itch.io

Glad that helped you get a bit further.

As for progressing past quarter 6. Researching Ultra Processed Foods, and Water Rights is probably the easiest way to make it past quarter 6.

Additionally focus your research on the options that are creating the most revenue for you. 

Slowly increase the dividend every other or every 3rd quarter until the Board Members mood stabilizes or increases. After that only boost it if you have excess money and are worried about the Board's mood.

A Board Member won't give you strike in consecutive quarters, so use that knowledge to your advantage... Successful bribes will remove a strike!

Let me know if you need anything else. If you make it to the end, let me know what your high score is!

Thank you so much for playing! I'm glad you're enjoying the game and I think I can get you pointed in the right direction. I'm going to try to answer without giving anything away, but if you need more help feel free to reach back out!

My quick tips for a successful run:
- Take out the largest loan available immediately. The interest payments will hurt initially but it will allow you to ramp up production much faster.
- Pay attention to what percentage of your goods are selling each quarter. If you're selling out, you should probably bump your prices up a bit. If you're selling less than 80% or so you might want to bump your prices down a bit.
- You'll almost certainly have to take some of the less scrupulous research options, the game is mean to be a bit tongue-in-cheek and does certainly push you down that path.
- Ultra Processed Foods is a really powerful research, the base revenue from it will be much higher than any of the starting items.
- Some of the dialogue from the board members might not be 100% accurate. I never spent as much time as I wanted to on the dialogue tree, so while it should always point you in the right direction, it could be a little misleading.

Understanding the board:
- Board Strikes: The board members look at a couple of things to see how you're doing. Dividends, Stock Prices, Frivolous Activity, Production Costs. Each board member weighs each item differently and has different tolerances for what they find acceptable.
- Dividends: Money that is paid out to share holders (stock owners). The Board Members want to see the dividend increasing, so one of the easiest ways to meet this need is by regularly making small increases to the dividend. Once the divided is high enough they'll no longer care to see it increased, but that number is pretty high.
- Stock Prices: In game the stock price is very simplified. Basically as long as your profit increases the stock price will increase. There are other factors at play, but the big thing if finding ways to increase profit.
- Frivolous Activity: Basically any money you spend that doesn't go directly into lowering production costs or increasing production capacity is seen as frivolous activity by the board. The easiest way to see this is the Research screen. If research is increasing costs, the board probably won't like it.
- Production Costs: The Board wants costs to go down, so this compounds with Frivolous Activity and makes it difficult to go all in on altruistic research. 

I'll leave it at that for now, but please let me know if you have any other questions! Enjoy producing prophet!

I didn't play it as I thought it looked odd, with no amplifying info on the page and the file not being hosted on itch... I see the download now, and just got it. I'm about to go to bed, but with any luck I'll remember to give it a shot sometime this week!

I'm disappointed to hear you're shelving this project, as I think the idea is really solid, but understand needing to move on. Good luck with your future projects, and with the scoring on the jam!

Getting fired and going bankrupt are the most moral routes you can take in game, so we'll just chalk it up to you wanting to genuinely be a good person!

The tutorial was going to be fully interactive and chunk up the game, unfortunately I just ran out of time to fully implement it. 

I really appreciate the kind words about the lore and jokes. Our Artist and Writer did a great job of fleshing out the characters and I think it ends up being one of the biggest strengths of the game, but not many people mention it, so I'm glad to see someone is enjoying it!

I really like the sound design by E-Mertz, and unfortunately didn't do it much justice with my programing and planning skills. There are 4 total tracks, but only 1 plays at a time, I may have to unlock all of the tracks from the beginning to bring some variety to the background music.

Thank you so much for your feedback!

Thank you for the incredibly detailed feedback!

I did intend to build the tutorial to be fully interactive and chunk the game up, but ran out of time. I agree it is definitely too dense and wordy in its current iteration.

