Conversation by arhpositive

[raw]
made by arhpositive for LD30 (COMPO)
Important Notice: A game-breaking bug was fixed on Monday evening.

Hello there, visitor! Play the game and drop a comment below to ensure your game gets back a vote & comment from me.

My name is Arhan Bakan, and this is my third Ludum Dare entry.

THE STORY

"Conversation" is a game about a few characters and the ongoing conversations between them. "Connected Worlds" theme fits when conversations are considered as connections between two different characters.

HOW TO PLAY

Clicking and holding the left mouse button on a character starts a conversation with the closest character on the scene. This will be marked with a conversation line.

During a conversation characters will slowly get closer. You can also rotate both characters by moving your mouse left or right.

Releasing the mouse button will stop the conversation.

You will see some conversation topics (question marks) flying around.

Your GOAL is to collect these conversation topics with the conversation lines between characters.

Collecting a conversation topic with a conversation line will result in a successful conversation, the conversation line will turn green and the characters will stay still when they end that conversation. This will give you points.

Failing to collect a conversation topic means that characters will repel each other when they end that conversation. They will slowly back away from each other.

Characters crashing onto each other, characters crashing into other conversation lines or characters crashing into conversation topics will yield negative points.

Game ends when all but two characters go out of the screen and get removed from the game. This will rarely happen so you can say that the game has no clear goal or no clear end condition.

At its current state it's a very hard and imbalanced game, but try to enjoy it and don't forget to leave comments below!

Happy Ludum Dare voting, everyone!

Ratings

Coolness 79% 2
Overall 2.91 856
Audio 2.69 576
Fun 2.58 950
Graphics 2.09 1123
Humor 2.04 761
Innovation 3.91 94
Mood 2.73 788
Theme 3.33 505

Feedback

ViliX
25. Aug 2014 路 02:52 UTC
The concept is great, but I've found a game breaking bug: When two planets collide, the game freezes. You must have some memory leak in there. Please fix it asap so other will be able to play your game :)
(You've got lot's of points for the concept)
Tovip
25. Aug 2014 路 06:52 UTC
I really like the concept but having a person float off the screen feel's like it makes the game too hard especially when the game is already pretty challenging.
馃帳 arhpositive
25. Aug 2014 路 09:51 UTC
ViliX, thanks a lot for noticing that bug. That's the punishment for submitting the last version in panic. I've restored the previous build via Dropbox, and while it has another bug, it's less lethal and the game is playable.

I'll fix the bug tonight when I get to home from work.

