Play game
Nassau Merchant Company's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #17 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
| Fun | #42 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Accessibility | #53 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Overall | #53 | 3.422 | 3.422 |
| Audio | #60 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Originality | #66 | 3.476 | 3.476 |
| Controls | #74 | 3.048 | 3.048 |
| Graphics | #82 | 3.238 | 3.238 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4.stable
Wildcards Used
"Are we the baddies?"
Game Description
Form your own trade company at the heart of pirate-occupied Nassau and reap the benefits of the chaos!
How does your game tie into the theme?
In this game you form your own merchant company and take expeditions from port to port, buying and trading from several factions.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
LGWV
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
5
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Very cool game that I actually sunk a decent bit of time into. The ship combat is satisfyingly difficult (as ship combat should be, it's a building-sized vehicle after all). Genuinely fun to zip around and gradually improve your vessel by hopping between the various factions.
I LOVE your inclusion of the "cutting room floor" section in the game's description - it gives a great insight into the game's development process. I may start doing the same myself :) All of your stretch-goals mentioned in there sound like great ideas. I particularly love the visual idea of the little one-pixel-sized crew members milling around your boat.
All in all a really great entry. Well done dev!
Thanks for checking out! I love putting stuff like the “cut content” in my submission, makes it feel like a devlog lol. Thanks again for giving it a play, hope to see more from you during next month’s jam!
Wonderful menu and start! The gameplay is straight forward but enjoyable, though I had some issues exiting out of dialogue when ships were shooting at me. The cut content on factions could definitely make it more interesting to establish relationships, maybe add some bounty hunts that benefit some of the relationships, etc. Love the water shader and the commands by the ship as if its being called by the crew.
Love the bounty ideas, thanks for playing & reviewing!
Very cool game and nice job on the execution!
I think the islands are a bit too far apart, so it gets a little boring. Also, once I upgraded the hull and shot, I wanted to find some pirates to fight, but couldn't find any, so some tweaking on the progression needs to be done.
How did you do the water shader? I could have used that in a previous game jam.
Fair enough on the distance between islands - I likely should have included some decoration, sandbars, uninhabited islands, etc to break up the travel. Typically, the pirates stick around the islands and make trips to Nassau every so often - at the start there is ~1-2 dozen, but I’ve had some feedback that the respawn speed seems to be lacking for them.
Water shader is heavily based off of this shader here - https://godotshaders.com/shader/pixel-art-water/. I had to do some tweaking with the noise textures, foam, etc to get it to work at the world scale. I’d recommend looking at the example project in the comments there, as it’s application is somewhat complicated vs more standard shaders.
Really enjoyed it, some nice touches at the start with the naming the company and skimming through the giant contract. Menu screen art is very nice too.
Would love to play an expanded version of this with more options for buying/trading.
Neat game, good job!
to be honest, I only tried this game because of the artful main menu screenshot — and it turned out to be a cool game! it reminded me of The Wind Waker’s open waters, it’s a nice contemplative mood. I love the little shouts from the crew lol.
I think the ship rotation could use some acceleration, as it feels very rigid when going from clockwise to counterclockwise (or vice versa). also, I kept losing sight of my cursor, it should stand out more. maybe A/D as an alternative to steer would be nice too.
combat seems optional, is that intentional? there doesn’t seem to be any rewards, and I can just sail away in a straight line. anyway, doesn’t seem like there’s an end, but I got to a funny number and stopped there:
Great idea on the acceleration for turn speeds! It currently is a static value based on the current sail level, so def feels a little weird.
Currently, combat is basically optional and more of a hurdle to jump during trade routes. I originally wanted ships to possibly drop trade goods (some of them have unique movement which travels between islands as trade routes, so prob defined by that) - but just ran outta time on it.
Thanks for playing!
I liked the game, the battle system between ships is really fun, although a little easy once you get the hang of it.
Eventually it became rare to see enemy ships, I think I destroyed most of them 😁
I think the interface would benefit a lot from a little more feedback on the elements, at first it took me a while to understand if the buttons were clickable or disabled (especially the sell button).
But overall, I had a lot of fun, congrats on the entry!
Totally agree on the UI - I’m typically pretty bad with UI feedback and I left most of the UI this month to the last second so it’s all pretty boilerplate lol. Planning to do something pretty UI intensive next month, so we’ll see how that goes. Thanks for checking it out!
Really great water, sound, and pretty fun loop. I Controls were a little rough, and I wasn't able to buy stuff very well.
Good:
-The combat was suprisingly fun. Unfortunately I died because 3 ships came all at once. =P.
-The starting cutscene and the title art are really good.
-Ship callouts/text was a very nice feature.
Improvement:
-The map was a nice touch. It did provide some direction, but unfortunately the game didn't provide a sense of what I would be doing at the start. It felt more like a wander than an expedition.
Totally agree! I left any tutorial-ling / tips to the last minute, so it’s lacking a lot of initial direction due to that - thanks for checking it out!
Really cool concept I enjoyed killing random ships
Sailing games are always fun, and this one was a joy to play! I found myself roaming around for much longer than I expected! Really loved the main menu art.
FULL SAILS from my end, great work on this game!
Very fair point on the trading, thanks for the feedback! I’m hoping to update it after voting to improve some of the trade UI and HUD, which hopefully will make trading more informative. Thanks again!
I really felt the pressure being the captain of a ship and telling my crew: SET THE SAILS, SHOOT TO THE RIGHT and so on. Really cool experience and also very ambitious for one week of development. Keep it up you are very talented!
Great work! Enjoyed the combat mechanics - quite challenging, but when you got a hit it felt like a real success. The crew’s feedback with the text was quite nice.
My favorite thing was the flavour text and the documents at the start though!
The naval combat mechanics were quite a surprise. Simple to understand but you really need to master them to win battles. Trading is also fun. Congratulations on your entry.
Thank you!
Nice game. It was fun. The sounds fit the setting well. It looks like the controls listed on the game page have raise and lower the sails swapped. The in-game controls show correctly.
Dang you’re right - good catch, thanks!
Fun! I love these types of games and it was cool to compare our approaches. I also think a fun little touch was the HP being represented by your first mate telling you how broken the boat was.
Thanks for checking it out! I actually have voice lines for all of those calls as well, just didn’t get them added before the deadline - def will be adding them after voting.
It’s a nice touch that the X in the font is a crossbones. A solid pirate game with decent ship combat and trading! Well done!
Thanks! I really love the font tbh, the main one being used for headers and titles is this one - https://www.fontspace.com/the-rum-is-gone-font-f109641