Drug Dealer [Business Sim] - Testing Needed

[leon]

Drug Dealer (work title) is a turn-based simulation game, based on an old MS-DOS classic created by John E. Dell in 1984.

Content warning: This game involves illegal drug trade (No sh*t, Sherlock?).

You assume the role of a drug dealer.
The object of the game is to deal drugs to pay off the loan shark, who charges *very high* interest and make as much profit as possible in the given amount of time - 21 days.
You travel around the various parts of New York City and buy and sell various drugs. Whenever you travel, prices change and random events may occur, such as big price changes, getting mugged and finding drugs. You may also encounter a trader offering gun or extra inventory space upgrades. When you encounter the police, you have an option to run (there is 25% chance of instant game over) or fight back (sucess depends on HP and the number of guns you carry). Lost HP cannot be restored, but there is no limit to how many guns you can carry (each gun increases the chance of hitting).

The game has placeholder graphics. The gameplay is complete.

I'm looking for people to test the gameplay.

Download: Drug Dealer (win/Mac/Linux)

[Crocosquirrel]

Picked up for testing. Should this be removed, look for a report in SBT.

[tiya_nofurita]

This looks so fun Do you still receive input/feedback for this?

[leon]

Of course! I would love to get some feedback.

[sasquatchii]

I had a really hard time sticking with the demo, mostly because the main/dialogue text is very hard to read. I'm a designer and already pretty finicky about typefaces and fonts in general, but whatever text you picked out is not meant to be used in the way that you're using it. That is more for display purposes, (to be used sparingly) not for big chunks of text meant to be read. For that, you could go with a simple serif or maybe even a nice sans serif. Here are some fonts designed specifically for reading words on a screen.

From a purely technical perspective, the game worked great! I didn't run into any problems or bugs or find anything odd or glitchy.

However, from a game play perspective, I did feel a little lost. I get that as the main character, we've got to pay off our loans by buying and selling drugs. But I feel like the game just tells us that, and then dumps us into things headfirst. Maybe it'd be better to hold our hand for a little bit? Or have more explanation/story behind things? I wasn't really excited or intrigued to just go around and buy and sell drugs for this random MC who I just met and don't really care anything for.

Also, I didn't buy or sell anything right off the bat as the game suggested. I wanted to go around and look at the prices and compare, and then I got robbed pretty early on, and had $0, and no way to do anything about it, which was frustrating.

And then, when I didn't have enough money to pay off my debt, someone just shows up with a chainsaw and kills me? O-kay... although a chainsaw seems a little unrealistic/unbelievable? Why wouldn't he just use a gun instead? Although if you'd fleshed out his character a little more, and painted him out to be some sort of psycopath, it might be believable. I think this would be better if you spent more time creating a likeable main character, and there are a ton of ways you can do this. You can make us sympathetic to him maybe by painting him as a guy who's kind of a screwup, just in the wrong place at the wrong time doing shady things, but actually has a heart of gold (Ie; Jessie Pinkman from Breaking Bad) or the main character might be a brilliant jerk that we'd love to hate, except he's really good at something, so we admire him for it and like him anyways (ie; Walter White from Breaking Bad)

You also have the opportunity to come up with some pretty fun bad guys/villains, so I would consider that as well! I thought the random, normal looking dudes you go around to to buy and sell from were kind of boring.

But just with the death ending as it is now I didn't really care as to whether I lived or died. I would try playing Long Live the Queen if you haven't already, because you die a lot in that game but it's so fun it's addicting.

So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news! Hope that wasn't too harsh, just want to help make the game better by giving my two cents. I think this is a really cool idea & am looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

[leon]

Thank you for the concrit! This is very useful.

Also, I didn't buy or sell anything right off the bat as the game suggested. I wanted to go around and look at the prices and compare, and then I got robbed pretty early on, and had $0, and no way to do anything about it, which was frustrating.

I'm sorry to hear that. I should probably disable travelling, before you spend your initial cash. You can't get robbed if you either put your money in the bank or spend it all.

O-kay... although a chainsaw seems a little unrealistic/unbelievable? Why wouldn't he just use a gun instead?

The chainsaw simply came with that placeholder sprite. It's wasn't meant to be final.

[verysunshine]

I picked up the game to test it. Is the text final? I found a lot of typos in the first four screens alone.

[Edit: Merged Posts Together]

I played through the game three times, taking notes each time. My main complaint right now is that the game feels horribly unbalanced in the loan shark's favour. If you could provide some sort of guide, or perhaps hints, I could test more of the functionality. Here's my comment log.

Play through 1- following instructions

• “I borrowed money from an unsatisfactory character NAME Jimmy the Loan Shark”
• Jimmy the Loan Shark is an amusing name
• “Breaking my two favorite legs” is also amusing
• Jimmy having the market cornered on “heroine” is amusing for the wrong reasons. Either that or he’s selling superhero prostitutes. This is corrected in the actual game.
• Traveling between parts of NY takes a whole day. Traffic in NY is probably awful, but you should be able to travel between places in the same day.
• I will not be able to critique this properly until I have some form of tutorial
• It would be nice to have a rough estimate of what is good to sell where. I know weed is popular in the Bronx, but the game starts me off there, so my weed profit was zero. I was guessing more than I was strategizing.
• Dead via cops

Play through 2- following instructions
• Paid off $30 on day 1
• Sold all inventory in Bronx on day 3, paid off $1,500
• On day 5, I got a random screen trying to get me to buy guns or inventory. I needed neither and had no money to buy them. Perhaps make this something with a barrier to entry
• On day 5, deposited 300 into bank to see what would happen
• This game still feels like it’s impossible to strategize with. The loan appears to grow far more quickly than you can make money. I assume there is a win condition, but you can’t get it now.
• The random kitten drop is funny
• Am I supposed to get caught by the cops 3+ times right after the other? Because I did, twice.
• The cops killed me again

Play through 3- screw the rules, I have money (or not)
• Since the dev menu was on, I decided to try cheating my way through the game to see what would happen if I did manage to pay him back
• I used the variable viewer to find the money variable
• The console is disabled- never mind
• Ended up with no money and zero drugs. Hope I get a random drop
• I was killed by the loan shark

[verysunshine]

(Redacted and placed in the above post. Can an admin remove this?)

[gas]

Believe me: I've played the original! Uhm... I'm so old?!!
And I was planning to convert the GWBasic script of TaiPan (DrugDealer "legit" edition) into a "cute trader" game .
So I was very curious about your conversion.

Your game suffer of the original sin, but not your fault at all, the strict conversion is good, even the "silly math".
It's: Back and forth from any location with cheap goods, until prices get a boost. Sell. Repeat. And you win. You face only very bad random events, anyway you face them in any strategy, so...
This simple strategy was winning in the most acclaimed ELITE trading game too (DrugDealer grandson), when you find it the gameplay drop to zero.

To solve this, some game designers added fixed price tables but a kinda longer path to follow (you cannot choose all the destinations each time, you follow a step by step path). This imply a better strategy: travel cost money so a little income between near locations means nothing.
Add some random events but not killing ones, or quests ("do this at Y location in x given turns to gain Z dollars") and the game become really enjoyable without cheating strategies.


T'Was a blast in the past but I hope you will handle some of the old mechanics, now really outdated.

[leon]

Thank you very much for the feedback and all the tips!

Am I supposed to get caught by the cops 3+ times right after the other? Because I did, twice.

Getting caught by the cops 3 times is the same as rolling a 6 with a dice, 3 times in a row - not very likely, but it happens. The game events are completly random. I see I should change that...