THAT WAS CLEVER

Smart and beautiful game, I love the Papers Please reference, good job!

Such a nice game! Graphics, music, even the voice acting is great! It's a bit hard to understand the gameplay at first, but the whole presentation of the game is excellent, so that kept me going. Great job!

Interesting game. Was a little hard understanding what they wanted in the tutorial. But that might just be from my lack of sleep haha

very very very stressfull, loved it.
cant believe it was made in 72 hours, huge congrats

Same, hard to follow as first, and already a bit too stressful for my taste ahah but such a great presentation. Voice over is super well done

really well made game!! a bit too hard to follow sometimes for me at least but thats part of the experience i guess

Very interesting concept! the noteboard was a nice touch which more games should support these days :)

Very cool game, art, concept, voice, all are perfect. And the tutorial is helpful to understand how to play x)

The voice acting added so much to the mood, the music was spot on too! It reminded me of papers please in the best way possible. It was pretty addicting, but I wasn't sure if it mattered whether or not the connected country was an ally, maybe I should've tried to sabotage. It's a really well done game, the 10 seconds break down was a smart idea but wasn't punishing enough in my opinion. I wonder if there is a way to win the game, I will keep trying!

Best game since Paper Please!

I hope that this could become a full game, and right now is already long.

Great Job!

Pretty amazing, so cool to have it fully voiced, plus subtitled. Cool music and overall very nice ambiance and mood.
Maybe a bit easy to find information as sometimes code where just first letters of the name/country etc.
Would love to see more events as well.
Really loved the idea and was fun to play. Very clear as well

Amazing game!
I love the voice acting (especially the accents), this adds a lot!
The notebook was such a vital tool otherwise I would have forgotten everything all the time.
The chaos and things breaking reminded me a bit of spacteam which is a game a really love :D
The pixelart graphics were also amazing and the soundeffects really fitting.
Great job overall :)

Love the sprites!.

this game is amazing

Almost gave up before 10 connections, was surprised the story continued!
I like the papers please references.
The voice acting is great.
More types of chaos would have been great.

Clever and beautifully looking game, the team must've put a lot of effort in the art 🎨 👌

@ThatzNiko haha thank you for playing, I appreciate the enthusiasm!

What an overwhelming response! Thank you everyone, the enthusiasm you showed in your comments is really encouraging! You also made many interesting points that I'll be happy to address:

@catellib , @kromeboy @okshirl and @chybby - I see you are people of culture ;) You're right, Papers Please was one of the sources of inspiration for this game, and finding the right balance between quoting some of the ideas presented there while giving the game its own twist was a challenge in and on itself.

Okshirl, Chybby, thank you for your observations about the distraction mechanic! The game was originally supposed to have a longer list of distractions, but some of them had to be cut due to time constraints unfortunately... and by the way, yes, the phone calls are spread across multiple days, and later in the game some additional gameplay mechanics, like knowing whether or not a Country is an ally, come into play.

@save-sloth-studios , @braizen and @blk-dg - Yes, true, the game has a bit of a learning curve, that's why we tried our best to smoothen it by including two different tutorials, one in the form of a cutscene while the other as an interactive in game tutorial. Thank you for your feedback, it's really useful!

@angrybeard , @cambryx - My main role was writing the music for the game, when I saw the notebook implemented in one of the game versions I actually had the same reaction as yours haha. I agree, pretty useful indeed!

@clockmaker , @ghatazorg , @macmist , @eugenik, @zalir and @shemokam - Thank you so much for the kind words!

I hope I answered to everybody, in case I missed something please forgive me, I'm afraid I'm a bit sleep deprived at the moment xD. Cheers, and good luck with the jam!

Definitely needed more stuff to keep things interesting. After the seventh call or so I was starting to wonder when it would end. The levels should definitely be shorter. Probably only five calls at most with how long each one takes.

That said, it is a jam game and what you have feels very good. I think there is a lot of potential here for new wrenches to throw in the plans. The graphics, music, and overall presentation were all great!

Brilliant job! looks great, fun concept and loads of potential!

@zungryware Thanks for the kind words, and for taking the time to write your review! We tried to create as much variation as possible in the mood of phone calls, ranging from funny/ironic to more serious ones, but, as you said already, three days were too little time to implement further variation on a gameplay level unfortunately. We actually ended up discarding many ideas to give priority to game stability and to provide a longer experience.

However, this kind of feedback is extremely useful to us in case we ever decide to continue developing the game (it was mainly done in our spare time as a passion project, but depending on how things evolve... who knows!). I'll make sure to discuss this aspect with the rest of the team.

@ashleyarmstrong So glad you liked the game and had fun! One thing is for sure: we had a BLAST making it as well! Cheers!

Very fun game !
I liked memorized all of the code, and some time, the "chaos" have some impact, (but to less)
I didn't see a time limit though.

very good game comrade ! good job x)

The immediate atmosphere was pretty immersive. The UI, the tactile interfaces like the notepad and computer commands, and of course the constant rumbles from explosions, all helped to drive the player into the story and world. You could've just have a mouse based interface, but the addition of the typing mechanic helped sell the idea much better.

NGL, I didn't use the notepad provided. Instead I kept a Windows notepad off to the side and jotted down every new nation that came about. On top of that, by the 7th connection or so I finally realized I didn't even need to browse the NAT directory, I could just type the first few letters of the nation and get something. This, combined with my growing list of quick lookups allowed me to start to burn past the levels. At least, until the next section where there were more things thrown at me.

