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I gave myself the challenge of making a completed game in 4 days.  I didn't meet the deadline (it took me 8 days).  But, this is the result:

(http://jrjellybeans.net/images/society00.png)

(http://jrjellybeans.net/images/society01.png)

Society (http://jrjellybeans.net/flashGames/society.html)
A society that doesn't grow is dead.

A society that doesn't progress isn't moving forward is moving backwards.

A good society will never be stopped.

Controls
Mouse Click - Move
Esc - Pause

Stand close to houses to take control of them.

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It's a game about the way that I think that societies function. 

Any opinions or comments would be appreciated!

I.. don't really understand.. but I am intrigued. It seems like you have a really good concept here, I just can't tell what the heck is happening.

Agreed,
Seems like a great start, but I would recommend telling the user what the goal of the user is as well as some like of legend as to what the icons are.

Yeah, from what I can tell its a neat start for a concept but it's a little hard to tell what is going on.

I'm assuming you are just a guy running around conquering different cities/castles that get stronger as the game progresses, but I have no idea what the black and blue orbs do. I also never got an extra guy running around like in your screenshots.

I guess its not that bad for a little over a weeks work though.

Are you going to do anything else with it or just call it finished?

Damnit... I was hoping I wouldn't have to work on an instruction screen...

It looks like I will :(

Give me a day or two and I'll whip up something to help you guys.

Thanks for the feedback!

@ Yngram
It's finished entirely. 

I think the game is more fun when you can actually understand what is going on :)

This is what I've concluded:

- You control a person
- This person levels up via collecting resources
- This person is trying to expand his/her society by finding suitable places to build and standing nearby for a few seconds
- This person will eventually die
- A new, less experienced, person will take over and try to keep on improving the society
- Sometimes you can get helpers to join you on your quest for experience (though I cannot recall how I did it)

...that's it. I'm assuming you play until the timer at the top runs out.

EDIT: I should probably provide feedback as well

A basic 'this is your objective' screen would be nice. Also if this is going to be a sort of 'get a high score' kind of game, I feel like it lasts too long.

Stand near a 'captured' village, from what I can tell this is how helpers are spawned. Their effectiveness is hard to determine. It seems as though the amount of time you spend waiting for a new followers eliminates the bonus of having them. I do not really know.

Hmm, do any games exist where the primary gameplay involves figuring out the rules? That might make an interesting basis for a game.

The game looks interesting but I couldn't figure out what to do either unfortunately.

Thanks for the feedback all!

I'm still working on a tutorial.  Hopefully, it'll be ready by the end of today.

(I'd love to explain how the game works, but it's really helpful and interesting to see what comments people are making.  I'm trying to use this information to make the tutorials as friendly as possible.)

There's now an in game tutorial as well as an in game manual.

Please give it a try and let me know if anything is still confusing.

Thanks a bunch!

I like the feel of the game.

I didn't play the tutorial, or notice it until I saw this, and I didn't notice the manual either.

Is it just me, or does the tutorial feels a bit less responsive than the main game?

Yeah, it feels well put together and pretty neat.  The music is nice too.  The tutorial was instructive, but felt fairly long, I guess I'd have preferred to learn on the job as it were.

The goal seemed a bit loose, the feel of the game was not one that (to me) seemed to match the highscore chasing goal.  I think I'd have rathered some sort of conquest/completion style thing.  Though timescales make that sort of thing difficult I guess.

Still some decent ideas in it :)


There's a whole genre of them http://www.towlr.com/ (http://www.towlr.com/)!  There's also a fair handful of short indie puzzle games that use that bias, increpare's The Rose Garden (http://www.increpare.com/2010/08/the-rose-garden/) is one that sticks out for me.

That's a fun game. I got 16484 culture, probably not a lot. :/
Two things annoyed me though, the bad responsivness of the mouse. Some times I would click and it wouldn't move at all. I like clicking a lot, instead od thinking ahead with one click to a long range. Kind of like diablo. Not sure if it's your algorithm or it's the fault of flash.
The second thing is related to the first thing, I wasn't able to pick most of the fruits from a city because of the controls.
Otherwise, very intersting game indeed. :)

I right clicked on the game and ran into a problem. The Adobe menu for right clicking on a Flash applet would disappear, and left clicking anywhere else in the game and in the tabs window and on my Firefox tabs did nothing. I'm using FF 3.6.13. Focusing on another window (the downloads window for FF in this case) fixed the problem.

Don't know why you would think that.  The game uses the same controls for everything...


I haven't heard this before and I can't reproduce the error.  I was going to say that it probably had something to do with Firefox itself. 
Are you able to consistently reproduce this problem?

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Thanks for checking the game out everyone.  I really appreciate the feedback!

The lock up only happens in the tutorial levels, and I've reproduced it in different parts.

The new tutorial cleared up a few things I was too lazy to figure out for myself. It's a neat little game you have there.

I still can't figure out what the problem is.

Could you tell me if it occurs in EVERY screen of the tutorial?

Knowing which screen it first occurs in would really help out.  I can't help but feel this is connected to the issue that increpare had...

@ yngram
Thanks a bunch!

I can't play I click on the play button and a dark screen pops..
edit:
yay I was able to play ;3 I enjoyed it.

Bug: if you die while shooting at a castle then you keep shooting after you're resurrected.
Please please change some of the colours - reading the instructions made my eyes bleed.

I'm not getting the lock up today in the tutorial. I some times had to right click twice to move the rc menu or lc twice to make it disappear. Then I updated my Flash player, and the need to double click happened much more rarely. It might be framerate related, since moving and attacking became slower when I brought up the rc menu.

Also, it might also be a problem with Firefox and its plugin container hogging up resources. The plugin container averages consuming a slight majority of CPU processing (50-60%) while I play the tutorial or regular game. Then system idle shoots over 70% when the animations lag with the rc menu up.

It's not the prettiest game, but it's unique and fun

LOL  :durr:

Yeah, I'm definitely not an artist.  Though I'm quite proud of the job I did - things actually look decent for a change :)

I recently changed around some of the code in the game  Turns out adding that tutorial really did make things a bit slower, and I tried to counter that as much as possible.

Hopefully the optimization cleared up some of the problems people have been having.

I will now start the long journey towards looking for a sponsor!  Wish me luck ,eh?


Oh, and I agree with you :)  Unfortunately, I suck when it comes to colors, so that was the best I could do.  If there are any artists that could tell me a better font color, that'd be great!