Tyranny Defense Simulator 2984 by WFMG

[raw]
made by WFMG for Ludum Dare 50 (COMPO)

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Welcome to TDS 2984!

The objective of this simulator is to learn how to deal with an unruly populace. As you start the simulation, the populace will become disobedient and start sharing harmful opinions. These will be filtered out and displayed to you on the screen.

The more of these messages sink in, the more your reputation suffers, and the more eager the populace becomes to question you. Therefore, it is your objective to shut down all problematic messages before they have the time to sink in. You must rule by fear. The more posts you redact, the more the populace will fear you, and the less they will have the foolheartedness to share.

If you do by any chance miss a message, it will be displayed to you on the right side of the screen.

Good luck, and remember! We will make a great tyrant of you yet!

Ratings

Overall 452th 3.2⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 514th 2.8⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 399th 3.075⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 323th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 419th 3.15⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 155th 3.575⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 136th 3.475⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 239th 3.375⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

🎤 WFMG
04. Apr 2022 · 02:58 UTC
If it still says "*Completed in time for the compo, but decided to mark as a Jam game anyway.*", it's because for some reason it won't go away.
p0l4r
04. Apr 2022 · 19:30 UTC
Nice, i got a cool 01:46:3980026

I liked the 10/10 voice acting! :D

Well done!
zSharpFire
04. Apr 2022 · 19:48 UTC
A really cool little game, fits the theme perfectly, had a couple laughs thank you
tengusheath
04. Apr 2022 · 21:01 UTC
I like the idea. And interface and graphics are cool.
MateusBoga
05. Apr 2022 · 18:17 UTC
This is so funny xD I love the voiceacting, and how in the end it's so chaotic it feels like you're approaching the silgularity.

I don't know if it's just me, but there's so much information so fast and it ramps up really quickly.

Nice job!
binroot
12. Apr 2022 · 15:06 UTC
the voice acting was suberb and hilarious! neat concept, and fun to read all the little articles/notes.
doomshmuck
12. Apr 2022 · 15:21 UTC
That was pretty fun! Nice job. It got crazy at the end there. I will say though, the voice overlaps at the end made it kind of ear splitting, so probably should tone that down so there aren't so many voice overlaps. I also couldn't really read what the messages said due to how the game plays, which I'm sure means I missed out on some silly jokes.
Woetnie
12. Apr 2022 · 15:22 UTC
Fun little game. Could use a volume slider tho, it started getting a bit too loud at the end :D
RosyMaple
12. Apr 2022 · 20:27 UTC
Love the voice acting & sound design

I love games like this that are a slow build to overwhelming the player with simple to many thing. my LD49 project was very similar in nature but I think yours is probably a better execution.


unlike others I think the ending affect of the voices overlapping and being uncomfortably loud was really cool.


One thing I would note is that it goes from 0 to 100 really quickly. to the point that I thought it might have a scripted end time. If you want players to try to play for high score I would have it ramp up slower at the end there.

or maybe make it so its manageable until you hit like 50 rep then it goes to super fast so you still get that really cool overwhelmed ending feeling.



Over all I really enjoyed the game, but its not something I would play multiple times
Zettelkasten
13. Apr 2022 · 11:10 UTC
Very interesting take on the theme! I loved the atmosphere, and the voice lines and pop up boxes, overall the general style of the game - all very fitting! Fun wise - there is still some potential, I feel like there is just always some point where you don't stand a chance anymore. Also, it's a bit unfortunate that you don't really have any time to read any of the messages on the screen. There could also be a more in depth story here, definitely has some potential!
Melik Cagan Oduncuoglu
13. Apr 2022 · 14:22 UTC
I love the voice acting. Great job!
Diego Escalante
14. Apr 2022 · 04:20 UTC
A bit loud at the end! If you wanted to go for that overwhelming feeling with all the voices, maybe you could turn down the volume as they begin to pile up.

