Abaclickus!

UPDATE: VERSION 1.5.2 10/3/2016

A pretty significant update, warranting a couple exclamation points.

• Subtraction has been implemented!!!
• You can now save and load your progress!!!
• The dollar sign now sticks close to the numbers, not looking like hot garbage.

UPDATE: VERSION 1.3 9/12/2016

• Made the beginning questions much easier, slower ramp to more difficult questions.
• Added visible numerals showing the value of the abacus at levels 1 and 3 to better ease in players and passively teach them the abacus.

UPDATE: VERSION 1.2.1

• Put help slides after the title screen. It's not on command yet, but at least it's something.

UPDATE: VERSION 1.2 9/2/2016

• A major graphical overhaul that upgrades the visuals from the burning tire fire it was to "Acceptable Programmer Graphics"! Simple lines, Skeuomorphic objects, a fake palm pilot!
• Fixed the bug where you would pay the price of worker training for cheats.
• Renamed various things so they would be clearer to the player.
• Optimized how buying answers work: You pay the price, and the answer will appear on your PDA.
• The answer button will now have a visual que for when your answer is correct or incorrect!
• However these changes have somehow busted the help prompt. Whoops! I'll fix that soon. Read this page for the tips for now.

More updates to follow shortly!

My entry for my very first Ludum Dare (Ludum Dare 36, Ancient Technology Theme.) Abaclickus! Is one part edutainment about the Abacus and one part clicker. Solve increasingly bigger and more complicated math problems while earning money to hiring others to work on Abacuses along side you, or buying cheat tokens to reveal answers to problems that are stumping you, or simply just invest it into earning bigger rewards for solving problems! So dust off your clicker finger, ready your *glances at wikipedia* ...Intraparietal sulcus... And crunch some numbers!

Learn how to use a Abacus here: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Abacus

Tips:

• 9 on the Numpad will activate Fullscreen.
• 6 on the Numpad will activate Windowed
• 3 on the Numpad will activate Fullscreen on a integer scale (for all those like me who are using 1440p/720p resolutions.)

You can activate cheats and break the game over your knee if you want. I won't tell you exactly, but you need to hit several keys in order to activate (and you'll see a sign that it worked.) The keys are the remnants of a word whose vowels have been removed, and that word is related (if not obvious.)

Why did I made this game ?

I was really wanting to participate in a Ludum Dare game jam. And well, to be honest... I hated the theme they landed on for 36. "Ancient Technology."It felt like a very "aesthetic" heavy theme instead of a theme that impacted gameplay, and I'm just not really into the cliches of Ancient Greece or Egypt or the stone age or whatever.

But while discussing this theme with other people I got pointed to the Abacus, a ancient device used for calculating numbers before the numeral system was adopted. I thought about how it for a while, and eventually decided that even though I didn't have an solid idea with how to use it (initially I thought about a cyberpunk game where you use one to hack but that seemed contradictory to the theme, and I didn't have enough time to do something as narrative heavy as my idea for that asked for), I wanted to program a digital abacus regardless. After a day of working on it, I got it functioning.

Afterwards I asked some people if they had any ideas on what to do with a Abacus. And someone, I'm assuming sarcastically, said "clicker". But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

Will you update the game?

EDIT: Yes! I will be making tweaks to the numbers, re-balancing the difficulty curve, adding in SOUND and MUSIC, adding in the ability to SAVE! SAVE! Also I'll fix the help prompt again!