Tovip, I didn't really have the time to think about balance issues and your point is a good one. Planning on doing a post-compo version with some tweaks and fixes.
Lycaon
25. Aug 2014 路 21:43 UTC
While very interesting, the game sort of falls flat in its execution. I'm all for alternate ways of simulating conversation, but this one doesn't work all that well, at least in its current form. Controlling the little bastards got really frustrating, especially when all you want to do is get a link between two people going so you can catch a conversation topic but it just won't connect to the person that you want it to.
Seraphic Media
25. Aug 2014 路 21:45 UTC
I totally agree, this is a great concept! It was pretty hard but I still had fun playing it :)
primaerfunktion
26. Aug 2014 路 07:26 UTC
Cool idea, fun game and those people are cute. Good work!
MrP123
26. Aug 2014 路 09:37 UTC
Very interesting concept, but still needs a lot of balancing.
Will Edwards
26. Aug 2014 路 12:28 UTC
Excellent concept, a bit hard to control.
royvanrijn
26. Aug 2014 路 15:08 UTC
Nice game, pretty simple and the graphics are... well simple :) And I've lost a couple of people during if I don't converse enough haha.
dvdking
26. Aug 2014 路 19:02 UTC
controls are real hard, I couldn't quite figure out which planet connects to which
ElectricSeagull
26. Aug 2014 路 19:51 UTC
Really nice idea. Once I got the hang of the controls it was quite fun and challenging.
BinaryPie
26. Aug 2014 路 21:57 UTC
Cool concept, quite challenging once you get it.
OnlySlightly
26. Aug 2014 路 21:59 UTC
That's a really cool metaphor you used for the mechanic. Great job!
Linus Lindberg
26. Aug 2014 路 22:00 UTC
Interesting concept, I'd love to play a more finished version, you should keep working on it!
rustybroomhandle
27. Aug 2014 路 18:43 UTC
Interesting take on the theme - fun to play, but a little bit difficult when the people float off, as someone else has said - and also it'd be nice to be able to choose which people are conversing.
wdebowicz
28. Aug 2014 路 22:03 UTC
Nice idea! I like the mechanic of moving people by interaction in pairs.
mrexcessive
31. Aug 2014 路 10:24 UTC
Hi there. Novel idea you've got there. Found it fairly frustrating to control the characters, often ended up parallel to the direction of ideas drifting around and unable to steer pairs in time... so losing score as fast as gaining. Maybe runs a bit fast for thinking through how to catch all ? Good job with a new idea though!
Razoric
04. Sep 2014 路 16:52 UTC
Cool, novel mechanic. Would like to see it fleshed out more with added polish. Could be really neat.
jukimv1986
04. Sep 2014 路 17:03 UTC
Interesting take on the theme and nice gameplay concept. Well done!
granut100
06. Sep 2014 路 14:34 UTC
Interesting game!
frogcheese
07. Sep 2014 路 12:35 UTC
It's an interesting idea, but i think it would benefit from having more clear goals. It would also help if rotating a pair of characters was a little faster... My basic idea here is that you could make the game feel more intense by making the characters react quickly to input and add one or two more characters into the mix so that the player has to manage more connections at once. Also, an idea might be to allow players to rotate connections with the arrow keys whenever they hold down the mouse button.
馃帳 arhpositive
07. Sep 2014 路 12:47 UTC
Everyone, thank you so much for your comments!

So, in general, most of you think that the idea is cool and original, while gameplay could use a lot of improvement, along with more polish in graphics, sound effects and music.

I believe this idea has some potential to be converted into a mobile game. I see that a lot of you have put some suggestions on how to tweak the game in order to make it more appealing, and I thank you for that. I want to continue working on this game as soon as I find time to do so, and I'll take all the comments here into consideration.

Thanks again! Keep playing more Ludum Dare games!
eralpkaraduman
07. Sep 2014 路 21:40 UTC
Collecting conversation topics and making people talk is great idea. One of the best game games I've seen on matching the theme so far. Falls short on fun but overall it's good.
JoshuaBurr
07. Sep 2014 路 21:43 UTC
Interesting mechanic. The rotation seemed a bit slow. I feel like this may have potential for touch screens.
ploogle
07. Sep 2014 路 22:33 UTC
After a couple minutes I got the hang of it. Very nice!
dylanwolf
08. Sep 2014 路 01:52 UTC
Neat concept, but the learning curve's a bit tough since there's a lot of variables to consider.
local minimum
08. Sep 2014 路 17:11 UTC
I clearly don't rock at conversations, but that wasn't much news for me. Nice game. I managed to loose a lot and get negative scores, so I must have been missing some key features or I am to slow at the moment to have my attention divided between all the people drifting away.
Z.B.G.E.
08. Sep 2014 路 21:09 UTC
Simple yet innovative gameplay, and a nice take on the theme. As you said it's really hard to play and a bit frustrating, I guess it could use some more experimentation to find out how to make things more fun to play, but it really feels like you've found something new here. Congrats :)

Oh and also the music, while basic, really fits the mood of the game.
recursor
09. Sep 2014 路 23:46 UTC
Very interesting idea. It is just difficult enough at first to be challenging, and I did let one of the little guys run off screen. Perhaps if one gets close to the edge just subtract some points and make him stop or something. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Nice job
Sunflower
10. Sep 2014 路 21:34 UTC
Uhuh, quite confusing at first, it felt pretty slow once I got the hang of it. The fact that you can keep your characters on screen with little effort when you know how to go about it doesn't help, either. Ended with 114, probably could get more, but I just let the faces float away. >.<
suppi
13. Sep 2014 路 21:07 UTC
interesting game! but the conversations felt kinda random and slow so my characters kept drawing apart :(