You Have a Call by dp3rucha
PLAY ON YOUR WEB BROWSER HERE

Play the game (web version) on itch.io: https://dp3rucha.itch.io/you-have-a-call
Austin, Texas. 1953.
There has been a heist at the bank on Main Street for the past half hour.
Your name is John E Scott. You are the chief negotiator. Your job is to get as few people killed as possible and catch the robbers. You will need to get information about the hostages, the robbers and know the terrain. You have a map of the bank, the phone where the calls will come in, and a notebook to write down the information obtained.
Incoming calls will accumulate every 10 seconds on your 4-line phone. Answer depending on which one you think is more important.
You have a call.
[NOTE: This game has been created by a group of people whose native language is not English. Sorry in advance for any ortographic mistakes.]
| Link | https://dp3rucha.itch.io/you-have-a-call |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/you-have-a-call |
Ratings
| Overall | 643th | 3.471⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 917th | 2.986⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 151th | 3.875⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 131th | 4.186⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 236th | 4.125⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 186th | 3.914⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 71🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
Also, swearing for the sake of swearing kind of brings down the dialogue for me. But maybe that's just me.
Graphics are really appealing.
Part of the idea was keeping you a lot of time reading meanwhile the call continue incoming, but maybe another approach would have been better.
One thing though: I can't read that fast!! The 10 second limitation is tough here.
That adds to the chaos though, so maybe it's fine.
@asbjorn yeah, the idea was showing very long texts so the player has to be busy a lot of time reading. Glad it has worked for you and that you liked it!
I think this game would be better without the "10 seconds" theme imposed timer. There is a lot to read, and you can't really appreciate the writing or the events that are happening because of this time limit. So you either read just pieces and make snap decisions without really knowing the full story, or you read it all and remember the event for the next playthrough (so you don't have to read it at all again, saving time that will allow you to read other events). Neither of which really feels good.
I'd really love to play this game without the 10 seconds limit (some timer would still be fine, but 10 seconds is just too steep for the amount of text to read)!
@fabula-rasa the answers changes for a same question, and there are similar answres for different questions, so the idea is that yoyu allways have to read the question and "waste" the 10 seconds time while more call keep incoming.
I agree that without the 10 seconds limit it would be better becuase every person has a different speed reading.
The art was beautiful and really accompanied the style of game. My only feedback would obviously be as you mentioned with the grammar and English.
Otherwise, great job friend :)
To be honest, most of the games in this jam would have been better without the 10 second aspect... Not that I'm blaming the theme or anything... :D
The only downsides I had were:
- the text sometimes was really too much to read in such a short period of time.
- the text in the responses being different sizes was really tough on my eyes. I like the font that you used, but the different sizes made it a little difficult to quickly read.
Overall I really enjoyed this one, and I think if it had just a little bit more testing on it then these two negatives would have been taken care of. Well done!! This could be a full game.
Having a native English speaker proofread and edit the dialogue would probably also have been a big plus, though I understand that probably wasn't possible given the time constraints.