wanting to click on things to interact with. Really impressed with the level of polish!
I did hit a crash on the web build, just as a heads up.
Thanks!
I found out about this yesterday. Apparently I've forgotten to free the fireball's smoke particles so they just accumulated. I was tired from the jam and it slipped out lol. I'm going to upload a fix as soon as the jam ends!
I can't get over how well put together this is. I have no notes.
🙏🙏
I love the art! Awesome game (just missing some info on the fire—but you already know that, haha).
Thank you for this entry! 😉
Very polished game, I like it! I like how the tiles bounce on interactions.
Very nice!
I didn't notice fires could be extinguished, so my first try was about watching my small village burn. But I should have just RTFM.
4199 points on 2nd try. And ended up watching my village burn. ;(
pretty much this
to be brief about the presentation: stellar pixel art, satisfying sfx, moody atmospheric soundscape, fitting music (with a nice touch of dynamism for the day-night cycle), and a lovely sense of impending doom. this is all very impressive and highly polished for a jam game — and then there are the mechanics…
it takes a while before things start happening, especially when dealt a bad starting hand. during my first run there were long periods of time when nothing happened, until the fire started picking up towards the end. also, it seemed like the challenge wasn’t to place rare building, but to randomly draw them in the first place. I ended my first run with hundreds of each resource, and nothing to spend it on.
I almost stopped playing after just one attempt, but I guess the relaxing pace (and the score screen) gave me time to think. I realized that I had a lot of ideas for new strategies, like letting fires spread to get more faith (which incidentally made the game a lot more hectic too, which was cool). I really enjoyed the sense of discovery, trying to figure out how I could maximize the score on my following attempts. my best score so far was 4987 on my 3rd attempt, but I’m sure I can do better, which motivates me to play more. I’ll definitely come back to this after the jam!
trying to balance getting faith from spreading fires without making too much of the land nonburnable is an interesting dynamic, it adds a lot of tension and urgency to the otherwise relaxed gameplay.
the main progress gate seems to be rock, and it’s important to get a quarry early. restarting to get a good starting hand seems essential for a good run.
a lot of things are dependent on randomness, which I like, but it would be nice to see some more agency (like deck-building or something).
meadows and forests are basically dead cards — the opportunity cost is huge, and there’s no real benefit as a lot of things can be built on charred land. at least forests have the benefit of allowing more camps to be built, but meadows seem completely useless.
during the final moments, I’d love to make a futile effort to put out the fires before the city in inevitably engulfed by fire. it doesn’t even have to give points or anything, I just like clicking the flames :)
bug: clicking “Exit Game” freezes the game on web.
superb submission overall!!
Wow, first of all thanks a lot for taking the time to write such an in-depth review for the game!
Starting hands
I definitely think this is a problem, and I already have some ideas for how to remedy that - for example more stuff to buy in the shop, upgrades for buildings, a trade-market and sacrificing resources for the volcano!
Fire spread strategy
I really enjoy when players discover this. I really wanted the game to have at least somewhat of a god-game feel.
Restart for quarry
Definitely thinking about this. Maybe you could choose your starting hands out of X cards to mitigate a bit of the rng. Deck building is definitely something I'd love to add to the game!
Meadows and forests
I added those cards for 2 reasons:
1. In case you end up with too many burnt tiles or built tiles and can't build a camp, for example. To prevent the player from getting locked.
2. Every deck of cards needs some 'lower tier' cards you can discard or care less about, imo.
Other possible use cases for them in the future are:
1. Allowing the player to expand the map, and that it could only be done with non-structure cards.
2. Allowing the player to destroy buildings with those cards, so they could build better buildings.
But I am aware they can be a bit of a nuisance right now!
Final Moments clicking fires
Definitely heard this from players. Maybe I'll try to make it so that it eases-in a bit more into the ending. It's kind of abrupt. Good thinking!
Web bug
Yeah, I'm aware of this. I actually check if the game runs on web then I hide it, but it didn't work for some reason and I didn't get to fixing that haha
Thanks again!
Cheers
oh don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool to have those dead cards in the game — it was part of my learning experience to realize that I shouldn’t pick them, it was a fun realization. and it makes sense that they help prevent softlocks, like you say. I was a bit let down that they couldn’t be used to expand the map, but it’s great to hear that you have some possible plans for them.
everything you’re saying sounds cool, I’m looking forward to whatever happens :)
5 stars game. It's incredible, good job! I got 4285 points. Took me a few tries to understand I could extinguish the fire
This is a real issue with the game. I noticed that many players, justifiably didn't get that at first. It's a shame, could've done a quick fix for that 😅 Thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked the game.
Great game! I felt like the balancing act between putting out fires, gathering additional resources and maintaining places to put down new settlements was a great gameplay loop. The art, music and sound effects were all very polished and the game scope felt excellent.
I will say, the beginning of the game was a bit confusing, because there wasn't much guidance about how to place building and what they cost, but the card format used was intuitive enough that I figured it out without too much trouble.
I also wish the end condition had more to do with the player's input. I think it would add to the strategy if you were trying to accomplish an ultimate end goal, like maximizing survivors by avoiding building in a predetermined lava flow or (inversely) maximizing the ultimate damage via your placement of buildings. I think this would help the strategy part of the game go one level deeper.
Regardless, I had a lot of fun in my run, and I really appreciate the time you took to put such a neat game together. Thanks for making it!
Thanks for the in-depth review!
Beginning - early game definitely needs some improvements and fine tuning, and the lack of tutorialization is a real problem. Will definitely make the necessary adjustments for a post jam update!
Ending - the lava flow idea is really cool. At first, I wanted the player to be able to delay the calamity and to make sacrifices in order to do that, but the project was already very ambitious so I settled on a defined time frame. So this idea is really cool for that!
Cheers!
Really fun and gorgeous art and music as well! A good game to play during the break session of a pomodoro session :)
Cool game! I liked very much the artdesign and the chill music. And the gameplay is fun too, especially having to extinguish the fires from time to time makes it compelling to stay focus. I wish there was a clearer end goal, or at least a way to visualise the score and some hints on how to optimize it.
Anyway, congrats for this entry, very well done :)
The looks and music are great and I like the gameplay, it almost seems like you didn't do it in a week :)
The twist of having the volcano erupt all the time is a good take on mixing things up
Thanks for playing! TBH I'm kinda in disbelief too 😂. It's the culmination of a lot grind and a very clear goal (with a comprehensive gdd)! This is my 9th game jam overall that I made to the finish line, and I have participated in 12.