itch.io

I would like to make an argument in defence of my game.

Have you ever heard about Wandersong? Quite a different game, honestly the only thing mine has in common is the presence of ghosts and, very important point, enemies that aren't actually enemies and battles, that aren't actually battles. Perhaps confusing, but I will try to explain. The opponents that you face in that game are not evil. In fact they don't even want to hurt you. Basically it is all a big misunderstanding that you have to solve with the power of song!

Although in a completely different setting and genre (and lack of quality from my side), I was going for the exact same thing. You cannot hurt those ghosts. You cannot be attacked by the ghosts. There are no hidden health bars. At most you could hurl insults ether way (which is supported by the bot) and eventually run out of time (I don't want to take up all your time, when there are many good games to rate). Personally I see my chatbot (ghost) as an unwieldy giant blocking the mountain pass (obstacles if you will) and the only way to continue is to convince them to move away. What you do is ask the correct questions and interpret the answers, learn who you are talking to (lookup the ghost type) and say the correct thing so they go back to the void. Granted it kind of depends on your definition of enemy.

The cambridge dictionary defines enemy as :

a person who hates or opposes another person and tries to harm them or stop them from doing something

The most damming argument based on it would be "ghost that opposes you and tries to stop you from removing them". Personally not a big fan of this definition, since it would also imply that a parent that forbids a toddler to stick a fork into an outlet is the toddlers enemy.

I like the definition of enemy from dictionary.com better: 

a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

By this definition the intend of doing harm is required for an entity to be considered an enemy. The ghosts in my game have no such intention. They don't have any gratification form your failure to remove them.

A different definition of enemy might be conflict. If you think that any type of conflict between entities (in my case verbal conflict) makes them enemies, then we have a problem. I am of the opinion that any story needs conflict. No conflict -> everyone got along well -> they do stuff -> no story. The 92nd piglet build its house from depleted uranium, but there is no wolf to blow on it. Tbh I was also concerned if conflict meant enemy, so I had asked a question on the forum whether or not the refusal to cooperate makes you an enemy. Mod said it didn't sound like an enemy.

Honestly we could go on theorize about how much conflict makes two people enemies, but I have once again written way to much.

Let me instead help you get to the game bit

• To activate the game you need to type "/begin" into the input field (probably needed to explain that better)
• Now you will receive replies for your input. write any sentence and the bot will attempt to understand you and give you a fitting answer. I colorcoded your input, so you can see when words get detected. It marks subjects predicates and questions. Didn't manage to implement objects, so there are no real topics to talk about.
• Use the answers you get to find out what type of ghost is talking to you (type: "/help ghosts" for the full list of ghosts and for example "/help ancient" if you want more information on the ancient)
• Each ghost type has a description, a guide on how to determine them and a way to remove them.
• I only implemented one ghost and spoiler: you need to type three words to remove it