I found the voice lines pretty entertaining and well acted. It was one of the things that carried me forward. I think some of the sections overstayed their welcome a bit. I think maybe just doing 7-8 connections would've been more to my taste, though unfortunately that would've meant less lines :shrug:

The connection interface is surprisingly fun to use. It feels satisfying to hit a perfect connection after doing all the detective work. Not that perfect connections are terribly hard, they just take a while to figure out.

So I think that was one of the more enjoyable parts of the game to me. How do you take a simpler concept like Papers Please while keeping its ideas fresh and entertaining? Well, you figured it out! Cool game.

Gorgeous art and clever mechanics, busy work is a love letter to Papers Please. And it's voiced, too! A lot going on here. Notepad was a nice touch as well - especially given how short the jam was. Well done!

Really addictive game! Almost want to play it again! :D Except it doesn't quite match theme of this jam. Yes there is some chaos every 10 seconds, but that's not the main mechanic of the game, so yeah. Overall, the game is very fun!

It took me quite some time to understand the rules of the game, but it's fun enough.
I was amazed at how well the game's settings, graphics, sound effects, and voice actors match each other so well.
You guys have worked together as a team before this Jam, right?

I can't believe that a game of this quality was made in 72 hours.

Isn't this the first game that takes on the role of an operator?
It is an amazing game in many ways.

@benthetwoofus Thank you for your kind words!

All of the team met only a few days/weeks before the jam started. For me, Pier-V and Langi, this was our first LudemDare and my first game jam full stop. I can't speak for the latter, but I definitely learned a lot from this experience.

Most of the script just came from me writing out the base interactions, then handing it over to the rest of the guys for feedback/edits. I wrote out and have voice assets for 5 whole days, but had to cut them to just 2 days so we could get the game out the door.

This wouldn't have happened without Hugi and AlpacaLad's hard work coding, both are gonna make great games/experiences in the future, I just know it.

Wow! This is absolutely amazing. Hard to believe it was made during 72 hours. The amount of content and polish is huge.

Wow, this game it's probably one of the best that i played.
In the beginning it was a litte bit hard to understand and to find the things, but when you get the hang of it, it pretty fun to make the calls correctly, and search the names and countries.
I can see a good future with this game!

My first 5/5 for this jam. I am really impressed with what was done here in 72 hours. The graphics are really good, same with the audio and gameplay. I really liked the voice acting and the gameplay loop of getting locations and connecting people correctly. This was really addicting in the same way Papers Please was. I want to see this turned into a full game.

Wow. You've got a lot of stuff packed within those 72 hours, and a very nice package it is, Papers Please offspring effectively. Well done!

Nice! If I have one gripe with this game it is that it is too slow. There doesn't seem to be much pressure to do anything once the order is given. On the other hand, misremembering anything from the call is very punishing.

Really nice game. The inspiration from Papers Please shines through every cravice.

Just wow! Did not expect any voice acting in this jam. Love the idea of being a comrade who has to connect people like in the geood old days. It took me awhile to get used to the gameplay loop but it felt very satisfying to know how to use the terminal and even remember some commands so you don't have to look them up. Well done!

Excellent work! Such a cool design an concept ^_^ Well done everyone! This is certainly putting the fear into switchboarding :D

Super super great game, the switchboard mechanics were great. I loved the references to Papers Please, it felt like a cross between that and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, with the nagging things. It worked really well. The music felt a little out of place, a little too calm for the kind of work a gulagee would be doing. The rest of the audio was exactly on point, absolutely great voice acting.

I really liked the gamplay. It was very interesting and complicated but still fun. It took me a minute to really realize what was going on, but it was fun to learn and really feel like I was in the world.

Really Really cool! Gave me papers please vibes. I liked the game and how it all worked. Main thing I wanted was it to be a little shorter per section, so after doing maybe 3 connections or so you go out to a small scene and can do some other side mechanic or whatever. I really wanted to keep playing for the story after I got past the first section, but it took a little too long to keep going. I also thought the theme was sorta tacked into the game instead of the game being around the theme, though it seemed to work well enough. Great job all around!

Wow phenomenal job, even more incredible this was made in 72hrs! I love Papers, Please and this was as well made! Fantastic Art, music, gameplay, dialogues, va and the mood was just incredible.
My only criticism would be the that I felt the use of the theme was just getting in the way, the time was too short (understandably) and it just started to get in the way of enjoying the game.
Overall I would love for this to be a full release with more interesting story elements that tie together like in Papers. Fantastic entry!

I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game and definitely will be playing it again. The voice-acting and writing for the game was absolutely incredible. That, combined with the bombing sounds and screen shake really sold the mood. I do wish the switch board was slightly more forgiving so I didn't have to line up the plug with the hole exactly, but that is super nit-picky stuff. I hope to see this released as a full game - wonderful job!

Loved the art, music, voice acting, and the funny narrative had me giggling as I played it. Was transported geographically! Had a nice time playing it, but unfortunately had issues with hearing the calls. Great job!

@tuile @nardandas @real-flamingicecubegames @rage-paint-games @glaciereclipse @pengilton

Thank you, guys, for the kind comments! This was my first time Voice Acting for a video game and it was such a lovely experience. I'm super grateful for Hugi for allowing me on this project. Cal Clarke also did a magnificent job writing out the dialogue for me to explore.

If you guys are interested in hearing any cut lines, I've attached a link below to all my lines.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FLOUXaa3BWq6IcwO7QgmYNEfPCY1zFb6?usp=sharing