TIC-80 Games is a post series where I review TIC-80 games I play. You can read more about the fantasy computer in this post. and see my latest reviews on the tag #tic80games!
Life is about Balance is a simulation game made by Brain in a Bowl for Mini Jam 34 and earned the first place in the category "presentation."
In this game, you play as a new hire of a company that makes "crappy motivational posters" with pictures of trees. You also have a rent due in four days. Good posters make more money but take more time, so you have to balance making good enough posters as fast as possible to pay the rent.
Poster is getting good!
You have 4 time slots per day where you can choose to "write the text," "make the design" or finalize the poster. After making a choice you'll have to fight distractions. This is represented by a battle against black monsters. If you overcome the distractions you'll gain a star shown at the bottom of the screen in either the text or the design part of the poster.
It's as badass as it looks!
Life is about Balance everything is done using Z & X keys. In battle they're used to attack left or right respectively, and holding the key allows you to move in the desired direction. I like this design choice, but I think the game could explain the controls better as I tried to move using directional buttons and they're aren't supported in this game.
I like how you can use your days however you want. You can do the quantity approach and make many crappy posters money or earn as much money making few good quality posters. I also like the little touches like how the player's shirt changes every day, I wouldn't have thought of adding a feature like that.
As fnished the four days I encountered a bug that prevented the rent from being reduced from my salary: "rent due in -1 days." Also, the starting cash is too high so even if this bug wasn't there the game would've been a chore to finish! While I think the game didn't out-stay its welcome, fighting the distractions gets repetitive after a while, even though it felt badass at the start. A more invovled battle system would be nice, but it's too much to ask from a game jam entry.
Life is about Balance does a good job balancing its mechanic, and I found the premise of the game homuros. It's an interesting game for TIC-80 and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a shame that it contains that critical bug.
Links
- Brain in a Bowl on Twitter.
- Play Life is about Balance on Itch.io