ANSWER ME! by Viliar

ANSWER ME! is a game where player races against the phone battery to send as many messages as possible. Game represents several people in conctact list. Each with a completely different style and theme. Once the player receives the first message in the chat he has to choose from three possible answers. Longer the answer gives a better attitude with a person you are talking to. After choosing the most convenient answer player has to type it with a keyboard. Main character phone is defective though. Battery level will fall quicker once the player started to type. So you have to choose wisely whether you maintain good relationship or send as many messages as you can. Eventually battery will hit zero and you will see stats with sent letters, scores and resulting character relations based on your performance.

Ratings
| Overall | 380th | 3.422⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 256th | 3.422⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 62th | 3.913⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 280th | 3.705⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 531th | 3.227⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 550th | 2.237⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 70th | 3.756⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 447th | 3.178⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
It has a unique mechanic. I've never seen typing games used like this - used to tell a story almost.
It's a really interesting take on the theme, and one that I can relate to; I have a crap phone myself.
I especially love how the main character switches their personality to accommodate the person; e.g. you're more professional with the boss. But you still have the choice to be blunt and rude (the short responses make me lol so hard).
My advice is to make the directions more clear. It took some time for me to understand how to play, but after I got it, I had a lot of fun. Maybe, after clicking a response, a prompt with "now type that response - quick!" appears. Overall, it's quite awesome :)
Nevertheless, great job guys!
Good game, I played it twice! The first time I underestimated how much time I would actually have. Second time I went for the last answer every time and still finished with a bit of time left. I think the best things to add would be some music and sound effects (just light typing sound effects and like a ding when you get a message would be great). One thing that I would consider a bug is that it doesn't end once you've answered all the dialogue trees. I would recommend having the end screen once there is no actions the player can take.
@phlip45 yes, the end screen is needed ofc in your case. We will imnprove overall logic and balance if this project will seem interesting enough for players on ludum. Btw we couldn't imagine someone will actually beat all dialogs with longest answers in time 0_o Imo it's because english is not our native=) Thanks for the feedback! Also nice score, man =D
Girlfriend - 140
Boss - 105
But at least 15% battery left to play some games! I had a lot of fun, that was innovative!
The graphics are pretty simple but fit very well. The writings pretty funny, although I have to say, I actually got tripped up by typos and weird smileys in the messages a few times.
At first I had NO idea you actually had to type, I thought the red circle was just how long it takes to input the message so I was just waiting and then an empty red box appeared. Once I had figured that out I got a lot more done. But nearing the end the timer got far too quick for some of the responses.
Well done overall, only improvement would be some music, maybe some light sound effects for new messages popping up etc.
- I finished with plenty of battery life to spare even after choosing the most difficult option and couldn't be bothered to wait for the battery counter to slooowwwwlllyyy tick down to get the game ending. The game should either continue until the battery meter depletes (more content or randomized conversation) or end when you finish all of the dialogue trees.
- Needs sounds! Also, if you don't have any audio, please opt-out of the Audio category.
- Having to switch back between mouse and keyboard over and over and over was a pain.
- Pressing enter on an incorrectly-typed line of text ends up selecting all of the text you've typed. Which...means if you press backspace to correct a mistake you made at the end, you end up erasing everything you typed =( You also can't undo this via Ctrl-Z. =(
I think the sound was a little bit lacking, but otherwise the presentation was fine. The graphics were alright, your take on the Running out of Power theme was interesting too. I also realize you probably didn't account for the fact that keyboard layouts are different all over the world, so I won't hold it against you. Programming with a Norwegian keyboard is a pain too, because all the symbols used in programming were used because they were easy and accessible keys. Not so much on our keyboards, where pretty much anything outside of letters and numbers has us hold shit or alt =P
**Overall game impression:** Took me a bit of time to realize what the filling up circle was all about. Overall pretty fun game. Very simple and entertaining, reminds me of texting my boss, gf and mother as well...except I also ended up sending messages that were meant for my gf to my boss..... lol :D I enjoyed the game, good job!
**Suggestions and comments on improvement:** Add sound effects of some kind. And maybe add some kind of hint for the red filling circle, something like- "Sending" so it's more obvious what it does. I thought that's how long it'd take to receive a reply at first.
The only thing that I would like changing, is at the end. You don't have enough time to properly read all of the text that one person sends, so you just start typing! I don't suggest giving more time, but instead, at the end of the game, make it possible to see the text dialoge that you send with each person, and maybe add a scoreboard system? Even a local one that just remembers my previous score would be nice!
Overall, Very nice game, the story is rich, the music is great, and the game is fun **and** rewarding as well! Well done!
Graphics look good and there's not many bugs, I think I got stuck at a message for a few seconds because there was a space after the final dot that I immediately guessed right with the battery pressure coming on me haha.
Good job! ;)
But you executed it differently ! It was nice anyway, i totally loved the neatness of your game, it really looked like a Facebook conversation.
Maybe i would have shorten up the answering time still proportionnally to the length of message of course !
I liked the music, and the cover image too !
Well done guys ! :)
- innovative gameplay
- cons:without reading your description I didn't know what to do, no audio :/
- overall: nice :)
The typing stuff is great and increase the stress :)
So i played your game and i really love it.
It reminds me to "SMS Race" on a browsergame called Jobfight which exists in 2008.
It is really funny to answer as fast as you can lol.