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Sorry you weren't able to finish! Yours was one of the first I played; I found it pretty chill and I liked the trivia component. 

Great job finishing! I found a lot of depth to your game. 

Shooting zombies as a skill doesn't carry over to investing IRL, but debt management certainly does. I wanted to include leverage as a skill in my game so you could take a loan to double your bankroll. 

Loans didn't make the cut, but I did learn a lot about the difference between lending and owning. For instance, there's a pecking order when a company goes under and liquidates its assets: lenders gets paid first, then preferred stockholders, and last common stockholders. Usually the last group gets nothing, thus it's a lot riskier to own what is directly tied to the value of the company. 

GROOVY!

The visuals are a little whack, but the music/SFX stand out and makes this game a fun experience overall. 

10/10 character designs and excellent learning content standards! You understood the assignment :D

Oh yeah this is clean. Great job! 

Stocks seem a little busted though, I think it's because they all shoot up unless the news says they failed. I also failed the counterfeit minigame a lot, but otherwise the challenge level and progression were exactly what I wanted.  

Had a bug where I ran out of cards on the way to red willow and couldn't finish :(

This is a great concept for a financial literacy game! Probably needs a little more balance as I was stuck with a lot of unused gas cards and needed more cards that just passed the time (i.e. something like "camping" that doesn't change much). Perhaps each time you pass a new area it reshuffles your deck and gives you more bonus cards specific to that area (like with the gamble cards in the center city).  

I also didn't know whether I had used enough food cards since there was no gauge for that. A clearer indicator of food need before each day ends would be helpful. 

Overall, marvelous work!

There's a lot of game in this game!

While the whole zombie shooting phase is fun, I don't think it contributes much to the theme of the jam. There's enough depth in expanding your lemonade empire buying more ingredients each round. Shooting zombies makes sense for the game title though, it just seems out of place for a coolmath game. 

...also I'm salty because they stole my sugar!

Betting on horses is kinda like betting on investments, ain't it? 

Glad you liked the animations!

Really appreciate your thorough feedback and thanks for pointing out areas of improvement! 

There's definitely a balance to strike between having agency over the game and actually simulating the market. I made the "support" clicking intentionally weak as it teaches you that you can't run the businesses yourself. Originally wanted to use it to position your investments to avoid bears and hit bulls, but it caps out really fast at 1.2x so it's not good enough for that purpose. In a future update, I will make it so clicking on bears and bulls moves them instead of relying on your support modifier to navigate. I could also have left click actually put more money in the investment for better returns, though that may be reserved for a perk effect. 

I agree that having a tab to show your current investments would be super helpful! It might also be worth it to sell them so you can afford something you couldn't before. 

Glad you enjoyed the game! Looks like you got the UI scaling bug... 

On my computer it looks fine so I didn't know it was an issue on other computers until after I submitted. I'll have to adjust the canvas settings in the next build so it's consistent. Try scaling the browser size to 100% and see if that fixes it next time!

EDIT: I found the culprit! My canvas scaler was set to constant pixel size instead of screen size. Here's a super secret fixed version :) https://kittyking101.itch.io/bankroll-fixed?secret=9zXAzNHv1RAoEJYE1s3vj0glxH0

LocalThunk had similar sentiments about his games. Balatro was merely a side project shared amongst friends but he was eventually convinced to turn it into something fully fleshed out on steam. Did it pay off? Absolutely! Am I expecting you'll have the same results? Probably not, but given your game currently sits as the #1 most popular entry in this jam, I'd say you have a decent shot of getting noticed. Considering what currently exists on the market and what publishers are looking for, you would stand out.

I'll leave you with something "financial literacy" related. Opportunity Cost is a term used in investing to describe how much you lose by not pursuing the best option. In your case, it would be the cost of working on this vs a different game. I hope my feedback convinces you to go further with this one! 

Balatro wasn't made in a month! It took 2.5 years in fact.

Given how polished your game is already, I'd say you'd come close with a roadmap and a few months. Maybe a Kickstarter further down the road? I think it's all worth looking into!

As for how much further it can go, there are plenty of areas to innovate IMO. Maybe you have to fill up your "cart" with products using the same grid logic before using coupons, giving you control over what types of stuff you take. Maybe the store adapts to your meat coupon strat by removing meat (something like the boss effects from balatro that disable suits). Maybe the win condition involves taking X value of products each round to make a larger dent in the company's profit margin (requires putting more stuff in your cart, which risks you not being able to afford it). 

I appreciate your desire to make fun games instead of trying to win! That being said, if there was ever a dusty jam game to keep working on, it would be this XD

and I'll be honest, it does stand out compared to the rest of your collection. There's gotta be an emerging market for coupon collector games featuring secret granny societies. 

Yup, this is indeed Granny Balatro!

