Play game
Countryball Command's itch.io pageRate this game
The submission period of this jam has not ended yet. Rating opens 2026-12-01 12:15:10.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
The submission period of this jam has not ended yet. Rating opens 2026-12-01 12:15:10.
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I played for around 15 minutes on Easy difficulty, using a browser on PC.
Two things made a good first impression: the art style and overall visual identity, and the introductory tutorial. The achievements were also a nice addition.
Browser performance on my PC was a drawback, though, and it affected the experience.
My main gameplay concern was that the experience started to feel repetitive fairly quickly. During this session, I didn’t find enough variety to keep the existing mechanics interesting. I don’t necessarily mean that the game needs more complicated strategy—new variables, options, or situations that change how you approach the game could also help.
I didn’t have any major issues with the mechanics I encountered. For me, the limitation was less about how those mechanics worked and more about the lack of variety around them.
Overall, I liked the presentation and the introduction, but I would have liked more variation as the session progressed. Since this was a short session on Easy, I can’t say whether that changes later or on higher difficulties.
I meant to take a quick test of this game, ended up playing almost 2 hours
It is pretty good game, and its main problem currently is that there is lots of confusion.
First two main things to fix. These were two things that most spoilt the game for me.
1. Own countrys logo keeps getting bigger. Otherwise I like it, but it keeps hiding countries under it. It becomes very annoying when you expand your country, and hence the logo gets bigger, but then you havent conquered your neighbor yet.
2. In buying armies page, make an option to make the number back to 0. In my first game I was quite confused how the building happened, and as I kept increasing the number, nothing happened even longer, since I didnt have enough money to buy them. It took me quite long time before I realised that the money was taken right away when buying, and at that point the number was already so high on most of them, that it was very high to reach that amount of money anymore to be able to build them.
These two fixes would imprve the first time experience a lot.
What I still missed was that how much money armies consumed as upkeep. I think tutorial said upkeep costs, but I couldnt quite see this cost. Maybe add it to the buy cost as 35/0.1 USD.
One thing that got me stuck in the game was that as I expanded a bit, then it ended up that all the countries beside me became of same color, meaning I couldnt attack any of them anymore, and my only option was naval.
It is bit annoying that this can happen, and perhaps there should be some way to still make some country weaker with lot of effort. However, I am not sure if games idea was to do more diplomacy, since I pretty much skipped the diplomacy. If that is the point, then no need to change, since might be even better game if part of the thing is to actually figure out how to get diplomacy benefit you.
Regarding random events. Those were bit confusing in that you would see differnt options, and sometimes you see only green options show up on some choice, especially it might show +money. So you pick that up, and then it ends up taking your income down. That was confusing and felt very random, as in, I couldnt have control what to do, since even I chose the option with only good things, and especially with +money, I still ended up losing money (income).
One thing I was wondering is if there is any way to send more troops when attack has begun already? If three isnt, it might not be bad option to be able to send more.
And regarding choosing your country, as, at least I wanted to go pick some specific country, it was annoying that countries were ordered in ranging, instead of alphabetical order. Alphabetical order would be better. Although, favorably you can pick the soring yourself.
But all in all, I enjoyed this game pretty much, and might even return it later again. Would even consider buying it when it is ready, for it quite nicely hit the "Risk" type kind simple world conquer strategy game that is basically quite quicly playable. ALthough this wasnt really quick enough yet to really work for substitue for Risk kind itch.
Thank you so much for playing the game for so long and writing such detailed feedback! Im really glad you enjoyed it, and its great to hear that you would even consider buying it. For now I am planning to release it for free on the Google Play Store and it will always be free on itch.io too.
Your feedback about the confusing parts and the overall pacing is really helpful and I will definitely keep it in mind for future updates.
About the situation where all the neighboring countries had the same color, I think that was a rare event where a huge alliance forms. Theres a small chance that alliances like nato, brics, an Asian alliance or an African alliance form during a game. Be sure to keep an eye on World News for that.
For random events theres always a chance that your decision can backfire, even if it looks good at first. This is intentional so theres not always one clearly right choice, but I will take your feedback into consideration to make the outcomes clearer.
I will definitely add the ability to send more troops into a country while an attack is already happening, thats a great idea.
Thanks again for helping me improve the game :)
"For random events theres always a chance that your decision can backfire, even if it looks good at first. This is intentional so theres not always one clearly right choice, but I will take your feedback into consideration to make the outcomes clearer."
This clarifies it. However, right now this doesnt translate to the player.
What it looked to me, when the options were shown, was that there were some sure things, with either green or red effects, and then there were two kinds of random events.
One that showed that might happen good or bad (I guess 50/50 basically?) or then there were some that were shown as having lower or higher chance of possibly happening.
Therefore if one of the events was showing only clearly green or red things, I assumed it meant that these are sure things, and no random would be involved.
Played another game, since I had an itch to play another one of this.
Another confusion notice.
I havent figured out where to see when someone is attacking my country, as in, the battle progess.
There sometimes comes these alerts that some country is attacking, but I have no clue with how big force, or if I should do something.
Uprising is bit similar situation. It mentions uprising and might even tell to prepare troops, but I dont see anything happening. Sometimes some country might get lost, but that dont seem to be the case always.
But especially someone is preparing an attack notice, most of time seemingly nothing happens. I guess they attack my country and lose, but then sometimes, it is simply game over.
And one time it seemed to me like that notice meant that because I was attacking one country, that one of their allies sent them help, making me lose the attack.
Not sure I have understood right, but main point here, I dont have a clue even after three games, and this time I even tried to check after that notice if there is some war going on or something somewhere, and didnt find.
by other words, complete confusion what is happening.