Plague Machine

You are a witch doctor who owes their soul to the Devil.  He comes now to collect but you've made a deal with him:   Sacrifice other peoples' souls in place of yours.  In order to live as long as possible,  you must release a  plague onto the world which feeds your health.  Each round of the clock, the Devil steals a bit more of your soul.  How long can you survive?

Cities has different characteristics and populations counts.  Each City has weaknesses that can be exploited through careful positioning of your plague Spores and by upgrades their potency through Mutation purchases.

The game is part simulation,  part RPG, and part Mancala. 

A tour of the HUD: Top left is the currently selected City name and population total.  Under that, the City's population breakdown by age group.  Clicking the arrow under the graph will pull out the City's Stats.  The bottom left is your Plague Spore information for the selected City.  The middle three buttons are for pulling up the Mutations window (the skull), then Navigating and zooming (the arrows and dot), then selecting the Attack option (the bullseye) to move your Plague Spores to nearby Cities.  The area on the right will pop out the Mutations window for you to buy upgrades and to see your Plague's Stats.  The top right is your Health and the Revolving Timer.

Each round of the Revolving Timer, calculations are done for 1) Plague Destruction, Population Death, Population Birth, and Plague Death. These are all rolled up into a final addition to or removal of your Health. The Devil's Damage is also subtracted from this value and will increase drastically as the game goes on.

The controls are simply to move your spores by using the using the bullseye button at the bottom of the screen.  You will move a percentage of your Spores from the selected City to the next City you click on (if it's within distance). Don't forget to purchase upgrade Mutations to battle the ever resistant Cities.  Each purchase increases drastically at the cost of your Health.  

The Plague Stats Overview:
- Critical Population - The maximum amount of Spores you can have on an individual City
- Damage - How much death you inflict on a City per Spore
- Diversity - How much your Plague resists a City's adaptation over time to your infestation
- Growth - How quickly your Spores multiply when feeding off the death they've caused
- Mobility - The percentage of Spores that will get transferred when attacking another City
- Rampup - The amount of Efficiency gained per Revolving Timer
- Sacrifice - The percentage of souls that are fed back to your Health from the Plague's destruction
- Upkeep Cost - The cost to keep the Plagues under your control.
- Zeal - The initial Efficiency of your Plague Spores after attacking a new City.

This City Stats Overview:
- Carry Capacity - The maximum population of a City
- Growth - How quickly the population grows
- Intelligence - How quickly the City adapts to the Plague once infested
- Virility - How many Children are born to Adults and Retired City Dwellers
- Community - How well Children and Elderly are protected from Plague damage
- Technology - The always increasing resistance to the Plague even when not infested

This game was solo developed and made in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 44.  The theme of the gamjam was "Your life is currency."  This was my first game jam with lots of learning experiences including building to WebGL, flat art creation, texture sampling, and using Itch.io.  I missed the Compo submittal by about 3 hours.  Blame it on the first time deployment issues.

Post LD Updates

• Updated tutorial wording to be a bit more clear
• Tweaked some of the City stats to not be so overpowered
• Fixed the game not ending when you have zero health (should have been “<= 0” not “< 0”)
• Toned down the water color
• Fixed a bug where placing your first Spores was set to 0 instead of 50 (thanks to LD user @bar!)
• Added a Tutorial Skip button
• Changed Tutorial font to be more readable