It's a neat concept! It might be cool to have some "benign" messages that you might not want to censor, so then parsing the messages themselves under time pressure becomes part of the game, rather than just how quickly you can press the buttons.

The graphics were great, and the voice acting was a nice touch! Well done!
🎤 WFMG
14. Apr 2022 · 10:57 UTC
@doomshmuck @woetnie @diego-escalante Turn that sh- up! :sunglasses:
@mateusboga @binroot @rosymaple @diego-escalante @melik-cagan-oduncuoglu Thanks to all of you for telling me you like the voice acting! I got a professional microphone not long before this LD, but I felt like the voice acting was a bit dopey.
I've basically pinged everyone already, so I won't bother with that anymore.

Thank you all for your feedback! It's very fun to see people react to the game, and I've got quite good feedback this time around! There are definitely some great suggestions here - benign messages, slowing the game down more, waiting to make the prompt spawning really logarithmic until reputation drops below a certain number, and the volume, and there are definitely things I would've done differently if this game had had a longer development time. There is a certain conflict between thematics and fun gameplay and I can see that more clearly with your feedback.

The idea is that suppression *inevitably* fails and as it says in the ending: "it doesn't make much difference". Initially, the messages started increasing in frequency even faster, making the difference between a good and a bad performance even smaller. I didn't want to make a long LD game, so I was happy with the <2 min gameplay, and made sure to put tiny, nicely formatted fractions of a second, on the screen. I'd probably ramp up the acceleration after a certain reputation threshold, but if they all came at the exact same speed before that, it'd be boring. Maybe randomising the time a little before the threshold is reached would work. Or I could tie the rate more directly to the reputation number. **The end time is not scripted, but since the increase in frequency between each prompt spawn is exponential, the differences are pretty minor.**

@zettelkasten is right that it has a lot more potential for story, and this is something I said before any feedback even came in. **Unfortunately, by the time adding more prompts was an easy job, there was very little time left.** Maybe if I'd gone another day, but I felt terrible staying up that late as it was. I wanted to make a compo game anyway.

The volume is loud. **That's a part of the game. It's supposed to be uncomfortable and overwhelming when your tyrannic regime is confronted by the truth.** Great example of the conflict between thematics and gameplay. I would not do this in most games.

As for benign messages and slowing the game down enough where you can read the prompts: **I did consider adding benign messages for you to sort through, and it would add more depth to the gameplay, but I didn't want to expand the scope this way.** The way I work, if I add benign messages, I need to add different consequences for censoring/not censoring them, where censoring them would harm your reputation, but not censoring would help it. This would require much more balancing and testing and I did not want to overscope. I also had trouble coming up with the messages, so spreading my imagination thinner wouldn't have helped the game. **I also didn't want the feeling of blindly following orders and not being able to hear the other side out to be diluted.** My LD 44 game, [S:C:U:M: - The AutoVore Division](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/scum-the-autovore-division) has the regime pawn face personal consequences for failing, and the same would happen to the player in this game if it were not just a simulation. That way, the censorship affects the grunt workers of the regime as well. **Yes, there is lore. I will eventually release something that will blow your minds.**

Thanks again! I'm glad you like the voice acting, graphics, and general theme!
Lpax
17. Apr 2022 · 00:14 UTC
Well that was quite the experience! Great idea and quite well executed. I also loved the voice over! In the end I was overwhelmed by all the messages and I just stopped and waited it out :sweat_smile: Well done!
alight
19. Apr 2022 · 00:15 UTC
Nice game overall, the messages gave me a feeling of Windows XP. :laughing:
bloodycoin
24. Apr 2022 · 20:46 UTC
Great idea, great and simple mechanic well polished.

By the end of the game (since I didn't have time to read the messages) I actually felt more like piloting a giant mecha and getting beaten up - showing error messages about all the damage inflicted, etc. :joy:

I wanted to write about very loud sounds in the end and few other things, but after reading your long reply, I saw that you have already answered all my questions :slight_smile: