Tower of Babel

You probably know the story of Tower of Babel. Ambitious project to build the highest tower in order to be closer to the God himself.

But God likes his privacy, so he decided to ruin it by making sure that everyone stopped understand each other. The principle of languages was introduced.

And here is where you come into the play. You are supervising the construction site after this incident. You don't understand a word what they want from you, but you will manage, right? Just be observative, record what you hear around into your dictionary and things will start to make sense eventually.

Game was made from the scratch in one week for Coco Code GameJam #2. All assets except for used music (credits: https://opengameart.org/content/frozen-desert-112) are author's work.

How to Play

Resources

There are four resource types in the game you will be working with plus coins. You can see how much of each you have in the bottom panel.

Resources in some amount will be required by the workers on the construction site and you will decide what to send where.

Coins represents your funds, you will spend it to buy more materials and sending materials to the workers (it will be described later).

Market

Market is a place where you obtain additional resources. You can visit it by clicking the market icon.

There is always three offers you can pick from. The trick is that at the start you don't really understand what's the deal. Once you accept one offer, you will receive exact amount of given materials - and this gives you your first clue!

NOTE: the amount is always between 1 and 9

Translations

In order to do your job effectively, you need to understand all these new languages. At the start there is only one foreign language, but as you will play, more will start to appear (but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Every time you receive a shard of information, it is wise to make a note in your in-game dictionary.

You might noticed that if you hover foreign word, panel with possible translations appears. You can modify what you see there.

Click on the word to open Dictionary on the page for given word. Here you can see set of checkboxes - you can check here possible meanings of the word and next time you will see this word in some context, you wil have at least some idea of what it yould mean. And as you will be getting more and more information, you will refine the meaning further.

Lets give you some example:

After picking one offer from the merchant, I received following message:

NOTE: To make it slightly easier - First word in pair is always amount and second one is always material. But order is randomized, so even that "7 clay" is listed first in English, it can be still second in the forein langugae section (so it can be both "nazur patotos" and "totsukit nabii")

This gives me information that both "nazur" and "totsukit" could mean 7, 1, lot or few. Both "patotos" and "nabii" could be clay or stone.

You probably noticed that amount can be exact number or approximate value (few, medium, lot). You can't really tell if merchant (or construction worker) offers you "2 stone" or "few stone", so count with both options until you prove one of these meanings.

Dictionary can be also opened by clicking on its icon.

There is as list of known words for each language any ou can freely browse them.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I strongly recomend to check only the options you are absolutely sure that they can be the correct meaning. When you are not sure, it is always better to have more options checked then having one that is not correct. Mistakes can terribly snowball! Still - if you notice later in the game that you made a mistake - you can try to track it back by using record section of the dictionary - each word has this kind of log that includes all interactions including given word and their outcome. It can prove itself helpful.

Workers requests

So, you have some resources - it's time to send them to someone who needs them.

When there is an active request, it is shown as an exclamation mark icon somewhere on the tower. There can be up to 3 active requests at the same time.

When you open request, you will see what is needed. Of course - in a foreign language.

NOTE: requested amount is always between 1 and 9

At this time - you might have some idea of what material is needed, you might not have. One way or another - you can send materials by entering amount and hitting send button.

When you do, these resources will be send and you will see updated request. If it was all that was needed, request is fullfilled and you receive some coins and "progression" (will be explained later). If there is still something needed, request stays - but it updates based on materials sent (which can give you more clues on the word meanings).

NOTES: 

• Whatever materials you send are gone - no matter if they were needed or not, so be careful.
• Every sent batch also costs you one coin to cover the logistics costs.

Languages

As you progress the game and start to understand, more languages might start to appear (both for merchant and for workers). Each new language needs to be deciphered from the scratch. To distinguish languages from each other, they are color coded.

Maximum number of different languages in the game is 5.

NOTE: Languages are generated at the start of the game and the words are picked randomly so you can replay it again without knowing a word meaning.

Win and Lose

It is laso time to mention how you win (or lose) the game.

There is a progress bar in the middle. If you fill it all the way up - you win. If it hits the bottom, where the skull is... you guessed it.

The bar is filled every time you fulfill request.

The bar slightly drops after each action (trade, resources sent) based on number of active requests (more active requests = bigger drop). Performing action without coins (when you are broke) also drops it.

That's it!