The post-jam release with all the missing bits added and bugs fixed is here!

Colony Chaos on Game Jolt

Colony Chaos on Itch.io

Due to numerous sound bugs causing looping audio, it's almost mandatory to play this game with sound off after a certain point, sorry :( Silly sound_stop_all() instead of audio_stop_all(). However, we'll soon have a link here in the description with a less annoying version for you to hopefully actually enjoy.

Ahem, anyway... The goal of the game is to convince the island's 7 cities to pledge their unwavering loyalty to the crown, raising a green flag to indicate their enthusiasm. While dodging pirates, travel around to engage the townsfolk in various encounters to try to increase their support for the Glorious Empire; sway votes in parliament, quell angry riots, and conduct civilized discussion with the heads of state.

Press H at almost any time for overviews of how to play any given part of the game.

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  • Happysquared
    Lv. 15

    I enjoyed the variety of gameplay. I also absolutely love the talking sounds. Really enjoyed the sound variety in this. Nice work! The variety of mini games defnitely made it feel quite fresh and fast paced.

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Nice, glad you liked it! I've been putting a bit of work into the post-jam version so it should be ready to go soon(TM)...though now we're into the work week so it might not be until next weekend, we'll see.

  • SpritePainter
    Lv. 21

    This was really fun. I loved the variety of gameplay. The ship combat is probably the best part. The arcade feel of it all works really well and makes for a fun experience each time. I did have one issue where the sound of the crowd chasing me stayed on after I left their colony (was run out of town). So, for the rest of the session I could just hear the shouting sound over and over. Still, great work and a really good entry.

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    I love the "don't be rude" minigame 😂

    But before that: you really need to explain things before players can get frustrated. Your game launches in full screen, and every time, I hit alt - enter before even noticing there's an intro text. I almost gave up on the game before seeing your responses talking about pressing "h" and the intro.
    But even then, it's a game jam, people usually want to jump into different games, the most important information about your game should be hidden after a slowly scrolling wall of text! I always skip those! "Press H to show the controls" could just be in here in the game's description!
    I also think you could have just made the worldmap have the help window by default at the start of each game, telling the players they can press H in each mini games to see what to do.
    There's also a weird bug with the ship battles, in windowed I can see the reload thing, but not in fullscreen. But then if I use F to toggle fullscreen, it shows up!

    I guess that's already a lot, but I really like the idea of having different minigames like that. And it's really too bad about the wrong audio function (which can be pretty funny at first), because the sounds are good. My main issue with the gameplay is that each minigame tends to be a little too long, especially the "run around" one. But overall it's still really good! It's just a shame I almost completely missed it because of how unclear it was at first.

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Ok, I've (finally) added a tip to press "H" for help in the game description.

      The GUI layer is kind of a fullscreen mess; how it shows up depends on your screen resolution since our initial attempt to get it right didn't work so we ended up...doing something. Which also didn't work quite right. But since its based on the view it should always display correctly when not in fullscreen, yes...I think.

      Thanks for the feedback!

  • dreamcastgh0st
    Lv. 2

    Really goofy, really fun, very creative take on the theme! I really really like this. The minigames are all well implemented, and very unique from each other-- I do struggle with the voting minigame, though. It seems biased too far in your opponent's favor. I especially like the combat-- the way your Z and X buttons shoot both sideways directions is really fun. The sound thing is super annoying though. Other than that, no complaints!

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Yeah, the voting is unbalanced, sorry. The AI sways votes in a circular pattern of 8 chairs vs your X pattern of 5, to make up for it being completely random and often choosing edges or chairs that are already its own, but 8 is too many, particularly since it also gets the last influence. I'm glad you really liked the rest of it, though, sound bugs aside!

  • Hessery
    Lv. 10

    Alu hu meer

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Google translate translates this from Danish as "aluminium" in (apparently British) English. Or, "Hello, he's Meir." from Arabic. Or, "Potato Hu Mir" from Hindi. Or, "alu hu meer - The New Year" in Norwegian.

      As such I still have no idea what you said, or meant, sorry.

      Edit: OOoooh, wait, yes I suppose that's what your character is "saying" in the conversation minigame, isn't it. You'd think I would've remembered that sooner since I did the voice acting, and then listened to it a bunch during testing.

