RNG by junjunlowpoly
How to entertain the player with only a small virtual world?
In this classical RPG setting, instead of the player, you play as a random number generator in the game and decide what random encounter the player has. You can choose from different types of monsters, a village and different types of item in treasure chest. You only have very limited options and your goal is to make the (AI) player beats the game before he realizes how repetitive the RPG world is. The player will leave the game either when he's bored by the repetitive pattern of the game or he finds the game too hard or too easy.
Instruction:
You simply need to make choice for every random encounter.
Watch player's boredness and his HP. Game ends either when HP gets to zero or when boreness gets to the maximum.
The goal is to make the player beats the game boss before he gets bored of the game.
Game and source code available at: https://junjunlowpoly.itch.io/rng
Note: Please choose "Fantastic" for graphics quality, otherwise the game may run faster than intended.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rng |
Ratings
| Overall | 271th | 3.318⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 349th | 2.955⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 4th | 4.409⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 95th | 3.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 160th | 3.727⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 321th | 2.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 62th | 3.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 302th | 3⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
The game is a strategy game about maintaining a hp> 0 and boredness < max state.
You choose events for what player encounters.
You need to make the player upgrade / level up to fight stronger enemies and thus be less bored.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE GAME, IS IT REMINDS ME THE FEELING OF ACTUALLY MAKING A GAME.
DESIGNING FOR PLAYER EXPERIENCE. And sometimes it is a matter of strategy and calculation.
BTW The game can also be a decent entry for that "Control the game not player " theme.
Honestly though, I like the base conceit of the game, but I felt like it kinda lacked the spice to keep me interested. Maybe if you could throw down things in real time, as opposed to just the encounter system and then keep multiple players enthusiastic simultaneously so you have more to do at a given time to keep my interest.
Thanks for makin it, but unfortunately "The player got bored of the game."
(... sorry, it wasn't that bad, but the line practically writes itself >.< Thanks for the game <3 )
Just wanted to use the 48 hours to make some prototype for more exploration on mechanism based on this idea.
The game is lack of music, and i felt the game is too slow of progressions and dull, have no surprise since everything is under control with constant values. I hope the game can bring more different prograssions and pace, u should improve the gameplay experience.
I can't wait to see it on mobile if it's able to publish on it :)
另外我开始以为打怪是可以升级角色的，过了一会儿才发现是需要靠捡东西，这个设定和一般JRPG不一致，可能会让一些玩家在初期感到困惑。
The game was very interesting at first, but (as you already announced) got very repetitive quickly. To realize this concept fully is clearly not anything that can be done in compo. What you did here is really great, a really nice entry!
On a technical note: I changed the resolution to maximum. It got strechted there and the boredness bar was not properly visible. But on the default resolution it was fine.
I also changed the graphics to beautiful and it really was beautiful ;)
Gameplay-wise, the limited number of options made finding the optimal distribution of treasures / battles a great, interesting challenge, but at the same time I can see the risk of it becoming repetitive for players (I mean ourselves here :D) and, ironically, slightly dependent on the actual RNG (for example, in some cases it was relatively frequent to get the player temporarily stuck on a sleep at village -> start walk-> village -> walk again-> village again). I set as a personal goal to be able to put a boss battle, which I failed at because the game had become samey to the avatar before it could handle the boss :sob:.
Great job!
@ithildin: I agree that the limited number of options is where both the challenge and risk are from. The challenge comes from the conflict between limited options and the goal of preventing the virtual player from feeling repetitive. Unfortunately, the content (A) seen by the virtual player in the virtual game is almost all the content (B) seen by the real player. So if the virtual player gets bored easily, the real player probably gets bored easily as well.
I guess one solution is to keep content A small enough while adding more to content B. I don't have a clear idea about how to do this right now but it is one direction worth exploring.
It could be fun if the hand was animated, so that you can see the player playing the game.