Play lemonade stand
You were just selling lemonade.'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| ANTI-CAPITALIST POWER | #1 | 4.739 | 4.739 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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This is an enjoyable and thought provoking game, if one whose intended experience I ruined because I read the description before playing it. But considering the title of the game jam this was submitted to, I think it would be easy to guess as to what the message of it was.
As other commenters have pointed out, the game is well done. The Visuals are pleasing to look at, the music is bearable enough I suppose, and it runs without glitching. Which doesn't sound like much, but crossing the bar of having a functional game is a difficult thing to achieve, even if it doesn't look like it. As I understand it anyway.
The experience itself, as mentioned previously, proved enlightening. The whole thing where you try to choose the "good" options early on leading to failure due to you not being able to both buy lemons and sell them at the same time leading to you just buying the one with the bigger number. Which initially is understandable, after all why buy a manual squeezer when you can grab an electric one.
Over time however, likely representing the company becoming a larger and more influential corporate entity, it becomes questionable. Do greenwashing, dump the waste on a river and just label the fines you take as cost of operation, outsource the farms where you get your inputs from to South East Asia. And in the final one where you have to sprint for a Billion or lose, bribe a politician instead of just paying your workers properly.
Onto the things written in the page, saying that Central Planning is unfeasible against Laissez-faire approaches because it's centralized is misguided in my eyes. Because there is an argument made that the system used by the Megacorporations is basically using Central Planning. For more details on that statement, check out the book "The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism" by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworsk.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
About what you mention in the last paragraph, that sounds like an interesting read. I never thought about it and, even though it makes sense in many ways, since a company is actually a centralized structure, I see a company more like a feudal state instead of a democratic state. And of course, profit oriented. A country has deeper variables, but anyway, I should read the book before jumping to conclusions. Thank you for the recommendation :D
Just like in real life. There are places like a town Mexico where cola is cheaper than clean water and a company has restricted access to the only freshwater lake because it's water is used in cola production
I really like that this game emphasizes how systems have much more power than individual people.
Good game! It shows in a simplified way both, how difficult can be nowadays to survive as a small business without "expansive ambitions" and how you can only grow so much by making questionable decisions. Love your rambling in the game page too, 100% agree. In addition, and this is completely personal as an audiovisual student, my take is that in a world where general population is unable to identify marketing strategies, there is no such thing as a naturally self-regulating system. Looking forward for that future where companies compete over which one is nicer :'-]
Ok, por donde comenzamos? Hmm...
Tengo que aclarar que no hablo inglés pero sí lo entiendo un poco, aún así es posible que yo no entendiera algunas de las frases del juego por lo que es posible que las haya interpretado malEXCELENTE IDEA, PÉSIMA EJECUCIÓN; TAN PÉSIMA QUE DERRUMBA, TOTAL O PARCIALMENTE, LA CRÍTICA QUE INTENTA HACER
EN CONCLUSIÓN: Si vas a hacer una crítica a algo REAL asegúrate de que el modo en que haces esa crítica también lo sea, no puedes amañar los resultados de un videojuego para después ofrecerlos como "evidencia de que el capitalismo es un virus" si el juego FUE diseñado para ese propósito y NO PUEDE ARROJAR UN RESULTADO DISTINTO AL DESEADO POR TI. Otra cosa, existen temas demasiado complejos como para simplificarlos tanto, son como las carpetas .zip, sencillamente es imposible comprimirlas más de lo que ya están, lo mismo sucede con estos temas, son tan complejos y extensos que una breve explicación se hace casi imposible de realizar y menos aún si tu intención es expresar ese tema en un videojuego hecho en unos días, es MUY difícil hacer algo así sin descuidar ciertos aspectos, como en este caso, el realismo del escenario que se plantea en este videojuego.
