Well, Mike ran in to problems getting ldjam.com working properly with about 12 hours left in the Compo, so this is the backup plan.
Grab yourself some hot chocolate, prop your feet up by the fire, and relax this Christmas. Take up a cozy little hobby. Why don't you build yourself a nice little model Christmas village?
The Steers-Robluck Company of Albany has you covered this season. We have the greatest catalog of model Christmas village buildings, props, and decorations in the world. Our best-selling how to guide can get you started in this relaxing hobby today.
Gameplay:
Purchase buildings from the catalog and place them on the model table.
If visitors come to your village to shop in your stores, they might spend money, which you can then use on more catalog purchases.
In order to attract visitors, you will need shops and businesses, which will need to be staffed.
Placing houses lets people move into your village, who can then work in your stores.
Visitors to your village don't like trudging through the snow, so build them paths and walkways so they can get around more quickly.
As you build buildings, more things will be unlocked from the catalog.
Controls:
* Click and drag to pan around the table.
* Click the catalog to open it. From there, you can buy any building you can afford by clicking "Buy". Then you can place it on the map by clicking. You can cancel your order by clicking off the table, or somewhere invalid. On the map, valid positions will be shown in green, invalid positions will be show in red.
* When placing paths, all the buildings will be hidden so you can see behind them. The building location are highlighted red, and their entrances are highlighted pink.
* Click the clipboard to see some notes about how your village is growing.
Troubleshooting: If you get a blank red screen, no assets could be loaded for some reason. Did you extract all the files? If that doesn't fix the issue for you, or you get a red screen with an error message, let me know.
--==--
12/15/16 - version 1.1
- better error handling
- fix building entrances that weren't adjacent to the building
- fix Z-ordering in some edge cases
12/15/16 - WHOOPS! rolling that fix back, the Z ordering fix caused crashes on path placement
12/15/16 - version 1.2
- fix path placement crash
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 60% |
| #7 | Mood | 4.36 |
| #15 | Overall | 4.14 |
| #17 | Graphics | 4.46 |
| #41 | Fun | 3.92 |
| #156 | Innovation | 3.57 |
| #242 | Audio | 3.03 |
| #261 | Humor | 2.64 |
| #452 | Theme | 3.23 |
Comments
I made it to a population of 55 but I think there's some "wasted" space. :)
Love the game : ) Would be great to be able to choose what to build by clicking on image of building. It's not too intuitive to click on the transparent text button : ) Also would be great to make road paths by holding click and dragging mouse. I really like the atmosphere of winter and xmas : ) Cheers!
A beautiful game! i love the concept and the art, but i ran out of money :c haha great job! :D
your game is so polished!!
i really liked the artwork and the mood in general
congrats!
The artwork is of course very strong, and this is gonna draw in any simgame fan. I was kinda hoping for more progression, but you can only do so much in a jam. Nice work.
Wow, this is a very robust city builder given the time constraints. The idea of it being a table top diorama is just adorable, and I love the art. The game started off a bit slow as I had to wait for a while to get enough money for new buildings, but things picked up after the third business or so. I had a lot of fun decorating my little town, and I think the Christmas theme really helps to that end. It was kind of annoying how I couldn't get rid of things once they were placed, but I guess having to build around things like trees adds a certain challenge. Other than that, I don't have much in the way of complaints. This is just a really solid city builder.
Oh my god the polishing this game had is enormous, I didn't know how to destroy things though, but everything is so well done to the time given, excelent entry well done!
Really great work. Controls work fine, tutorial is really nice (and relatively rare in LD games). Some nits to pick (if given more time to polish): could use BG music, maybe more consistent UI (some pixelated text/ buy buttons), and gameplay changes to make it more difficult (and rewarding) to build up the town.
I LOVED THIS PIXEL ART! Very very good! I played for long time the game...Great Job! Congratulations!
Awesome game, super fun, and very engaging. I enjoyed watching my town grow and evolve, and once I started making money I couldn't stop! Nice job!
Fantastic work for a game jam. The scenery and sprites makes it feel like sim-Santa.
On the downside... not sure how this fits the "One Room" theme.
There's something about this game that just had me hooked. I played about 30 minutes before I filled in the table. It's just amazing. Awesome work.
I really like how gentle and sweet it is. It was a really nice passive experience to have while watching my partner play Spelunky. Like "oh watch him explode and then build my general store." Very pleasant.
very quaint little game, my only problem with it was that it's a bit tedious to have to open up the menu and scroll through every time to find what i wanted. some kind of quick bar would have been nice. Also when placing paths it felt like i was being penalized for accidentally placing one in an invalid space, because if i messed up it meant I had to go back and pick it out from the catalog again. Besides these minor interaction issues though, the game is cool, and definitely cozy, good stuff
Indeed very cozy, great atmosphere. Like others I think a lot of improvements could have been made with QoL changes. To that I'd like to add that a visible grid while placing objects would have been a great help.
