Pachinko is Life by Don Fouts
The Pachinko Royale transpacific cruise liner departed San Francisco for Tokyo late in the season. In the second month of the charter a raging tempest blotted out all light except that of the lightening. The crew begged everyone to evacuate, but the guests chose to go down with their favorite pachinko machine.
James, Hawaiian shirt over Steeler's jersey clad America; Kenjii, a geriatric Japanese matriarch; Honza, a mysterious tracksuited tweeker from eastern Europe; and you, the player were fighting over their favorite machine when the storm struck. Together they lifted Lost at Sea, as much food as they could scoop from the buffet, and as many Pachinko as they could carry into a life raft.
As one of four survivors left adrift at sea with no hope of rescue you must make decisions to delay the inevitable slide into cannibalism, death, and worst of all, the loss of pachinko. Will you rise to the occasion to secure more supplies? Will you encourage your hapless comrades to take on the risk? Or will you play it safe, do nothing, and let the balls fall?
A game about the comic-absurd chaos of life before death.
Delay the inevitable: Pachinko is Life
Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER
*UPDATE: * We were able to fix the game breaking bugs and reuploaded the game so you can see how it was intended to be presented. For the contest we have included the original entry as a downloadable executable which should be used for grading us.
| Link | https://inflatable-cactus.itch.io/pachinko-is-life |
| Link | https://inflatable-cactus.itch.io/pachinko-is-life |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/pachinko-is-life |
Ratings
| Given | 68🗳️ | 67🗨️ |
ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ Pachinko is life! ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
Good job to the team
Great game all around, I really like the "make your choice" voice line in the dialogue music :D
It was a fun game though. I got way more invested than I expected to.
Aside from that great submition!
Overall I enjoyed your little game!
Thanks for the entry.
Did not hear any sound effects, downloaded the V2 game.
I did not really understand why everytime each of the four gets an initial amount of balls in the basked and what happens to the one with most and the end ... But I enjoyed shooting balls into the machine. ... and such a surreal scenario, very! Cool!
Besides those technical issues, that was really fun! There's a good variety of situations in the story sequences, and it's cool that they are selected randomly. The progression of the game is delightfully surrealist, and the visuals and sounds contribute greatly to the mood of the game. And linking pachinko score to characters and their fate give a nice spicy twist to those mechanics.
It was a nice surprise!
The ending seemed very abrupt - was it supposed to be? I was just minding my own business playing pachinko when the game declared I had delayed 7 days. I guess I was expecting one last event, or a message saying that I was selected to be sacrificed or something.
Unfortunately, bugs kept me from being able to finish. The first bug was that after the first transition event all the "sticky notes" with the decisions were below the play area. I could _just_ click the top of one, so I cold continue, but not make any actual choice.
The second bug hit when it was down to just me and Honza. The Machine just stopped launching balls even though there were 3 left. The handle would crank, but no balls :-(
So, sadly it was a soft lock. WebGL version btw. Still, very cool game - just needs debugging!
I would never have expected this combination to work, but it totally does. Really interesting take!