En fin, creo que eso es todo, hay un par de cosas más que me preocupan en el texto que acompaña al videojuego, haría comentarios sobre esto pero quería que esta reseña se enfocara más que todo en el juego en sí y en la crítica que este intenta dar (Eso y el hecho de que ya se hizo muy extenso el comentario jajaja)
RESUMEN: Un juego un poco mediocre y entretenido (aunque es entendible teniendo en cuenta el contexto en el que se hizo) y crítica aún más mediocre rozando la ridiculez ya que esta misma no tiene unas bases muy sólidas.
Si en algún momento se me ocurre alguna otra cosa que añadir quizás lo haga pero de momento este es todo mi comentario, disculpen cualquier error ortográfico o tipográfico, cualquier comentario es bienvenido siempre que se haga con el debido respeto.
GRACIAS POR LEER 🖤really good
Great game! Juicy graphics and simple and efficiently getting the message across. Well integrated with some incremental gameplay.
A really good proof of how the idea of "endless growth" is insanely flawed.
I mean, look what happens when body cells decide to follow that idea...
Beautifully crafted and with a very powerful message.
The "after the game" read provides nuance to the topics of the game, to the point I would dare say this could be used as an educational tool to talk about sustainability.
Excellent work!
Nicely done! Indeed there is no sustainable capitalism and the game mechanics show it. Also really liked reading your thoughts in the description
Nice game! I like the choices options, gives good incentive for replayability.
Congrats! That was a great read and an amazing game!
a really excellent game that’s beautifully elevated by the author’s note in the game description. both the game and note are wonderfully crafted and pull out all the right emotions.
I loveeeed this game, I played twice. Once to make the business grow and once to be more sustainable. I think it really conveys a message and I love that if I was “sustainable” the business didn’t grow fast enough and I was fired, truely shows the current state of the world. Art work was nicely polished too. 10/10
Literal goosebumps. A 5-minute experience that I might continue to think about for weeks, even years. Might be cliche to say, but the game and the little essay were absolutely brilliant. I can't comment long and deep analyses like others did, I'm genuinely at a loss for words.
Something I think others haven't mentioned tho- is the bite-sized format of the game. It's quick. It's easy. It's fun. It looks cute. I believe everyone here knows how capitalism shapes the media we consume and affects our attention span. It's such a good ""bait"" (I mean this very positively) for A LOT of people to learn and reflect on. But regardless, I think it was super impressive that you were able to give such a strong everlasting message from a short simple game.
I will be recommending this game to others! Thank you for making this game.
Great and visually polished little clicker game about the workings of capitalism!
I think I saw one grammatical error where you ask the player if they want to "Dumb" waste when you meant "Dump" the waste. Otherwise - impeccable!
The bright colors, the icons, the easily understandable rules made for a very good game that is simple and had a low learning curve. This works perfectly for the point you're trying to make about capitalism. I think some others were made too that were just as interesting. In your explanation you explain a few things but what struck me the most was the psychological effect your game had. It was not fun. And I don't mean the game itself or the mechanics but the task set before me just filled me with dread and at some point I didn't want to do it anymore. Surprisingly, and I don't know if you factored this in (but we'll say you did and you can take a deserved bow) but the ONLY reason I continued was because the note below said to finish the game before reading it lol. I began making ethical choices, not necessarily because I could see the consequences but to spite the system that was doing this. Repeatedly I thought, "Fuck this whole thing!" because I knew my time would be short. And if it's short - why not do something good? I mention all that because it does make me wonder what someone who believes in capitalism would think playing your game. Psychologically, do they blame themselves? Do they dive back in and stop paying attention to the wording to "win" the game? Are they positive they can win because capitalism MUST be a win-lose situation and they are WINNERS? I have to wonder!
You gave me a lot to think about.
Thank you so much for your long reply and for reading my long text.
I'm very glad that It made you think at least and I can see that yo really got my point.
Also, I really didn't think too much about the motivation of the player throw the text warning. I just didn't want for anybody to get spoiled for the plot-twist, specially if somehow a pro-capitalist manages to play this game. Me too would be very curious to see a pro-capitalist see and react to this game.
Also, thanks for the grammar error, it's already fixed