Keep eye on food. Idlers breed. Don't harm environment too much. Upgrade professions. Research new technologies.
This is my 2nd entry in Ludum Dare! This time I made an 'idler'. As you can guess it's about technology - ancient technologies to be specific. Let me guide you through 'gameplay'. You are guiding a Tribe. In order to be successful keep your eyes on resources and environment. The most important resource is Food. If you're out of it - your tribe will die from starvation. More advanced resources will come later. You have also Children indicator - Idle citizens will make it grow ^^. When it reaches 100%, you'll get another Idle citizen.
Watch out for environment - if you harm it too much rate as which it regenerates will drop down rapidly. Spend Science to advance in technology. Efficiency is the rate at which one worker contributes to resource he's responsible for (more effective hunter will give more food, and kill more animals at he same time), so total contribution to resource it efficiency * number of workers.Here's Tech Tree if you need some guidance, but you can play without it and explore the game.
For those who does not like surprises I've prepared list of technologies and their effects.
Mining: you can now mine yay!
Calendar: what do you expect? try it!
* Oscar5055, Patrix0n, veneficus78, kajman226, rojtarc21, faustNW, kombiusz19995 - been there through my journey till the end!
I've sat through the development of this game on twitch for almost its entirety. I find it fascinating how such a simple concept can become a game that draws you in for an hour of playing - essentially clicking buttons.
At first I thought the idea was boring but you've added a few different mechanics that work well with each other and it became actually interesting. I think the game is exceptionally well balanced, all the statistics and relations are reasonable and therefor the game is challenging.
If you add some actual game graphics, I think people might play it the same way the play agario or any of those others.
I like the idea. It's sort of like an incremental game, but with balancing instead of clicking. It's similar, but more challenging.
The population should die less quickly when food hits zero.
Thanks! I've edited the description - added few words about efficiency.
'Efficiency is the rate at which one worker contributes to resource he's responsible for (more effective hunter will give more food, and kill more animals at he same time), so total contribution to resource it efficiency * number of workers'.
Nice work! It remembers me about the hours I played "A Dark Room".
It's rly cool game. Like palmish say we need a speed up time but on late game we need slow down.Found 1 more bug we can unlock writing before pottery.
Love idle games, but they usually have something for players to do while waiting for the numbers to tick, like clicking on something. Maybe add berries or animals to click on to help increase the rate at which numbers go. Also, my tribe went from 3 people to 1 in less than a minute, so I couldn't even continue because children couldn't be made. Possibly add a buffer period where people aren't going to die at the start of the game.