Second game I got 1.5x better percentages, double coupon, 20% off everything, and two $10 clearance tags all in the first two rounds. I turned my brain off and saved like $200 by the end of the game.

I'm concerned the lack of educational focus may hurt your chances at winning, but the game is fun, the polish is SUPERB, and the concept is fire! With more depth in gameplay and story, I could see this becoming a featured game on Markiplier's channel. 

Haha, well I'd say you fully understand the concept of due diligence with your progress updates and attention to detail!

Amazing looking entry btw; I can't wait to play Granny Balatro! :D

Hey folks! 

Now that we've rolled passed the finish line, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on what y'all learned making your games! Feel free to answer any of these questions:

1. What did you learn about financial literacy?
2. How did you apply what you learned to your game? 
3. What challenges did you face in making it work? 

For me, it was the importance of due diligence. I wanted the player to consider all factors toward their decision to invest in a business, so I made a list of traits that they have to hover over with their mouse instead of putting all the stats upfront like a typical game would. 

Some factors are much more impactful than other (i.e. cornering the market) and that made it fun to balance. The biggest challenge would be applying these stats in the actual simulation (it's just as convoluted as the actual marketplace). I also learned about diversification and hedging your bets to manage risk. 

Hope you had fun making your game! Try out Bankroll and let me know how I did!

Ah, keep going! My game is shaping up to be different from yours. Still calling it Bankroll but the concept is more "keep things rolling" with investments instead of launching pigs. 

Not too much developed yet, but I found the perfect name/concept for my game!

It's gonna be a 2D platform launcher like Learn to Fly/Burrito Bison. The more you invest, the farther you roll!

Good choice in controls: JKL required some learning since it's less common than ZXC, so I had to start slow. I only screwed up one time but was able to eat just enough to win. The water drinking part was unexpected and fun. 

Overall this is a well balanced game and is perfect scope for a gamejam! I'll check out your other games too. 

I truly admire your dedication to finish my game. Rest well tonight! You have the Kittyking's blessing :)

Haha, yeah it's hard to find even with the whole map zoomed out. But there are 10. 

Here's a hint:

That was a blast! Those lyrics are so relatable as a Unity dev. The fact that bugs are everywhere is excellent meta commentary as well.

I'm glad the experience and the music resonated with you. Happy to subvert your expectations! 

Glad you enjoyed the challenge and kudos for getting 9/10! The last one requires a considerable amount of jank movement to reach. 

Somehow the game froze when I reached the end but I enjoyed this a lot! Gramps got aura. 

Second level took a long time to rebound, but otherwise difficulty is in a good place. Thanks for feeding my insatiable appetite for silly games!

I clicked on all the things and made it. Accurate simulation! 

Certified silly game. 

*kazoo noises* 

"This Game Sucks!" really sucked. Kudos to the devs for fixing that in the postgame. 10/10 experience!

Kittyking approves of the cat carnage, but the game needs balance. The dinos only seem to spawn when the tent is being attacked, so I only saw one and it died immediately. Even with multiple ballistas you can simply spam cats and win. 

I don't mind cats being overpowered, but lets see the dinos put up a bit of a fight. Keep working on this!

The Kittyking approves of these chonky boys! 

Congrats on winning Best Overall in the game jam! I can see why they picked it, you nailed the theme.

habba lub gooba huh! :D

(Translation: I love this game!)

First playthrough time was a sub-10 minute run. I'm a prolific speedrunner yaay!

Physics-based games are fun and I love flinging myself into the air, but it was a bit frustrating sometimes. I liked the other elements of the game! Music was popping and the character designs were sick yo! 

Perhaps there could be some AI grapplers that are also swinging around so there is other movement going on besides your own. The collectables could've stood out more too imo. 

I'll check out your game! I just played a 3D game with a grappling mechanic (The Giving Well), might interest you. 

Thanks for the feedback and praise! There's always room to improve, and I'll work on telling a clearer story in the way it was meant to be told. 

I was able to finish the experience. The tower bit was pretty cool! I loved the music and forest scenery, and for a 3D game I felt it was the perfect size environment. Serene is the proper word to describe how I felt playing this. 

Some of the physics were rough around the edges, and I only found one spirit despite seeing more than one. I also felt the story could be developed with the intention of finding more than the "item in need" at the end of each level. Perhaps I have more to learn from this game, but time is running out. Well done!

Did you reach the soup pot? 

Sorry you ran out of time! You'll understand how the ending relates to that concept. I hope you have a chance to experience it someday!

After you press F to finish, walk back to the house and press E. You should try to reach the last day, the ending is worth it!

Walk back to the house and press E to end the day. I have added a guidance arrow in the next build. 

If you have 10 minutes to spare, you can make it to the last day!