Good catch on Profit vs Revenue, I changed around the labels, and it looks like I never corrected that! I also have Demand listed twice, even though one should be Loyalty. Do you have other examples of where the information is incorrect? The economics are admittedly very rudimentary  and gamey (production increasing demand doesn't make much sense, but it is a way to reward players for completing research), and rely too much on random numbers, but I might be able to make some minor tweaks if there are big issues.

As for the previous quarters starting at 40ish, that's a good point. I just have it generate numbers around 50, I honestly didn't think anyone would pay much attention to the information from before their start! I could bring that more in line with the player's likely first quarter!

It is intentional that you can win by just Submitting Quarter repeatedly. Since this was made as part of the Fuck Capitalism Jam, I've tried to stick to that theme (potentially to my own detriment), so I actually tweaked numbers until you could win by default (basically making a joke about CEO being unnecessary).  I probably should've added something to call the players out for doing it!

For the story elements, that was actually in the original plan, but got overlooked along the way unfortunately.

I think you bring up a really interesting point that I haven't seen yet, I may have made something that's neither realistic nor fantastical enough, and put the game in a kind of weird limbo! If I ever dig back into it, I'm definitely taking a good chunk of your feedback in with me!

It looks like I didn't save my feedback, so I'm going from memory, and might be missing some of my initial impressions:

First impression:
- The textures are nice, it looks very clean.

Mechanics easy to understand? How can the be improved
- Yes.
- I think more mechanics would be nice. I'm not a fan of a maze with no twists. I see that you mention doing more with it and think that would be a good decision.
- I really don't understand the block chain portion for stat tracking, though I imagine it could be a really cool application. I could see it turning players off if they suspect it being used for nefarious purposes. Since it's not a standard (to my knowledge) practice, adding an explanation of what exactly is happening and how it works might be beneficial.

Is it challenging without being frustrating?
- I personally got lucky and ended up taking the right turn every time, so it was very easy. So my perspective of the challenge is probably not accurate.
- I do think it would become frustrating if I got lost for any significant amount of time, since there isn't much to engage with and it's not my kind of thing to being with.

Tutorial/onboard:
- It's fine, unless someone has never done a maze before, I can't imagine you'd need anything more than what you have.

How well is it optimized:
- I didn't notice any issues.

Using this guide I'm more or less able to keep everyone happy.

Not sure if it's intentional or not, but it seems like sending max workers from City 2 to City 1 every turn keeps City 2 from ever needing food. It makes sense to me, I just wanted to point it out. Now that I have an understanding of what I'm actually doing I do think the UI needs work, but it seems like a very early project and has an interesting premise!

It's not the head bob. Unfortunately I don't really know how to explain it, it almost looks like the animation is flickering. I don't always notice it, but it happens more frequently than not.

It looks like I didn't save my comments, but I'll try my best to remember what I had...

It is really cool to see AITD getting a remake! Definitely brings back some memories! I intended to play for a bit longer than I did but the game crashed when I went out to the 2nd floor balcony.

- Some of the floor meshes have weird artifacts (bathroom and hallway).
- Should the shotgun spawn in the first chest every time? I got it 2 out of 3 of my tries.
- The ability to skip cut scenes would be very welcome. I died twice right at the beginning as I was trying to figure out the controls, and having to wait through the cut scene every time was a bit annoying.
- When using the knife against the zombies they do not get a chance to attack you (could be intentional).
- Being attacked by the first enemy can cause the player to levitate. It happened to me near the piano and I ended up levitating off screen and apparently unable to do anything.
- Switching between using WASD and Arrow keys for movement and menus feels odd to me. I'd prefer to stick to one or the other.
- Is the scale off a bit? I don't know that it matters much as it lends itself to the errie feeling of the game, but it seems like the PC is a little too short, especially in certain rooms (e.g., bed room)

It looks like I forgot to save my comments, so I'm going off of memory a little bit here. I did run through it again, but I might be missing some of my initial impressions...
I was able to beat the game, and thought the idea was interesting.

