Reviews

Review by elias all reviews by elias

Crystal Commune is a complete city building game, very impressive for 72 hours. All the rules are implemented:

- There's animal characters (especially a yellow elephant!!!) and I think it's a fable about the downfall of capitalism or something?

- Iridescence is present on the iridescent crystals as well as on the lights of the space ship.

- There is little speech bubbles up all the time since all the animals are always hungry and sleepy.

- And there's two charts, albeit not very useful ones since money just goes from 20,000 to zero and population just oscillates between 2 and 8. In all the 20 or so games I played.

One challenging thing in the beginning is the icons - they all look too similar. It would have been helpful to display the letter you have to press (like M for mine) instead of the 5 icons. There's also a mouse cursor icon and a destruction icon but I could not figure out the purpose of either. You can't click any structures or animals so why would you ever be in the cursor mode? And when you destroy something no money is returned so why would you ever do it?

It would be useful to have more information about what's going on. Why is the mine not doing anything? Is it close enough to the crystals? Why is the animal rather eating and sleeping (I mean, can't blame them) instead of working? Does each animal need their own house? How many animals can a cafe serve at once? How many employees does a mine have?

The biggest issue I had is that something with money seems to be wrong in my version. When I watched closely for a while it looks like an animal that enters the mine works 3 times to make $300. Then it goes to a cafe and rapidly spends $300 (it buys 6 items for $50 each - in my mind that money should go to me but I actually lose it - for example miners in Ohio used to be paid in mine store tokens instead of money and therefore forced to buy in the overpriced mine store so the mine made extra money off all the miners it employed...). Anyway, on top of losing the exact amount the worker made, there's $150 upkeep for the mine and $100 for the cafe. So each worker that works is losing me $250 and there is no way to ever get positive income.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 4

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

The space port reminds me of Dune II, but the crystals are a bit like Tiberium from C&C. There are no battles, but the way you collect resources is very much like an RTS. It's always awesome to see an RTS(-ish) game during a Game Jam, as they are technically very challenging to pull off in just 72 hours.

There are a few reasons that RTSes are challenging. Firstly, it's hard to explain the complex game state, and all the options that the player has. For example, it took me a while to figure out that you need to build one house per pop, but that multiple pops can share a cafe or a mine. And you only ever need to build one port. I'm still not sure what the optimal number of mines and cafes is, but after a number of tries I finally achieved nice growth with 3 mines, 3 cafes and 15 houses, and profits taking off into the stratosphere (60k and counting).

Another difficulty is game balance. The economy can swing wildly. If you overspend and end up in negative territory, it can feel like it's easier to restart than to try to recover. I think if this could somehow be balanced out a bit better, the game would feel smoother.

I think the artwork is very good. The animal sprites are very cute. The Iridescent effect is well done, and it is clearly linked to the game design (making you collect iridescent crystals).

The charts are helpful, to see if your economy is going up or down. I found myself wishing to see a larger time range on the X axis, which is a sign that the chart is not superfluous, it's really filling a need for the gamer

Overall an excellent achievement, and I was happy to spend some time diving in, trying to deduce the game mechanics and looking for an optimal strategy.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by victorwss all reviews by victorwss

An interesting game idea with a lot of potential.

The game characters are animals. It would work more or less the same if they were humans, aliens or robots, but there is some intrinsic artistic value in making them animals. However, there is no fable here.

The iridiscency is very beautiful and I think that it was the only game that implemented true iridiscence instead of just being overly-colorful. The downside is that if the crystal had solid colors instead, it would be the same.

The graphics are very well made. But I suggest that you reduce pixelation since the game don't really need it. This is specially bad at the charts since having a poorer resolution is bad for them.

I think that its speech balloons are somewhat lacking. The workers say some things about their needs, but it is still very hard to understand how to please them.

There is no 2-player stuff, or at least, I couldn't make it work.

The major problems are:

* Your asteroid is too small and sometimes you run out of space or don't find any suitable space.

* It isn't clear how to build your colony: Sometimes you have cafes around and your workers are still hungry. You have unoccupied houses an your workers are sleeping in the streets. And I'm clueless in understanding what is wrong.

* Sometimes you think you built it correctly: There are mines, cafes, houses, a spaceport, some roads and all the buildings are near each other, but no, all your money just goes down the drain, nobody goes to the mines, people leave and you get bankrupt.

So my suggestions are:

* Double the resolution. This will only make the graphics better.

* Make the asteroids larger, or perhaps, a way to navigate between multiple asteroids.

* Make it easier to diagnose what is wrong and how to fix it. Maybe a way to inspect how tired, hungry or happy a worker is other than just having it tells you when it is aleady too late and they are already very tired, very hungry or entered the spaceport in order to leave.

* The cafes sell stuff that are too expensive.

* A house should fit more than one person.

* The player should have some control over how cafes serve people to avoid you get bankrupted just because somebody entered a cafe and spent a lot of your money there.

* There should be a way into priorize work instead of just letting workers decided randomly what to do: Which mine should be mined first? What should be built right now and what should be built later?

* More variety for economical activity, like vehicle factories or farming food.

