Erdodak 2 is pretty much just Erdodak 1. Most of the mechanics are 1 to 1 copies of the first game, the graphics are the same and the gameplay is the same. One could be forgiven for thinking that the game was just copy pasted from the first game. This also means, that most of Erdodak 1’s flaws are present in this game. But it isn’t entirely a copy of the first game. Some things that didn’t work in the first game now work.
First lets talk about the issues that Erdodak 2 carries over from Erdodak 1:
The food counter once again doesn’t work. You never have food, yet no one dies.
The visuals are yet again abysmal. I get that this was submitted to a game jam with the theme of low resolution, but there comes a point where the resolution is too low for what you are trying to do. The guide becomes a necessity to understand most of the game, as the low resolution makes everything from text to icons consist to at maximum 7 pixels, making them unreadable and losing their meaning.
Zooming is once again one of the worst parts of the game and part of the reason that I didn’t even want to touch the game and is part of the reason why I only played for under an hour. Zooming in and out once again changes the visuals of the game, making buildings look good up close, but an unrecognizable blob of 6 pixels while fully zoomed out. The mouse becoming incredibly inaccurate at all but one zoom distance forces you to play at that zoom ( luckily it was a wider zoom this time than the close up zoom that you needed for your mouse to be accurate in Erdodak 1). In a game where resources can be permanently removed due to a misclick this is a damaging system. Moving your camera while zoomed out once again causes the textures of buildings to switch rapidly. The worst case of this is moving your camera up and down while viewing farmland. The insane flickers are headache inducing and forced me to put all my farmland in a corner of the map, so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to that pain.
The ui once again does not help the abysmal zoom control. Your ui blocks a large portion of the game, which is fine, but makes the game claustrophobic, when zooming out to far turns the entire screen into a headache inducing blur. Your camera movement is also restricted at the edges of the map, causing some land to be interactable due to the ui covering it.
The game is once again unbeatable, though I think that this is intentional this time, or a bug from the first game, that wasn’t visible in that game, as it was unbeatable in a different way. In Erdodak 1, you couldn’t complete the objectives of buying all land or increasing reputation with the empire. In Erdodak 2 you can buy all the land, yet you don’t win or obtain anything by doing this. Buying all land is also extremely easy so it would be a short game, if you could win that easily.
Due to being able to place the tavern in this game, you can hire adventurers to do quests. In Erdodak 1 completing quests for the Empire would have gained you reputation with them, leading to a victory at 100 reputation, though gaining reputation was not possible. The reputation System does not seem to exist in Erdodak 2, in fact the doesn’t seem to be any System to win in Erdodak 2. Since building a stable city is easy and since there is not much to due, the game has nothing to offer after half an hour of gameplay, and even that is being generous.
Erdodak 2 also however also introduces a new bug (I think. May be wrong though) of bridges being unremovable, though since harbors are gone this doesn’t matter.
It does however also fix some things:
the year counter now works
merchant trades work, and are really as busted as the first game, if they had worked there
taverns can be placed down
all land can be bought
all in all this game had nothing new to offer and feels like a copy paste with minimal effort put into improving small details of the game, without fixing some of the major problems of the first game or introducing new gameplay aspects.
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Erdodak 2 is pretty much just Erdodak 1. Most of the mechanics are 1 to 1 copies of the first game, the graphics are the same and the gameplay is the same. One could be forgiven for thinking that the game was just copy pasted from the first game. This also means, that most of Erdodak 1’s flaws are present in this game. But it isn’t entirely a copy of the first game. Some things that didn’t work in the first game now work.
First lets talk about the issues that Erdodak 2 carries over from Erdodak 1:
The food counter once again doesn’t work. You never have food, yet no one dies.
The visuals are yet again abysmal. I get that this was submitted to a game jam with the theme of low resolution, but there comes a point where the resolution is too low for what you are trying to do. The guide becomes a necessity to understand most of the game, as the low resolution makes everything from text to icons consist to at maximum 7 pixels, making them unreadable and losing their meaning.
Zooming is once again one of the worst parts of the game and part of the reason that I didn’t even want to touch the game and is part of the reason why I only played for under an hour. Zooming in and out once again changes the visuals of the game, making buildings look good up close, but an unrecognizable blob of 6 pixels while fully zoomed out. The mouse becoming incredibly inaccurate at all but one zoom distance forces you to play at that zoom ( luckily it was a wider zoom this time than the close up zoom that you needed for your mouse to be accurate in Erdodak 1). In a game where resources can be permanently removed due to a misclick this is a damaging system. Moving your camera while zoomed out once again causes the textures of buildings to switch rapidly. The worst case of this is moving your camera up and down while viewing farmland. The insane flickers are headache inducing and forced me to put all my farmland in a corner of the map, so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to that pain.
The ui once again does not help the abysmal zoom control. Your ui blocks a large portion of the game, which is fine, but makes the game claustrophobic, when zooming out to far turns the entire screen into a headache inducing blur. Your camera movement is also restricted at the edges of the map, causing some land to be interactable due to the ui covering it.
The game is once again unbeatable, though I think that this is intentional this time, or a bug from the first game, that wasn’t visible in that game, as it was unbeatable in a different way. In Erdodak 1, you couldn’t complete the objectives of buying all land or increasing reputation with the empire. In Erdodak 2 you can buy all the land, yet you don’t win or obtain anything by doing this. Buying all land is also extremely easy so it would be a short game, if you could win that easily.
Due to being able to place the tavern in this game, you can hire adventurers to do quests. In Erdodak 1 completing quests for the Empire would have gained you reputation with them, leading to a victory at 100 reputation, though gaining reputation was not possible. The reputation System does not seem to exist in Erdodak 2, in fact the doesn’t seem to be any System to win in Erdodak 2. Since building a stable city is easy and since there is not much to due, the game has nothing to offer after half an hour of gameplay, and even that is being generous.
Erdodak 2 also however also introduces a new bug (I think. May be wrong though) of bridges being unremovable, though since harbors are gone this doesn’t matter.
It does however also fix some things:
the year counter now works
merchant trades work, and are really as busted as the first game, if they had worked there
taverns can be placed down
all land can be bought
all in all this game had nothing new to offer and feels like a copy paste with minimal effort put into improving small details of the game, without fixing some of the major problems of the first game or introducing new gameplay aspects.