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City of Salt's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #9 | 2.778 | 2.778 |
| Representation of Theme | #9 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Engagement | #10 | 2.889 | 2.889 |
| Functionality | #11 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Visual Design | #11 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Overall | #11 | 2.978 | 2.978 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- The game felt a little slow, but that could just be me - the story was a nice detail that added a lot to the experience!
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Comments
great idea, combining a story with idle type game
This was a neat take on an idle game, I liked the inclusion of a story layer.
I do wish there was a way to speed it up, or maybe more options to buy. It didn’t really feel like I had a lot of choices, and I ended up spending quite a bit of time fully maxed out just waiting for enough salt to upgrade the city again.
Given the story, maybe I was just too greedy, but if that’s the case it would have been nice to have options to spend salt that improved my relationship with the land/nymph, and possibly led to a different outcome depending on the balance between the two. In that sense there was definitely some ludonarrative dissonance here, as the game scolded me for expanding the city, but the only other option (as far as I could tell), was to sit there and do nothing.
Again, if you could speed up the passage of time it would make waiting feel more of an available option.
Regardless, this is a great foundation for something that could be really unique. Nice job!
Really enjoyed playing this one. I like how it represented the themes. Onl;y thing I would add is a better visual indicator for the passage of time. Sometimes it seemed like my game was frozen.
I liked the scaling salt piles in the water. The dialog and character art were good.
My biggest complaint is the amount of time it takes to get to Year 20. For a game like this I want to replay it and try different things to see if I get different dialog. An option to 2X-4X the speed or something would help.
I'm a huge nerd for city builder games. The feeling I got was that I was preparing for some kind of invasion, but I really didn't have to prepare. The game gave me Black and White 2 Vibes with the story telling, like I was trying to prepare my people, but it seems like it was an auto resolved conflict at the end. I think it would be cool if at minimum you gave the player a cutscene of detailing the battle and how their actions impacted it. (Could be done entirely with 2d images, kinda how Age of Empires 2 tells it's campaign stories, which would lean heavily into the beautiful character art in this game)