  • Ethan Wake
    Lv. 10

    This is honestly one of my favorites so far. The minigames are so delightfully goofy (particularly the one where you have to talk without interrupting anyone), and the voicework is hilarious! The pirate battles are fun, and kinda remind me of an old Atari 2600 game called Combat.

    I do wish the minigames could be reattempted if you fail, or that the game would end if you've lost 4 times, as there's no point continuing after that. It would also be really helpful to have instructions shown before each minigame, as pausing to press H can lead to a quick death in the angry mob game.

    It's a shame about the sound glitches (I, too, still use the obsolete sound_play/sound_stop functions by mistake, so I understand the struggle), but with those fixed and a little touching-up, you have something amazing here. I love it!

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Awesome, glad you enjoyed the game, and my voice acting! Not sure what you mean by "game would end if you've lost 4 times, as there's no point continuing after that"...I realize there's nothing clearly stating this anywhere, but unless there's a bug (which is altogether possible) if a town has a red flag it can't hate you worse than it already does, so any minigames lost there won't do anything and any minigame win there will turn the flag to yellow. A win on a yellow will turn the flag green (loyal) while a loss will turn it red again. A win on a green does nothing while a loss turns it yellow.

      • Ethan Wake
        Lv. 10

        I see what you mean, but at least in my playthrough, there was no way to replay towns I'd already played; nothing happened when I went back to them. So basically I went all around the island and failed in 5 of the 7 towns. After the 4th failure, it's statistically impossible to beat the game.

        EDIT: For some reason I was thinking this game follows a "best 4 out of 7 to win" concept, but your description says nothing like that, so forget what I just said lol. However, unless the game glitched for me, there's no way to replay towns... so if you fail once, it's impossible to beat the gane.

        • kris24
          Patron
          kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

          2yrs ago

          Thanks for playing, glad you have had fun with it!

          Unless something weird is happening (entirely possible) You should be able to revisit cities; however you can't visit the same one twice in a row. You have to go to some other city first - and yes that does mean that if you have only one city left to make loyal but fail the encounter, you have to go to an already loyal city and risk making them unhappy before you can try again! So it's always possible to win, but it can admittedly get pretty tedious if you have bad luck with the encounters.

          We'll try to make it clearer in the post-jam version (probably some sort of pop-up if you try to visit the same city twice in a row)

          • Ethan Wake
            Lv. 10

            Ah... admittedly I only tried revisiting the same town twice in a row. Didn't try revisiting one after visiting a different town. I will play again and try to beat the game using that method. :)

  • whatthesamuel
    Lv. 4

    Nice! I hope the sound problem gets fixed soon! Also it would be nice if we could get a brief explanation of the controls before the minigame starts like mario party. Great game!

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Yeah, we'll have to add minigame intros to the polished build. Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it!

      Also our GUI placement is not at all compatible with all monitors/resolutions, particularly in fullscreen, so we'll have to get all that sorted out.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      I can attest that it's totally worth playing it again with the working sounds, Jaspo's voice acting for the conversation/negotiation encounter cracks me up every time.

      We'd definitely like to do what we can to fix/improve the interface, hopefully we'll figure that stuff all out for a post-jam version. Thanks for playing!

  • Philip Lochner
    Lv. 5

    The game concept was fun and promising, but it felt like all of the mini games were a bit gimmicky and disconnected.

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Well, thanks for checking it out, anyway.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for giving it a try at least! Our goal was to get a variety of gameplay involved, which I could see making it end up feeling somewhat disjointed. It was a very ambitious jam project for our skill & experience level with GameMaker!

  • scottgoldsmith
    Lv. 10

    There is so much to this game! That's awesome! A bit confused on the controls and how to really play though, it's taken a lot of trial and error. So much depth though, love it.

    I was a bit confused as to which side the ships would fire from. I had this exact same issue in my own game, I decided to have a slight shooting cone with image_alpha=0.2; to highlight where you could expect cannonballs to come from.

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Yeah, we went in with the idea that a bunch of minigames combined together cohesively would give the game a nice sprawling feel, creating that "depth." And we almost even managed to pull it off in time. Thanks for playing and leaving feedback, glad you liked it! As mentioned in the intro text, pressing H in any of the encounters or on the world map explains a bit about how to play them.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for playing! As Jaspo mentioned, tapping "H" during any encounter gives the controls and some info on how to play, hopefully that helps a bit.