- The battles feel a little frustrating, because the AI just wanders around and spams attacks and the controls are a little odd. Really, the final battle is the only one that really frustrated me, since the fire whip destroys the leaf projectiles, but I do wonder if the battle system would feel stale pretty quickly.  I think a more active AI and precise battle system (at least mouse aiming) could be beneficial in the long run.
- I thought it was weird having to use the mouse in the level up menus, when the rest of the game is Keyboard only.
- The last fight highlighted that, in my opinion the MP/HP bars are way too big, they take up a huge portion of the screen, and it makes the battle feel unnecessarily constrained.
- After the mushroom battle the player character spawns back at the beginning of the map, meaning we have to walk back to where the mushroom was to pickup the axe, I think it would feel more natural to spawn where the mushroom was.

Seems like you have a pretty interesting foundation here, with quite a bit of promise!

No need to apologize, it's definitely not an intuitive game, I just appreciate you taking the time to play and leave feedback! 

I think my own appreciation of business games that are known for not being particularly user friendly might've bit my in the butt a little on this (I love the stocks and bonds in RRT! Thought EU is overwhelming for me as well). 

The original intent of the tutorial was to slowly step the player through all of the functions, unfortunately I just ran out of time, but I agree it's probably a little too much, with too ineffective a UI at this point.

Thank you for your feedback and encouraging words! 

I started the tutorial with the idea of making it fully interactive, but just ran out of time, but I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment regarding the tutorial and UI.

- The fonts are all pretty heavily pixelated on the startscreen and credits.
- The Main Menu image is as well, and it has a lot of artifacts (I'm guessing it's AI generated, if not then something might be breaking when it gets upscaled. The credit screen background actually looks okay, there's some pixelation with the font, but that's it.
- As for the jittery player character, I think it might be something to do with the animation. I don't notice it in any of the other sprites and the game doesn't seem to have any performance issues.

I like the changes!

A couple things I noticed this time around:
- Would love a way to speed up time. On the last round I was clearly good to go, but had the towers a  little far from the start so ended up just sitting waiting for a couple of minutes.
- Volume options would be very welcome, and are really easy to setup with Godot.
- Include a way to run. Games without sprint just feel wrong to me!
- Some way to interact with the enemies, once of the unique things about this vs a lot of TD games is that you have a player character, so use that to your advantage as much as possible. I absolutely surf the turtles the entire time they're on screen! I think you could do some really cool things with enemy interaction. I imagine something like grabbing onto a flying fish to get a speed boost glide.

I don’t think it was performance based, everything else seemed to run fine. 

I think it is likely the font. I have the same problem as well, where the font I chose really doesn’t scale as well as I’d like it to. 

I’m about to go to work, but if it helps I can check those issues out again later today. 

What browser are you playing on? What OS does your mobile device have?

I’m putting development on hold for now, but if I find some time I might work on it and see if I can figure out how to make it compatible with mobile browsers. 

I actually did realize I could run away, fairly early on, but only by accident. I do know it's fairly standard in JRPGs, and think I probably would've stumbled upon it one way or the other.

However, if you want to tutorialize it, maybe you could add it that first battle scene. Have the player fight mobs, but realize they can't take them and they have to run, something like that might work relatively well.

Yeah, I really wish I'd done something better with the UI. 

I've heard the complaint about not being able to tell what impact you are having, which is largely what drove the ability to see the history of your products, but it's admittedly a pretty weak representation, and now that I'm reading your input, I'm starting to think I have too many obscure mechanics running in the background.

I really appreciate your feedback!

KB/M = Keyboard and Mouse.

Is there any reason you're not uploading the game straight to itch? Having it as a Google Doc with no amplifying information on the game page seems very odd.

I'm not really a fan of JRPGs, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I think this looks very promising, and I really like enemy sprites! I ended my run a little earlier than I initially planned to, because I died and lost 10 or so minutes of progress (my bad for not saving). I skimmed through the story, so don't really know what's going on (nothing against the game), but I like the idea of sentient weapons and feel like it could be used to really interesting effect.

