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Anti-idle game about status quo bias looking for members :)

A topic by yo252yo created Apr 24, 2024 Views: 289 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 5
Submitted(+4)

Hi! 

I think this jam could be a good chance for me to tackle a project I've been thinking about for a while, about the status quo bias, i.e. the pervasive idea that inaction is morally neutral when in fact inaction/the status quo/normality is already pretty extreme and extremely harmful to a lot of people. 

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“Impossible to Fix” (tentative title) is an anti-idle game about the status-quo bias where you try to save humanity from its certain extinction at the hand of capitalism. 

Through classic idle-game mechanics, you unlock more and more progressive fixes to build up your “Reform” score. This score is competing with the snowballing effect of the climate crisis which has an increasing “Crisis” score. You need to get Reform higher than Crisis to stop people from dying before humanity’s extinction. A run is expected to last around 5 minutes. 

Here’s the twist: it’s impossible to do that. There’s no fixing capitalism. The only way to win the game is before you even start: in the welcome menu, you can choose the difficulty (easier times, normal, new normal, post new normal or impossible). Only if you pick “impossible” will the game offer you to completely dismantle the political system and start anew with a non capitalist economy, which is going to be tough but is the only path to victory.

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Anyway if you're interested in joining the project or just even bouncing off ideas let me know 🙂 I'd love to meet more like minded people. I have game design, writing and programming experience but not much else. My portfolio is at www.yo252yo.com if you wanna see what I'm about.

I'd like to keep the team and the scope pretty small to avoid burnout. Ideally, it would be nice to have someone that can make things look good cause thats definitely my weak point xD I was thinking of using web tech (like paperclip maximizer) with an artistic direction inspired by early web browser games (like ogame) but that can definitely be changed.

Host(+1)

Welcome! :)

Submitted(+1)

Sounds like a super cool idea! I'm already working on my own thing, so can't really be helpful, but wanted to say I like the idea.

Submitted(+1)

thanks a lot for saying this, it means a lot, I tend to work on pretty niche stuff so I'm very happy than anyone else than me is interested :)  I'm pretty sure that I can make something solo in the worst case scenario so you'll definitely be able to play it :)  I've read your project description, it sounds super cool, I'll definitely give it a play when it's ready!

(+1)

Sounds good! The only thing I would change is that the win condition (which is also a key message) might be hard to find and a lot of people might miss it. You might want to consider having it somewhere less hidden.

Submitted(+2)

I've been giving this a lot of thoughts so your feedback is definitely valid. I'm hoping to nudge the players through writing a smart description for the difficulty levels and through a few UI tricks. I'm definitely not hoping for a 100% success rate, but would be nice if it was more than 0 XD maybe like 30-50.

I've done a few prototypes of games that had no win condition and people are really insistant on finding the one way to beat the game, usually, so I'm not too worried about that. Worst case scenario I can always add hints if I see too many failed attempts. Actually I probably should. 

(+1)

Hello!! Are you looking for a sound designer / Musician? :)

Submitted

hi! I do not have anyone working on audio so the role is definitely open, but I didn't post in the threads about musicians/composers because this is a small scope idle game and I thought it'd be potentially boring for composers. I imagine it's going to need like 1 or 2 background tracks and a few UI sounds at most. If that seems interesting to you we can definitely work together but I wouldnt hold it against you if you'd prefer to work on a project with more complexity on the audio side xD

Submitted

hi! I assume your silence means you're doing something else, so I'll shortly start to look around for sfx and music myself, but let me know if it's not the case