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

[raw]
made by Eric Schmiel for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

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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🗨️

Feedback

The Lame Brain
04. Oct 2021 · 04:55 UTC
Hello Eric-Schimel! This is the first game I tried!

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
m11
04. Oct 2021 · 18:02 UTC
A brilliant concept - the description you've given above sounds like you had a really strong overarching idea :)
MFauzan
05. Oct 2021 · 01:28 UTC
Nice concept
valentines
05. Oct 2021 · 01:36 UTC
Very interesting concept!! Would be cool to see it expanded further
coryru
05. Oct 2021 · 01:41 UTC
Wow I don't know what to say ...
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.
Shess
05. Oct 2021 · 01:49 UTC
Ohhh, _that_ kind of unstable, huh? I was hoping to see more of this kind, thank you for creating this haunting experience. Sure, it wasn't "fun" in any sort of literal sense, yet it still gets top marks from me because it was weirdly engaging. Wait, am I projecting? Maybe I am.

I wish you had a chance to write more replies, of course. And maybe some mid-cases, too?
Deprecat
05. Oct 2021 · 02:21 UTC
I really would love to see this fully realized - the concept is so cool and I think it's worth pursuing.

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.
LDJam user 243193
05. Oct 2021 · 05:34 UTC
It's so unstable that I don't know what is right nor what is wrong here.
Rein
05. Oct 2021 · 06:34 UTC
I gave you my feedback during the stream earlier. Definitely let me know if you do anything more with this concept as I'd love to see what comes of it.
Jupiter_Hadley
05. Oct 2021 · 17:49 UTC
Neat concept! I included it in my Ludum Dare 49 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/TOwEHY_25bQ
Peco
07. Oct 2021 · 04:00 UTC
not giving a rating because i couldn't really figure out how what made an answer "correct"...
went over my head haha, sorry
nardandas
08. Oct 2021 · 03:08 UTC
It was definitely really interesting. I couldn't say why I picked the answers I did, but I felt like they had some logic to them, and they did what I wanted. Really really interesting writing as well. I do the the color choice for backgrounds was kind of eh, but overall, well done.
Nyles
08. Oct 2021 · 03:42 UTC
You weren't kidding when you said it was "unorthodox".
Simpathey
08. Oct 2021 · 05:25 UTC
An interesting narrative to explore. Only thing I might change is to make the font more readable since that is the core of the gameplay.
3mpty
09. Oct 2021 · 05:42 UTC
Interesting little concept, I'm a big fan of weird experiences like this in jams, unfortunate that it wasn't quite in the final state by the end, but nonetheless a neat novel concept. I had some minor issues reading text due to the background, I think readability of text should trump visual aesthetics in general, even for mysterious stuff like this, but other than that gripe I think the presentation was fine (ignoring the slightly misplaced text)

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.
idan9000
09. Oct 2021 · 09:42 UTC
I like what you're going for here, and I gotta put some respect on your name for busting out pico8. I think with a bit more time this concept can really shine; if you continue development on this with a few more prompts and responses please hit me up so I can check it out. Thank you for submitting it!
LDJam user 242787
09. Oct 2021 · 09:49 UTC
I thought that this was an interesting concept and approach on the theme. I understand that this wasn't quite finished for the jam, but I can definitely see what you were going for. Your post jam version is definitely an improvement! Good job!
yikescloud
10. Oct 2021 · 01:02 UTC
Fantastic concept! Reminds me a game control a spaceman adventure by texting, amazing
anchorlight
10. Oct 2021 · 02:11 UTC
This is actually a very similar concept to what I took on with LD47 and its unreleased postjam game, a game where you deal with incomprehensible cosmic Monoliths that control the flow of reality and repeat the timestream whenever they dislike the results of something.

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!
sslees
10. Oct 2021 · 02:34 UTC
I liked that you got the game mechanics implemented and a neat concept for a text based game. I think if you had more time to add different responses, or made it more clear how the score worked, it would get real playable real fast. Hopefully we can see a finished version after this!