Ludum Dare game - Tycoon

I completed my fifth entry in the Ludum Dare game competition last weekend. I wasn't sure about how fun it was at first, but it seems to be garnering a mostly positive reception. Either that, or the LD judges are just being kind, which I think sometimes happens. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Battling the final opponent, Vladimir

Play Tycoon Here (HTML5 in browser)

Ludum Dare judging page

My first new boardgame design in a while is in production at TheGameCrafter.com. Very cool feeling!  It's a worker placement game set at the end of the world. Tentatitve title: Wrath.

We'll see how fun it is (and how completely unbalanced, like nearly all prototypes) in about a week's time.

Results over Four Ludum Dare competitions

I just got the ratings for my Ludum Dare competition game, Domain, written from scratch in 48 hours last month. They were good - this is the second-best finish for me in the ratings, I think. I was curious how I compared, so I did some graphs with my four entries over the past few years. The competition is rated in eight categories, with "Overall" being the most important. My four games were as follows:

• Teeming (LD 23) 
• Evo (LD 24)
• Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (LD 26)
• Domain (LD 37)

Here are the results for those four games, first by percentile (vs. other games in the competition), then by overall rating (1-5 stars). In each graph, the categories are sorted by my average performance for all four games.

Apparently, Audio and Graphics are my weakest categories, which isn't that surprising. Theme and Innovation seem to be my strong suits. Teeming (blue line, my first entry) was clearly my worst showing in nearly all categories, and Evo (red line) my best (by percentiles), but Domain (purple line, most recent entry) actually was rated higher in terms of stars. I wonder if the judging has gotten easier over time? Or the games better? Hard to say. Anyway, I seem to be improving as I do these, which is cool. I'm hardly going to sprout an artistic sense in my late 40's, but it's fun to do these, and I still get some props for innovative, so that's OK by me.