Experience with the game:
TL;DR: I played about 10 runs. and only lost 3/4 when I played without the lumberjack doing anything.
Played 4 normal runs and won all 4.
Played 1 challenge run with the huntress doing nothing, and won, (lumberjack collecting wood, and old man getting money, then only food )
Played a few challenge run, without the lumberjack doing anything, and lost:
- as the old worker got ransomed for two much the second time around, and had no more money to pay the huntress to get more money. I reached october there
- as we ran out of time, as we got stolen a bit of everything once by barbarians.
- ran out of time but would have succeeded with one more month.
Finally would have won on challenge run "lazy lumberjack" on month of august with 10 resources, 2 food, and 7 money, before church, but I clicked "End current month" instead.
Now with 7, 0, 7. I barely won with 10, 1, 7 before the real church construction ^^""
So it is possible, even with a mistake, without the lumberjack.
And a challenge run without the "old worker" I won first time, without barbarian raids, but with 2 injuries.
At month September, with 10 , 2 , 5 before church. Though the lumberjack could not build the church, even if he was free that month, so I had to ask the old worker to do it still.
I really like:
- That your characters can get ransomed by the barbarians, and that you can choose to pay or sacrifice them
- That it can also happen while hunting (though I only saw that once, in my 6th run, when doing a challenge run with a lazy lumberjack)
- That it can also happen while collecting wood (though I only saw that once, in my 8th run, when doing a challenge run with a lazy lumberjack)
- That you have different characters with different proficiency at working
- That when you run out of food, you don't lose, but rather have to pay workers more. That is a fun twist.
- That you have a time limit, to race against
I like less:
- How easy it currently is, as, in a normal run, I have never had to use more than 5 months out of the 12 months.
- But I might have been lucky, as if you had multiple ransom in a game, and ran tight on money, it might be a harder time
- But that open the door to challenge runs with one character being "lazy" and not doing anything.
- Seems like the dominant strategy is to have each character do his best task, and have the old worker ambush the barbarians, which would explain why I had an easy time.
- When being raided by Barbarians, I would have liked to know how much they took out of my resources, food, money.
Bugs:
- Seems that the "sacrifice" events are not always calculating the food and money remaining, as during my challenge run with only huntress and old worker, I could "Pay" nothing to save them both from barbarians and forest injuries.
- Seems to be that the ransoms work most of the time, but not always the injuries event.
Thanks for the game, I did play more than I'd have first planned to.
Seems that the crunchyness with the randomness makes it somewhat addictive.
Are you planning to participate in the upcoming special Trijam 333? I think you would have the opportunity to create another interesting game, especially since it is iterative over successive weeks of jam + feedback/voting.
On the voting, I have put 5/5 on most, except for the audio, which is there is none, so 1/5 and the art which is good enough, but I'd be interested to see what you can draw yourself, if able ;)
In any case, have a great week.