      Figuring out the controls for shooting was tricky - we wanted to be able to have each side fire independently so that you could fire both sides at the same time if you were in the right position, but I can totally get how it gets confusing given the positioning of the ship.

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    2yrs ago

    This game is pretty cool and innovative, but I just don't think it was executed quite right. Having to do many different tasks on the island in order to take it over is fun and could actually make for a pretty good finished product.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for playing! The execution is definitely lacking on some points, I think both of us are well aware of that, haha. Neither of us are expert programmers and so we struggled a bit with integrating the various sections we worked on; in all honesty I'm a bit surprised we managed to make it work at all!

  • Kwis
    Lv. 67

    A good amount of interesting things in there!

    First, it's really cool to have a big Island to navigate around! Having to do so while avoiding the pirate ships was nice, there is a degree of exploration that is very welcome!

    The fights are interesting, it's good to use the ships property to attack with side cannons! However, the firing felt a bit disorienting because it's really difficult to tell which side you're supposed to shoot from. In the end, I ended up firing with both cannons everytime because it was easier. A good way to avoid the confusion is simply have the corresponding keys on the side of the boat so that I instantly can tell which button I need to press! On a side note, keep in mind keyboard are unequal. Some, like mine, have the x and z in very distant locations, so to use them i had my hand spread out on my keyboard. I wish people would stop using z (it's where your "y" is) and prefer the c key instead... I really like that the cannonballs make white smoke on impact, gives visual feedback while being sorta satisfying.

    The pirate lair seems tough, I never could beat it, as the cannons shoot too fast imo, but it's supposed to be difficult!

    The city mini games are a pretty good idea to change gameplay. It makes for an interesting take on micro-games!

    The one where you gotta talk when others aren't is pretty ingenious! Loved that one's concept.

    Wasn't fond of the riot one because, first THEY IMMEDIATELY RUSH AT YOU and the first time you play it, you don't have the time to realize what's happening before they gang up on you. I would suggesting making the help message appear whenever you encounter any mini game for the first time! it would avoid the bad surprise. Speaking of which, although the riot's idea is interesting, the fact that you lose whenever one touches you and that you gotta survive 30 seconds is a bit... much. I managed to win it but it felt a bit tedious to hold that for 30 seconds; kinda wished you wouldn't lose just by being touched once, but maybe like, if you were touched in quick successions by different people to really simulate the riot overwhelming you.

    The voting one with the chairs I... never got anything out of this one. Can't win this one, can't figure out which chairs are better to touch to avoid losing

    Also too bad for the sound issues :/

    In any case, pretty innovative, had a good fun with it!

    • Jaspo
      Lv. 16
      Jaspo Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      I found the pirates get easier with some practice. And yes, at one point we had discussed putting the controls next to the ship instead, but I think that change got cut for time's sake.

      The help tips were added when time was running short and needed to be a quick and hacky thing and that's why they aren't presented more elegantly.

      The voting encounter just has the AI choosing chairs completely at random, so it was very hard to balance and the "balancing" was just changing the pattern of chairs that the AI would influence...it likely did turn out too hard ultimately but it's almost impossible to tell without a lot of plays. It does have an issue with likely being impossible to beat if the AI accidentally plays ideally.

      A few things that were finished but simply didn't make it into the game jam version due to time: First, the music. It wasn't great, but it was done. Same is true for the battle sound fx. Second, there were supposed to be city port battle encounters that would trigger when you go to a hostile (red flag) city. Winning would result in the city being neutral again, and losing would result in being dead and losing the game, same as a pirate or pirate base encounter. The room and art and everything were done but the code to add it didn't make it in time.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts! Sorry about the shooting controls - I was worried they wouldn't work for different keyboard layouts but couldn't recall which keys were bad to use. Gotta remember it for the next time..."X" and "C" don't use "Z"!

      Post-jam (or during if it's allowed?) we'll link to a version that has some of the most critical fixes in it, like the sound and a city battle scene that's supposed to be in there.

      Thanks for the feedback!

  • 2102
    Patron

    This is a great game! Very original

  • Chris
    Patron

    great fun, I like navigating and ship battles, the mobs were fun but the timer could be a burn to wait.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Colony Chaos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for playing - did you get a chance to try the other two city mini-games? The balancing of all the encounters could be improved somewhat, I'm sure, but I'm just satisfied that we even got them working at all!