Minimus Brainius by hulien22

made by hulien22 for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

~ A game about competing in debates with a small brain ~

The year was 483 BC, in ancient Greece. Some people say it was one of the greatest points in history with some of the greatest minds. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Pythagoras... and others I think. The philosophers were said to have unlimited minds, and were able to solve any argument. It was a great time to be alive.

Then there's me, Minimus Brainius. People say I have limited space in my head, but I won't let that stop me from becoming the greatest philosopher of all time. I will ascend the ranks to become the greatest debater.

Join me on my journey to ascend to philosophical god-hood!

Travel across Greece meeting farmers, merchants, philosophers, and maybe even gods in order to grow your brain. Visit libraries, word-smiths and oracles to help prepare your brain for the complex inquiries on the road ahead.

Although our brains may start small, if we pick our words carefully we just might be able to weave a concise and impactful sentence to change the world(view). - Minimus

@hulien22: Coding
@Frunkleberg: Story and Artwork
@ImInSoftware: Coding and Music
@JosephlDooley: Foley and Coding
@Cocolicco: 30 mins of idea generation

🎮 Godot 4.1.1
🎨 Photoshop
🎵 FL Studio

Bug Fixes:

(10/02/2023) Fixed text on small screens
(10/02/2023) Fixed crash on load new map
(10/02/2023) Fixed game over trigger on regular debates

> Play here! <

Link	https://hulien22.itch.io/minimus-brainius
Link	https://hulien22.itch.io/minimus-brainius
Link	https://github.com/hulien22/ldjam54
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/minimus-brainius

Ratings

Overall	114^th	4.089⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Fun	299^th	3.768⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	14^th	4.518⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Theme	120^th	4.321⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	383^th	3.911⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Audio	212^th	3.778⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Humor	68^th	4.115⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Mood	232^th	3.929⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Given		16🗳️	9🗨️

Feedback

Compasslg

03. Oct 2023 · 02:23 UTC

Minimus Brainius, you are a genius

Compasslg

03. Oct 2023 · 02:31 UTC

My tiny brain can't figure out what makes a better argument, but the game is great :laughing:

LDJam user 0

03. Oct 2023 · 02:31 UTC

A interesting one. Though the interpretation of theme is not super unique, the gameplay shows innovative thoughts there. Nice to see that you succesfully convey an abstract idea into playable gameplay. Wondering how does the scoring works.

Andrew Michienzi

03. Oct 2023 · 02:33 UTC

superb very at lose feel!
I didn't fully understand what was going on, but I really loved the music and the vibe

Trifectuh

03. Oct 2023 · 02:39 UTC

This is really really great. I'm quite curious to know how the scoring works. Seems like a nightmare to program a system to figure out what the player is trying to say but it seems to work well as sentences that make sense and/or have the right convincing words in them seem to score better consistently. Very neat.

First playthrough ended abruptly right after the first boss debate. I think maybe I clicked skip on accident and was supposed to do something with my new expanded slots? Next one went fine until my ego was shattered by poor word choices.

Very fun, great entry. Looks good, plays well aside from the aforementioned bug, and has me 'intrigue' as to how it works under the hood. Probabaly gonna go poke around the repo and find out

Gabexiii

03. Oct 2023 · 03:22 UTC

I love the mixture of managing your words and actually using them. I restarted the game but got some very bad words, so the words available at the begining should be better so your run is not ruined.

Braeden

03. Oct 2023 · 03:26 UTC

Very challenging, clearly my brain isn't big enough
I like the music and the visuals a lot, feels very polished. Great job guys

nathmate

03. Oct 2023 · 03:44 UTC

Very interesting game. It would be nice to see what causes what scores, it feels like I'm making sentences at random. Also the overworld map generation seems quite unbalanced.

🎤 hulien22

03. Oct 2023 · 04:37 UTC

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Judging @compasslg @andrew-michienzi @trifectuh @nathmate

Judging is done based on a mixture of persuasiveness, logic, grammar and some dark magic (aka asking a large language model to pretend it is a judge for a children's debate contest).

