Played through finally - it was so amusing, yet the concept had serious undertones. Perhaps it can be made more challenging, but the idea was so well-handled it kept me engaged throughout!
Are you guys planning to take this forward in the future?
Viewing post in The Last Server jam comments
We had a bigger scope, but as the hours went by, it became smaller and smaller. So, if the reception is nice, we would take it forward. The 1v1s could be more strategic and varied, depending on the bots you face. The deduction part of the play get more difficult and require extra developer tools you lock after destroying certain bots. Things like, could be a whole meta/satirical experience!
What do you think? How can this game grow in your perception?
I did feel like it was the time constraint that must have closed in on you guys - because I saw a lot of cleverness in what you were able to execute!
making the 1v1 more strategic + making it harder to deduce are the straightforward paths that immediately occured to me too. But the idea of unlocking extra developer tools sounds good in terms of progression, and going meta - if done right, can be psychologically rich too!
I am not sure how practical this is - but is there a way where you can give access to manufactured discord chats? That way, looking at the profile is not enough to make a complete deduction, but you need to actually go through the kind of messages they post to come to conclusions? just throwing a very impulsive idea!
Yes, that was an idea! One flow where we accidentally let in Bots into the server, would have had some negative consequences like performance dips in the 1v1 gameplay.. And to weed out those bots, we would have to see the chats in different channel to find suspicious behaviour, like:
- repeated messages with the same content everytime
- posts at exact same time everyday
- login from different locations/countries within the same hour
- instant replies always
stuff like that, could make the gameplay more immersive, all the while making the players feel intelligent. This would also influence the spec list of the different powers in the 1v1. There's a possibility of a good ecosystem of gameplay mechanics here.