Feedback:
- The visual difference between the player characters and enemies is odd, to me.
- I feel like there are too many enemy types too quickly, and too many powerful variants of enemies. I feel like it probably makes it really hard to differentiate between tiers of enemies. For example, I'd assume the slime enemy (the one that gives the Aqua Amulet) is supposed to be important, but it didn't feel that way.
- I think the density of fights might be  a little too high, having to fight every few seconds makes progress feel very slow, and makes the battles feel tedious rather quickly.
- I have a hard time understanding the setting of the game. That may be largely on me for just skimming the story, but I do think some of it is the art direction with the setting jumping between a space station, wooden shack, run down concrete town.
- FLor and Azuli having the exact same face shape feels odd to me. I don't have a problem with reusing assets, but having the first two party members look the same odd (unless it's intentional and part of the story!).
- I think the early game might benefit from providing the player with some additional consumable items. I hit a couple of battles pretty early on that nearly killed me, but had few items to restore health and mana... While I think that could work later in the game when I'm more familiar or if battles were made out to be less common, I think the current state of the game might benefit from being a little less stingy with item drops at the beginning.

I think I'm having the same issue as Animamundi. Couldn't leave the library so started looking around and it froze on the room with the pool table.

Other than freezing, I really only noticed 2 issues.
1. The main character and the female interest both have the exact same face shape, which I thought was a little odd.
2. Some of the rooms you enter (the street and theater) have the main character facing towards the door rather than away from it.

Additionally, I couldn't unzip the folder using Windows 11, I had to use 7-ZIp. Might be worth mentioning on your itch page.

I got some high scores!

A very interesting concept, but one I personally found to be a bit too frustrating. Trying to battle the controls and monsters is just a bit too much for me.

I am not a fan of platformers, but I was able to get to the end of this! 

If you're looking for feedback, I thought the movement was a little too slow and felt imprecise both of which may be big issues for platformer. Additionally, the movement wasn't consistent once the wind (I think that's what it is) mechanic is introduced, which made some of the platforming more aggravating than it should've been. I like the addition of new mechanics, but don't know if its effects are illustrated well enough.

Do you find it hard:
- Yes, I couldn't get past the area right after the pink flower. Honestly it may just be a lack of skill on my part, but I feel like the hit box for the character might be a little odd, as I had a hard time gauging whether or not I was going to hit something.

Did you find any bugs:
- The speed flower falls behind the player character, not sure if that's intentional or not.

I really like the foundation you have here, even if the gameplay doesn't quite work for me. I ended up quitting at Tutorial-6, but I see a lot of potential in the system you have built. I think the interface, graphics, and sound design are all solid.

How to expand the game:
- In my mind this is currently a memory game (just memorizing the sequence laid out before you) rather than a puzzle game, and I would much prefer a puzzle game. Watching a sequence and then having to remember it to rebuild it feels extremely tedious to me. I would prefer the challenge to be in achieving a certain end state using the modules available.
- If your intention is for the game to be a memory game, I think you're well on your way, and my only suggestion would be to keep all modules available after they've been unlocked (whether or not they're needed for the current sequence) as it would increase the difficulty a bit.
- I also second Wandering Peak's idea of including syncing machines!

Possible error:
- "RMG_A is a command console for head part"  should that be RMB_A?

Ah, I had to go full screen. Not sure why I didn't think of that earlier..

On my first play through, I got the second phone and ended up getting stuck on one of the messages (the back button wasn't working), I tried everything I could think of but I couldn't get it to work .
On my second play through I got stuck at "What's Him's favorite number" I hadn't dug through everything on the phone (I assume it's somewhere in there), so I wasn't sure what it was and couldn't find a way to progress.

While it does seem to have some issues, I think the overall idea is fantastic. I enjoyed the twist after the second phone and was interested to see where it was going.

Feedback:
- I think the One Man Army splash screen either needs to be faster or skipable. It takes a while, and feels tedious when trying to test the game multiple times.
- I thought the walk to find the suspect was a little long and unclear. There were a couple of times I almost turned back because I thought maybe I was going the wrong way or had missed something. I did make it, so maybe it's not that big of a deal, but I'd think some indication that the player is headed in the right direction would be welcome.
- For itch specifically, it seems Zero Service needs to be played in full screen, so if you can force it into full screen that might alleviate some frustration from players (like myself) who fail to set it to full screen themselves.

