After The Pits
AFTER THE PITS
Yorkshire, 1990 - The coal pits are closed. Our community is left in extreme poverty. We have to pull together to help every household get what they need to make it through each week. Eleven of us meet each day to barter. I try to make sensible trades and keep enough back to provide for my family.
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Made for the GMTK 2020 Game Jam - Theme: 'Out Of Control'
Extreme poverty is mentally and physically damaging - it affects your decision-making processes and renders you out of control of your own life.
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HOW TO PLAY:
1. TRADE
2. UPGRADE
3. SATISFY NEEDS
4. SURVIVE
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CREDITS
by Luke No Further - lukenofurther.games
Made for the GMTK 2020 Game Jam - Theme - Out Of Control
DESIGN, CODE, and RETOUCHING
Luke Thompson
MUSIC
Maestro Tlakaelel - by Jesse Gallagher - No Copyright Music
PHOTOS
Intro screen 1 - by George Hodan - Public domain
Intro screen 3 - by Christine Johnstone - CC BY-SA 2.0
Intro screen 3 - by Steve F - CC BY-SA 2.0
Main background - by freestocks-photos - Pixabay license
#gmtkjam
Comments
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It's a simple concept but it's cool. There are some situations where you can buy all what you want without any limits. For example, it was Day 15 : -Buy Med + 2 Cost 23 coal// and at the same time// Buy Coal + 31, Cost 1 Med. In this case i was completly free to buy everything, so i left the game because it would be too easy on the next days... This kind of totaly unlimited power must be counter by a bought limit on each stuff or for each day, like 10 trades by day or 3 trades by stuff. Thank you for making this game :)
Good luck with this project and your others. Congratulation !
Thanks for playing and leaving your feedback!
The 'unlimited' power is a deliberate design feature - it's potential for being over-powered is countered because you can only buy one upgrade per resource per day. You might have full resources one day due to a handy chain of trades, but after a couple of days with a bad table of trades and some family needs hitting you simultaineously, the wolf's back at your door! I wanted to encourage players to study the trades carefull and find chains like these, some complex ones requiring sometimes 4-5 different trades to execute, so I didn't want to put a limit on the max number of trades, just how much they can benefit from one of these exploitative chains of trades. I wanted to make arbitrage simulator which is all about looking for weaknesses like this in the market and exploiting them.
You definitely make a good point though, it does feel like a design flaw when it's really easy and obvious to spot and execute - I'm going to look into running a check on the table of trades each day and prevent chains of just 2 resources from occuring - don't want to make hunting for a bargain too easy!
"The 'unlimited' power is a deliberate design feature" => Ok, i was thinking that you can find realy good trades but not unlimited power., for me it was a simple "glitch", but now, given that is a deliberate design feature, i'm asking : is the diffulty growing up enough to make a true challenge ? i'll retry later.
Besides the little scenario of the game really put me in the mood, I sincerely wanted to save my family from hunger and despair.
Peace and love !
Yes, the random generation of the family needs quantities slowly ramps up, meaning that you have to regularly upgrade your inventories otherwise the amount of resources your family requires will start to outstrip your capacities and you’ll take damage even if you have all your resources at max. Probably needs tweaking though, I haven’t playtested the late game much.
Peace and Love and may the trades be ever in your favour !
Here's a tutorial video: