Monarch`s Bully by kirroyal

[raw]
made by kirroyal for LD 43 (JAM)

A game about keeping the peace and diversity in a town in which people get far too upset about certain topics.

cover.JPG

The monarch recognises the importance of diversity within the opinions of her or his subjects. He or she fears that, should one opinion become dominant, a riot may occur, which may threaten the whole kingdom. It is also important to keep opinions diverse as to not allow a certain opinion to become too important. The citizens are constantly trying to influence each other during their daily lives, talking to anyone they meet, influencing anyone who can hear them.

But how does one go about keeping diversity. There seems to be no easy way. Apart from... if certain morals... and possibly the wellbeing of few individuals... are sacrificed for the greater good.

The monarch has chosen you to be the keeper of the peace and the balance of the kingdom. You will have to choose individuals to bully in to ceasing to spread their opinion to other people. A punch might help? But be careful, should others witness your bullying, they may take on the opinion of your target to oppose oppression.

monarchsbully.gif

WASD - Movement / Left Mouse Click for bulliying

This game contains a complex social simulation of the spreading of ideas among a populous. As such, it is very CPU intensive. Depending on your PC it may not run very well in your browser. Please consider playing the Desktop version instead (As soon as we upload it), should you have any troubles.

Ratings

Overall 672th 3.25⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 759th 2.938⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 98th 3.813⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 489th 3.5⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 502th 3.542⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 294th 3.31⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 566th 3.25⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 10🗨️

Feedback

vojtiman
04. Dec 2018 · 11:11 UTC
Great game, really enjoyed playing it, congrats! :)
Raiponz
04. Dec 2018 · 11:15 UTC
Very pleasant game, a mix-up between reign and a french riot.(I only Bullied yellow clothed people but don't ask me why)
btw : it work fine for me with no lags
najmm
04. Dec 2018 · 13:48 UTC
Nice concept...I like the AI...One thing I don't understand though is why we need a cursor to interact if we are moving using keyboard within the map.
AmigoPadilha
04. Dec 2018 · 14:22 UTC
Cool game, liked the idea and execution!

Great job!
Thiago Ferraro
04. Dec 2018 · 16:28 UTC
Solid game, nice idea!
Rafael Macedo
04. Dec 2018 · 17:00 UTC
An excelent idea for a game, but I feel like the execution was flawed. There is no sounds and when you walk around it fell really laggy. I also feel that the bullied person should become neutral after being bullied, as to immediately counter a rising faction, otherwise you always rely on luck of the underdog rising up suddenly.
Tetralogia
04. Dec 2018 · 17:44 UTC
It's an interesting idea and well executed, though I don't understand either why you chose the mouse to interact, it made it quite hard to play for me.
🎤 kirroyal
05. Dec 2018 · 17:18 UTC
Thanks for the nice comments! The thing with the cursor is definitely something we wanted to change after the game idea changed but never did because because time and stuff ^^ We build in sounds and music but they are not working in the web build. Has something to do with browser and unity. If someone has a clue how to fix this we would be very glad. @rafael-macedo You are right with the faction change. The thing is, that every resident has an affection to every faction to some degree. The nearer residents of another factions are the more influence do they take on that one. Complicated system that deffinitely could use some make over ^^ We were also planing on having more abilities as a player to take influence on that affiliations but ultimately did`nt have the time to implement them. Thanks so much for playing =)
smbe19
05. Dec 2018 · 21:06 UTC
Really interesting idea and quite fun. For me it was really laggy in the browser so it was kind of hard to play.
LuCecyl
13. Dec 2018 · 02:34 UTC
I really like the way you used the theme! It`s a good game, nice job!
BoyzAndGirlz
13. Dec 2018 · 23:20 UTC
After several plays, I understood the concept. Feedback could have been added for better understanding (walking, bullying, propagation). But is was a nice experience. Good job.
YYZ
13. Dec 2018 · 23:31 UTC
Sounds would have gone a long way in this game since it is entirely mute. Having just a sound for the bullying action would've emphasized the effect. I was also confused initially - did bullying the coloured person make that colour bar go up or down as it sometimes did not seem to have too visible an impact.

As for the starting cutscene, I felt each sentence stayed a little too long on the screen, and I wanted a button to just move on to the next screen or sentence, rather than a skip button which completely skips all the dialogue, which was what I pressed because the dialogue was rather slow. A next button would have been more useful. Moreover, the game does not need to show the intro every time I lose the game. I think just having it play once when the game launches, and thereafter when the player loses and restarts, they just need to respawn with the score reset. There's no need to replay the intro to the player since they are likely to skip the story intros anyway after the first playthrough.

I really liked that other people could 'witness' your bullying, which makes the AI and the game world feel much more alive. The art is really consistent and neat too and the colour palette looks good. There was even time to devote to finding a suitable font for the score, which is nice detail for a game jam. I found the movement a bit snappy initially, but eventually got used to it. Personally, I found the mouse controls okay and not an issue for me unlike the previous players it seems.

Nevertheless, the idea is simple and creative since it is unlike any game I've seen here so far. Good job.
Theory Studios
14. Dec 2018 · 00:19 UTC
The art and intro were some pretty good zazz that is otherwise unexpected in a compressed timescale. What I noticed when I played and I am not sure is explained. It seemed that when I punched a faction member that anyone around that person would change to the color of the punched member. Which seems to be the opposite of what I would expect.

Overall it is pretty cool, keep up the good work!
wowbagger
14. Dec 2018 · 01:32 UTC
Clicking felt funky. An alternative might be to give your guy the button and let the space bar swing it.
jongjo
15. Dec 2018 · 13:17 UTC
As some people have mentioned, the game would benefit from sound. Because people influence each other through talking, crowd sounds might work. I also agree that the mouse click was difficult to use.

I would have liked the game to be slower in terms of people changing colour and the walk speed. People were changing so quickly, I didn't have time to see what was happening and think about what the best move would be.

The current layout of the map is too open. It was difficult to isolate people especially as they were moving quickly. I ended up trying to hit the minorities with witnesses (that sounds terrible) because that was the easiest way for me to change people's colour. It could be helpful if the people had to navigate streets of varying sizes. You could hit someone if they walked in an alleyway, or there may be more open streets where it is more risky.

It would be interesting if people stopped to interact with each other. For example, people would stop and meet in different size groups and a little speech bubble could appear above them indicating they were having a discussion. The player could choose to break the conversation up or leave it as is. I think that the idea of people influencing each other through interaction is a really important aspect of the game.

The game's concept is very interesting and has a lot of potential. Loved the idea of people changing from witnessing an attack. If you do work on the game post-jam, I look forward to playing it! Great job.
huf0001
16. Dec 2018 · 04:49 UTC
Cool idea, but I think the initial difficulty is a bit much. You might want to consider a difficulty that scales up to its full difficulty, making it easier to draw players in and keep them playing. Also, having the NPCs move slower, as was mentioned by someone else, would have been better for converting NPCs of different opinions. It's a good start, but could do with some refinement.
huf0001
16. Dec 2018 · 04:49 UTC
Cool idea, but I think the initial difficulty is a bit much. You might want to consider a difficulty that scales up to its full difficulty, making it easier to draw players in and keep them playing. Also, having the NPCs move slower, as was mentioned by someone else, would have been better for converting NPCs of different opinions. It's a good start, but could do with some refinement.