Attack pigeons would be awesome!

That is an impressive ReadMe file!

Unfortunately the game is doing some really weird things for me and making it hard to really get a feel for it. It seems interesting, but it keeps making new popup windows. On top of that I'm having a hard time figuring out why I'm losing. I tried following the instructions, but no matter what button I hit first it seems to just cause me to lose. Additionally clicking on the screen seems to lead to an immediate Game Over.

All of that being said, that you're making this on mobile is incredibly impressive and I hope you're able to get a PC to really unlock your skills!

Will the art impact the audience reception:
- In all cases, yes. Good gameplay can overcome underwhelming art (e.g., Dwarf Fortress), but it will be more difficult. For your art specifically, I do think it will make it difficult to find much success outside of very niche gamers, but work with what you have and keep improving you skills!

Seems interesting, but I do feel like there isn't quite enough content in the demo to drive me to play more.

Feedback:
- I really liked finding the code for the Extra menu; however, if you get to the Extra menu without the code, is there a way to get back to the main menu? I couldn't figure it out.
- When playing the card game from the Extra menu, is there any way to reset or exit? I won and then was seemingly stuck on the screen.
- The card game is a little confusing. I did figure it out, but think a few UI tweaks could make it more intuitive. Reduce mana as it's spent, have a distinct play area, highlight End Turn when the player is out of possible moves, indicate what the opponent is doing, etc.

I can't give much feedback on the main gameplay since what I saw of it seems fine, it was intuitive and interesting.

Very cool little game. I struggled to figure out combinations and how to beat some of the enemies, but I think that's largely a skill issue. I really enjoyed the presentation and the overall idea.

The lack of a menu and options is really my only complaint, otherwise I thought it was very solid for what it is!

A nice little quick platformer! 

The player character was a little jittery and the credits screen was pixelated pretty bad on my screen (2560x1440 in case it helps). I like that the apples double as ammo and points, and I thought it was really cool that the birds can kill the spiders!

I am really lost as to what I'm doing. I think this is abstract enough currently that you'd need to include a guide so players can figure out how to play it. The first time I played I just clicked random things and then clicked end turn until it said "You Win".

The idea sounds interesting, but I just really can't makes sense of what I'm doing or what the results of my actions are.

I was able to get 111 seconds. I think the gameplay works relatively well, the visuals and audio are pretty solid, and it has a cool name!

Game play more engaging/addictive. A few suggestions (in no particular order):
- Make it objective based. Give the player something to do other than survive.
- Make it round based, with upgrades in between each round.
- Include different "maps" rather than just a rectangle you could have different shapes or even mazes.
- Add a story mode.
- Include different enemy types.
- Include some collectible power ups (e.g., temporary invulnerability, speed boost, deflection, etc.)
- Allow the player to fight back in some way.

Visual feedback:
- Find a way to make the player character more thematic, the shapes are easy to understand, but don't make a lot of sense and aren't particularly engaging. Having different spaceships or aliens (or player unlockable/selectable skins) could help.
- Give some variety to the meteors.

Overall, I feel like you have a pretty promising foundation, and could see this turning into something really cool!

Is there anyway to play with just a keyboard? I might dig around later and see if I can find one of my controllers. My only feedback right now, is that I wish you could do training mode with just a keyboard, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do it as you can't select the second character. The game looks pretty promising though!

I'm terrible at this but it is some goofy fun!

I don't have too much in the way of valuable feedback. I really like the theming, there really are no glaring issues that I see. Your Devlog is great!

My only  concrete concern is the lack of an options menu. For how polished the gameplay is, I'm sort of miffed that it doesn't include options. It's a very minor issue, but something that may be relatively easy while adding a solid layer of polish.

Other than that, I do wonder if additional game modes would buy it some longevity. Things like a time attack (how long does it take to make the ordered dish), something where you make multiple dishes by jumping between pans, etc.

I think you're onto something and already have a solid foundation!