Thats a great compo entry here! Really enjoyed the idea and pacing of this game, one of the best entries here for sure!! Congrats!
Nice, reminds me of when I played browser simulator games like Resort Empire. At first I wasn't sure how this related to the theme until I dragged around the screen and realised that the whole thing is set on a table in a single room! How clever.
I like the voices, but wish I could have heard more of that. The sound effects were alright. I love the art in this a lot, especially that little puff of smoke that comes out of those houses.
It's crazy how this was done in 48 hours. Great work!
~Random-storykeeper
Was looking forward to trying this, looked really cute, but all I get is a black screen :(
Love this one! Very relaxing and enjouable game! Thanks for making this! :)
A really nice idea!
An easy game, relaxing and creative.
I really like the art style.
Great entry
This game is really cute. I think some objectives would be good, an option to speed up time, and unlocks would go a long way in addition to the other suggestions, but for the time put in, this is an excellent result! It felt pretty empty without music or more sound effects either, even a couple jingles or a pixel santa flying by would go a long way!
I really liked the mood of this game, very relaxing and it was fun managing and watching the town grow. Although the placement of houses was a little tricky, since I could only guess where the entrance goes based on the catalog image. Those graphics are very very cute :D you got the feeling of a tiny model village really good done.
This is simply THE best game of Ludum Dare 37! If it doesn't make top 10 of the top 100 list then something is serious wrong with the voting!
Now while it is an amazing game for 2 days it does have its faults and I do believe they have been said by others but it is possible some of them may have not.
1. Unable to delete an item once it is placed
2. Not able to continually place all objects like you can the sidewalks. IE trees, lamps, houses, etc
3. unable to lay sidewalk by clicking and dragging. (note: I'm totally fine with the way it is but I can see why some people would say that)
4. Not being able to rotate the buildings before placing them
5. Not able to discern a buildings front door before placing object.
That is all I can think of at the moment. Now I understand that you only had 48 hours, and I didn't rate your game and what it could have been I rated it on what you presented and you presented a lot! As I write this I still have the game running, and at the time of writing this I'm at $2450.45 and its still going up, Pop:28, Vistors: 124.
I sincerely hope you will work on this post compo and put it up on Steam. You could add the features I posted about and even expand upon them too. Not only do you have to have a xmas theme you could have a tropical beach theme. Not to mention you could expand the catalog to include other items. You could also include an option to expand the table to allow for a larger town!
Anyways, You did a great job and it was a real pleasure to play your game!
KunoNoOni - Wow, you must have been playing that for a while. Glad you're enjoying it!
Thank you everyone for all the great feedback! I knew not having a bulldozer was a bummer, but you guys have pointed out a bunch of UI things that I hadn't considered.
I added some better error reporting to the newest version. If you get a blank red screen, none of the assets could be loaded for some reason. If extracting the whole ZIP doesn't fix that, or you see an error message or still just a black screen, let me know
Thanks, everyone!
Gorgeous pixel art and atmosphere, great job!
Unfortunately it clashes a bit with the non-pixel art parts in the menus, especially the text.
Controls are were bit wonky for me. Navigating the menus is a bit of a hassle, and some items should not revert back to the standard cursor, like street lamps and trees.
There was an audio glitch that caused a click sound to play about every 2 seconds.
But overall still very impressive for a Compo game.
Beautiful game, great job. I feel like it's a risky choice to go with a slower-paced game for Ludum Dare, but it's paid off well with this one.
Some of the navigation feels a bit clunky in places - I can't offer any constructive suggestions as that's something I struggle with as well.
Some music would have gone a ways to make this game even more immersive than it already is, but even without it there's a great amount of polish and completeness here for just two day's work. Well done.
Very cute! I like how all the action happens on a table in a room. Like others have stated, some UI improvements would help, but this is super impressive for 2 days of work! I love the RCT games, so this was easy to pick up and fun for me.
Game looks awesome...but only on screenshots, because after running it I only got black screen :(
Really nice simulation game! The pixel art looks really cute. The fact that the game happens on top of a table, and that the currency is all a few dollars and cents is really nice and well wrapped up! :P
For a compo project, this is really amazing work! :)
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This game is awesome. I would love to have the ability to shift-click when placing items to keep placing (eg for decor) and to destroy items (eg pesky trees messing up my town layout, or a lamp I bought in the wrong color). Being able to see where a building's exit will be before I build it would also be cool. But seriously this is AWESOME for 2 days!