* What about war against another players? With all of the building military, invading, raiding, conquering, destroying, defending, killing, spying, sabotaging, fortifying buildings, repairing, etc.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 3

Review by underthesink all reviews by underthesink

impressive city builder
I don't really understand what to do but from what I've seen it looks very impressive

I saw no pie chart only a line graph but I did see it met all the other rules.

Game could do with some tooltips over the buttons

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

Cute pixelized animals live in a 2D world. Irridescent crystals are scattered over the world. The animals want to eat, sleep, and mine crystals.

The player has indirect control resembling SimCity and, to lesser extent, real-time strategies. There is a $20,000 balance at start, and nothing built. The player decides what and where to build: houses, mines, cafes, spaceports, and roads for faster travel. The animals act on these plans, and use the created stuff. Animals travel to and from the world via spaceport.

After reading the hints in the README file, but not before, I was able to maintain a positive balance.

All the rules are met, except the bonus rule in which there is no need.

I like the overall style: fitting background music, simple but coherent graphics. The Dune2-Carryall-like spaceship made me smile, as well as the elephant-or-mouse animal and the "can't put it here" sound.

Very nice for a weekend project!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 5

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

A surprisingly intricate game of discovery that accomplishes much with few words.

At first, I thought that Crystal Commune was in dire need of an instruction manual, even if only in README form. I had no idea what to do, but to assume that trial and error was the intended experience and run with it. I feel like the initial confusion was worth it; by the time I've built a couple of each building and determined their purposes, the game had its hooks in deep.

Crystal Commune is fun to watch. It is a colourful game that plays itself, and in ways that are more satisfying than not. But as much as I would love to just sit back and watch my citizens do their thing, something about your mysterious unlabelled UI manages to convince me that executive meddling will benefit the commune... even though my bank account sits perpetually at zero dollars.

Although I'm quite partial to your minimalistic design, I'm less convinced of its effectiveness as I try to really learn the game. My chief complaint is that the return on investment on each structure is impossible to discern from the start. There seems to be a large periodic upkeep on buildings that end up easily exceeding incomes, and I'm not sure exactly what benefits I am paying for in-world or mechanically. How can the mine cost $150 in maintenance when it only generates $100? What does the cafe even do, and why do I want my citizens to eat when food costs half a shift's wages at the mine?

The game is certainly challenging, and I'd hate to be the sort who says "I did not like this game because it was hard and I was bad at it," but I feel like I haven't gotten much better after two hours, and I do blame the sparseness of actionable data.

Thoughts on genre (animals):
There's a duck, an elephant, and two cats, but they all seem to behave the same way or their differences are not too apparent. They feel a bit like automata with different skins stretched over the machinery rather than the individual citizens of a growing city. I understand that the city-building genre is not known for diversity, but still. They're different species, so even just noticeably different movement speeds or some occasional animal sounds would have been sufficient.

Thoughts on comic-book bubble dialogue:
I understood more from the debug shell that hunger and tiredness was a thing than from any communication by the speech/thought bubbles. They appear only sporadically, and it is difficult to grasp their consequence when they do. Does the pizza symbol mean "I'm hungry" or "I'm eating?" What happens anyway, to citizens are hungry or tired? I suppose they leave the commune, but it is nearly impossible to track their needs or their satisfaction of those needs just by watching their bubbles.

A wider variety of bubbles would have been great, but they can't out-do the classic hearts and happy-faces at the end of little coloured bars.

Thoughts on iridescence:
The crystal outcropping is a great iridescent object, but I spend most of my time watching the citizens and buildings. I feel as though my eyes are taking for granted what really ought to be the most coveted and eye-catching features of the cave because they aren't the things that spew dollar signs out of them.

The crystals on the airship however, were a fantastic touch that gave some clue as to the ends of the commune's industry in a wider world. Your sprite-work is quite good.

Thoughts on technical requirement (charts):
This is surely the genre of game most sorely in need of charts! Exhaustively detailed ones! There are graphs that track my funds and population over time, but they are low resolution and only list the minimum and maximum values. I eventually came to an understanding that the graphs were not meant to be taken too seriously and that I ought to play by feeling rather than calculation, but this philosophy has my commune sorely hurting for funds. I do want more information, so that I can "win" :(

And now for the smaller complaints:
The order in which citizens prioritize construction projects feels a bit haphazard. It seems to be neither the nearest foundation or the oldest placed ones. I haven't entirely discerned how the citizen's algorithm works, but I get this feeling that they can get torn between a number of competing priorities (including sleeping, eating) and become distracted from doing my bidding at the most desperate moments - which seems to be always. Maybe that is all by design, I don't know.

While the art is great, the window in which I can view that art is limiting. The ratio of window size to that of the tiles and actors felt quite oppressive when I was starting out, with only a 10x10 grid to work with. I wish I could zoom out or see more of the area at once.

Trying to navigate that area also adds to the oppressive sensation. The scrolling camera feels tight, as the boundary rectangles that move the camera are quite narrow and easy to overshoot, which halts scrolling immediately.

Parting thoughts:
Despite all this petty grousing, the concept alone made Crystal Commune one of my favourite TINS 2023 entries. The art and music were pleasant. The sound effects were the best in the competition. And this was actually the game I replayed most the most times at the end - for I still hold on to the eventual hope of managing a sizable colony.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None