Reliance (Working Title: ~Generating Cosmic Forces by Eric Schmiel

Reliance is a game about being dependent on fickle, powerful forces for your survival. You became stranded on some unknown, uninhabitable, distant planet and would have died quickly if it wasn't for the planet's sole inhabitant, a mysterious, cosmic force.
This force helps you at first on a whim, but may eventually become disinterested and forget about you. You must keep the force engaged in your plight long enough until a rescue shuttle arrives, but not irritate to the point that it would rather smite you. The problem is, you don't know anything about what it likes and dislikes.
Reliance was conceived as an existential deduction adventure. The cosmic force's disposition towards different topics is randomly generated each game. Every time you commune with the force, a prompt appears. A set of dialogue options is presented that touch on various topics. These topics affect the force's engagement with the player. You have to balance between becoming a boring sycophant that the force forgets about with becoming such an irritating nuisance that it would rather be done with you.
Unfortunately, as is common with jams, I was not able to fully realize the project. I only have 4 canned responses for every prompt that were originally place holders that always address the same topics. I only managed to write 24 prompts for the force (12 when irritated, 12 when content.) The game is sorta playable but lacks a lot of what the design hinges on to be interesting. Also, the prompts are poorly formatted.
Arrow keys to navigate responses, z to submit a response. Survive for 10 turns to win.
Ratings
| Overall | 468th | 3⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 533th | 2.341⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 75th | 3.955⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 328th | 3.409⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 506th | 2.447⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 315th | 2.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 187th | 3.429⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
Wow! What a concept! This is so well thought out and ambitious, I have no idea how I would have approached this topic in a game! I hope you keep working on it and get it to a better realized state... I absolutely love the meta concept of a stranded astronaut struggling to engage an vast unknowable cosmic force to survive in a game that is stranded on the LD site, struggling to engage a vast unknowable sea of internet people...
I was brutally honest with my feedback. I rated you low on "Fun", "Graphics", and "Humor". However, you get top marks for "Innovation" and "Mood"! Despite rating you so low on these scales, I really did enjoy this entry. true it is not a "Fun" game, but I don't think it was supposed to be, you know?
Cheers!
-LB
The fact that I struggled to communicate with the cosmic entity really sums it up. Congrats on tackling this idea I don't think I would have been so brave.
Positive- the concept is superb
Negatives- the dialog choice made it hard to understand what I was saying and it made it difficult to know how I was progressing.
But honestly that was the point communication would be difficult in this scenario. Too bad it wasn't very fun to play.
Not that I want this read as a negative review cause I did love the idea and couldn't do it better myself.
I wish you had a chance to write more replies, of course. And maybe some mid-cases, too?
Also I'm mad at myself because at one point I spammed buttons and managed to win but I have no idea what I did to get there. So apparently when I try to hold a convo with a cosmic force I'm rubbish, but when I don't really care I can get through just fine. Kinda why I need alcohol at parties, I suppose.
went over my head haha, sorry
Overall it definitely needed a bit more to get over the line, but the core concept is really interesting and the writing within was great, I like all of the poetry.
Your story is incredibly interesting, but I'll admit that appreciation came after exiting the game and reading what you had in mind. The placeholder responses and lack of unique visuals or any kind of change on screen hinder what it could have been. The audio and text otherwise is definitely neat. I completely understand that you gave it your best shot for Compo, an uncaring and brutal timeframe where the cutting room floor is the whole building and surrounding estate... not to mention doing it on Pico8 as opposed to a toolkit that can automate more of this process.
I guess the gist of what I'm saying is that I'd love to see you keep going with this idea, whether you continue developing on Pico8 or bring the idea to a more modern engine. If you have any interest in continuing this, I'd be happy to chip in wherever I can!