Now this is a really cool concept. I love 4x games but I've never seen one played in reverse. The UI is a bit obtuse, for instance when I clicked on some tiles a little light would appear but no options, but some time spent polishing it to helping a player past the mechanical learning curve of the game's economics would really make this shine. If you ever feel like exploring this game past a prototype, check out a board game called Moon Colony Bloodbath for some additional ideas on system collapse.
Play game
The Long Dusk's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #334 | 3.867 | 3.867 |
| Creativity | #383 | 4.267 | 4.267 |
| Narrative | #476 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Artwork | #2123 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Enjoyment | #2408 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You won Civilization-like game but then what? 4X game but in reverse - you don't progress, you regress strategically - count down on alien invasion, decide what matters and try to save as much as possible!
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
see description for full credits
Comments
This looks and plays like a real full game. VERY polished for a game jam, maybe a better tutorial would be good
Submitted
Day TradingReally great concept, but I find it too complex for such a short experience. For instance, I would expect that repairing and delaying impacts require only to get a correct unit on a tile without spending commands on action, taking into account how difficult it is to get anywhere in time. Also different terrains does not make it more fun. The main issue is that you cannot actually plan anything up front, you can just react on what's coming, and if your engineers or military are too far, well, you cannot do anything. Surely it contributes to the narrative, but for such a complex game having so little control feels frustraiting.
I see two ways how to impove this: 1) make it less complex; 2) give player more turns before an impact to prepare which would make planning possible.
Anyway, very good entry and very impressive for a jam in terms of polish and quality. Good job!
This game deserves more ratings. I spent a good half hour or so playing it. Honestly, hats off for making a relatively complete 4X game. Genuinely absurd that a solo developer can do this in 4 days. Only one nitpick (I definitely could be playing the game wrong, so please let me know if so) but one thing I struggled with a bit was that after you dismissed some of the notifications, it's a little hard to remember all the damage that popped up on the last turn (for the purpose of routing engineers). Other than that, awesome work. I like the upgrades as well, they're a nice touch
Submitted
Solar StrikeYou are too kind, thank you! It was actually 2 days end to end, and indeed UI is one of the biggest items that i did not find the time to do properly, all the elements on the main screen are just 1 iteration from placeholders, was trying to make them functional but UX has a long way to go.
There is pretty much no such thing as 'playing the game wrong' - it deliberately has no 'winning' state, there are a lot of tactics you could be using and they can lead to different outcomes! as long as you didn't lead to complete humanity wipeout (which is also possible), then you are doing it right:)
If you're keen, there is an advanced settings mode, you can wildly change configs of the map and balance, there are tonnes of combinations that lead to very different play styles:)
I really like this concept but honestly I can't tell what choices I should be making at what time. I can tell there's something great there though.
Submitted
30 Minutes Until The Apocalypsewell, that's kind of the poison of the genre, i guess :) so many options, how do you choose where to focus on. One trick i tried here is limiting the capability of just doing every possible thing is command points, so instead of just moving every single piece on the board, the player is expected to analyse which part matters most. For example, if you see a city marked for destruction and a factory - probably makes most sense to focus on the city's evacuation - then you can found new cities with the refugees and keep finding safe spots (the strikes' placements are not completely random). you have a point though - the hint system and overall UX should be better.
super interesting concept. I felt so sorry for my world because I had no idea what I was meant to be doing other than randomly moving things around while cities burn. Or maybe that's what it would really be like?? Either way, I just evacuated everyone and moved them out of harms way and, everyone survived I guess. With a better tutorial I can see myself spending more time to better understand the systems at play
Submitted
Pool PuttiFair, tutorials are the trickiest part especially for a strategy. However, there are many tactics possible here (evacuating, building, fighting/delaying, running, combo of these) and there is no "win" state - only a matter of trying different things and see different outputs, yours is as valid as any other! there is a clear "loss" state if population reaches zero though, which you didn't so congrats! :)
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.