---

Some tips for getting better scores
- Try to use words like "Because" or "Since" to add explanations.
- Use the free words to help add more structure to your argument.
- Use the oracle to help give yourself a step up in the boss debates.
- Use the forges to help get yourself those missing words.

🎤 hulien22

03. Oct 2023 · 04:39 UTC

@trifectuh Thanks for the bug report, that bug should be fixed now! Turns out the map could generate more combat nodes than we had questions for on some of the acts...

Ani

03. Oct 2023 · 18:08 UTC

Great take on the theme! First time around it was hard to know what words to keep since some are quite thematic and ended up being useless. The judging is a bit mysterious but I did much better on second try after making actual sentences - still lost though haha.

mcbombadev

03. Oct 2023 · 22:47 UTC

Birthdays is fun since people and holidays not bad.

Took me a few runs, but eventually got past the first boss fight thanks to the oracle. Great execution for a jam. The music and art were nicely done. I never managed to get a score above 6 though. Back to the word forge with me!

MAR Zockmeister

04. Oct 2023 · 01:49 UTC

Very stylish and polished game, love the visuals, the music and sound, the atmosphere. But I also had problems to find out what makes a good argument. But maybe I try again with your hints. Definitely a nice game. :smiley:

Netrunner Nobody

04. Oct 2023 · 02:13 UTC

It's like a significantly better version of that one Jackbox game. Which is really impressive, because Jackbox is a multi-million dollar franchise and you guys made this in three days. This is also a decent competitor to Twitter, as the people you argue with in this game are far more coherent and logical.

Anyway, have some stars. Five of them, in fact.

Catusfelony

04. Oct 2023 · 02:56 UTC

This is a really fun concept (and possibly a good use of LLMs) but I really couldn't tell what made for good arguments at all, in fact by the time I got to the boss I was already at 1 ego and lost on the first argument.

PassbyKamenRider

04. Oct 2023 · 03:18 UTC

This is my favorite one for LD54 ever. Love the idea of limited brain and the battle mechanics. I'm a bit curious about how the sentences get rated, will check the source code later. Thank you for making it open source, great job!

LelulaGames

04. Oct 2023 · 03:30 UTC

It's an interesting concept, but I just didn't understand the debates. What are you scored on? How much should you say? Does it matter what order they are in? The rest of it was pretty straight forward, but the debates.... I kept trying to make sentences and had "limited" words to use so nothing made sense.

mmason

04. Oct 2023 · 03:30 UTC

I go the way to Zeus but I brain to not big and big fail. Amazing game, the only thing I can add is please add a volume slider, I'll probably be coming back to play this more.

Ben Parisi

04. Oct 2023 · 04:51 UTC

Ah this is brilliant. Stuff like this is why I love Ludem Dare.
I'd love to know more about how you use the LLM API. What specific prompts you used.

Human Writes Code

04. Oct 2023 · 07:02 UTC

I LOVE THIS GAME! It's so good! I love the concept and how it fits the theme. Most importantly it is super fun!

I'm not sure what the scoring system is based on, though, because I consistently scored less than 5 with life-changing philosophical arguments such as these:

![aliens.PNG](///raw/e03/21/z/5f834.png)

![idiot.PNG](///raw/e03/21/z/5f836.png)

![so wise.PNG](///raw/e03/21/z/5f838.png)

LDJam user 278146

04. Oct 2023 · 15:42 UTC

This was hilarious! I liked the wide range of prompts and how I could always manage to make something work. I think being able to use words multiple times would have been good (I wanted to compare goat's cheese to sheep's cheese but could only use cheese once.)

![chrome_VgHpGTJdD8.png](///raw/28e/34/z/5f97c.png)

![chrome_CKBjEkQBU9.png](///raw/28e/34/z/5f97d.png)

jessicat

04. Oct 2023 · 23:29 UTC

Really neat concept. LLM based? Would be nice to get more feedback on how the argument is being processed.

Quoclon

06. Oct 2023 · 07:12 UTC

I liked the background music, and the 'world map' - I enjoyed solving the basic puzzle in the beginning. I got confused when it was time to start 'debating'. And, I didn't make it too much further beyond that. Which is too bad, because I can feel that this game is oozing with intention and hard work. Solid work team :)