itch.io

TYSM!

Addicting little thing!
Also damn, I thought my score of 146 was good, but these comments are proving me otherwise.

Awesome style! The game itself I found the inputs were a bit off from the music (might be on my end but IDK) which made it hard for me, and I found the dialogue was slow (like the speed at which it appeared, not slow as in boring) but I still enjoyed the story and visuals. Also I adore the character designs.

Final score was 49734

Fun game. Curious as to what triggers the different endings. Is it the different difficulties, or whether or not you call the mom or the friend, or how well you do on the vocab? Or how often you look outside? Or is it just in a preset order, or even randomized? Also I noticed the third time that the friend was talking about seeing the man *again*; was that only on the third runthrough it was the second different too? (I assumed it would be the same so I didn't pay attention to the text). Played normal the first time with 28/30, called the friend, pretty much never looked outside unless it was forced, good end. Second round I did easy, got 30/30, called mom, looked outside a lot, good end (barely). Third time I did hard, got 15/30 (also, is the last question a forced incorrect answer or is something just wrong with the mouse tracking on my laptop?), might have looked outside once?, no option to call mom or the friend, bad end.
Also is the "how did you see him outside" just about the window being cracked?
My two biggest gripes with the game are how slow the text is, with no way to manually progress it, and that at the initial "I should look out the window first," instead of just clicking on the magnifying glass you have to click on an extra menu that opens up from it. It's already pretty clear from the onscreen prompts what you're supposed to click on so it just adds an extra step.

"Can everyone please only make games that appeal to me?"

Been playing it for a few years now and it only just occurred to me to leave a nice comment. It's good for whenever I want something quick and un-intensive to play. It's a fun little sim! I love the art and how all the animals that were chosen have a reason or reference behind the character/movement/interest they represent (I'll be honest tho, I haven't figured out the lion-economist, rhino-healthcare, or jackal-news-outlet associations. Though I'm not American so maybe I'm just not aware of the logos of some American organizations or something). It's an amazing feeling whenever you actually have enough congress control to pass some of the bills/reforms/etc that need 5/6 when they come up (I just wish the "it won't pass now, maybe later" gave it a higher chance to come back or put it somewhere where you could choose to bring it back or something like that). I'm also at the point where I'm finally starting to figure out which long-term effects are coming from which seemingly non-influential cards. I do kinda wish that the answers weren't as leading with which options it considers the "right choice," because even though I usually agree with it, sometimes I think it's more nuanced than it's being presented, and it'd be nice to let people come to their own conclusions. It also feels sucky when you decide to not pass something for other reasons (like budget) and you have to pick an option that says something like "no, I hate workers" or whatever. Overall though I have a lot of fun. It's balanced enough to be fun and not constantly frustrating, got great graphics, and does a pretty decent job at simplifying a lot of complicated political issues and processes into something viable as a game. I just keep coming back to it. Great work!

Just played this with my brother for a good half-hour straight; definitely downloading it so we can play it offline in the car.
It also has a fun visual design! The characters and settings look super cool and work well for the gameplay.

Fantastic work. I loved the visuals and it had interesting mechanics.

Very fun little game! Played it for hours until I won (staying up WAY too late in the process), and it was fun for most of it. Sometimes frustrating, but never boring or tedious. I didn't realize for a long time how powerful the "Trade" upgrade was; I assumed the trade was only once, but it will repeat until you're out of moves! Absolutely necessary in the later levels when the scanners are unavoidable and can eat down your entire time in less than a second.

Big issue I noticed is that "Viral Chains" upgrade doesn't actually do anything (says it's supposed to slow down the scanners upon detection, but doesn't).

Some other issues I had was that there is no in-game pause button or way to get to the settings after starting a game; you have to click outside the window or otherwise switch windows to get to the pause menu. So if you want to change your colors or restart because you've messed up your run early on, you either have to spend the time to purposely run out of money, or close and restart the game.

My other issue was probably more a me thing, but I found the buttons to be opposite what was intuitive. Since you'd usually be using the search wave first and the infect second, and it automatically sets you to search mode first at the beginning of each floor, I had a lot of trouble remembering that 1 was actually for infect and 2 was for search (especially when later in the game and after I had the "invisible node infection" upgrade I would start a floor by taking a lot of "shots in the dark" with the infection. Since it takes a moment to register the switch, I would sometimes click too soon before the 1 button could register and search by mistake, and then assume I hit the wrong button since I was already constantly second-guessing myself about it, and ended up just keeping it on search and accidentally burning through many many moves trying and failing to infect). Some sort of indication of which mode you're on could be nice (especially for people using the Tab key). Edit: I may be stupid there literally is at the bottom

Lastly, some of the rangen with the upgrades and when the different difficulty increases (namely the second scanner) would show up made some runs feel a little unfair, since just being unlucky could seriously mess up an otherwise good run. Though I know it's hard to balance consistency and variation, so this is definitely another minor one.

This is not an issue so much as an idea, and of course there is no pressure at all for you to use it (especially if you're not updating the game), but an idea for another upgrade is one that speeds up the pulse around the nodes, so they don't linger so long that the scanners have the chance to hit the entire screen before they fade in the later floors.

Sorry this probably sounds like I'm just complaining, but I really did enjoy the game! Like I said, although sometimes frustrating, it was never tedious, which is very impressive with a game where you have to restart from the beginning and replay the first few levels a lot. I also really appreciated that the tutorial doesn't repeat at the start of every run and instead has a separate option to replay it from the menu. The graphics were both fitting to the premise and effective in gameplay, and I liked being able to customize the colors.

Very cool! Love the art, and the gameplay mechanics were straightforward and enjoyable. Quick enough that I can play it in once sitting, which I appreciated.

The trial-and-error aspect can be seen as either a positive or a negative; I personally enjoyed puzzling out which items to use on which enemies, but the hidden health bars until after you attack, not so much. Undecided on the enemy movement and detection ranges.

The boss fight felt a bit hard and grind-y to me, just because once you're within attacking range you don't have enough movement to retreat for even a single turn to regain health or to use a ranged attack, so there's not much strategy to it. (Or maybe I just got an unlucky map gen. I assumed it was the one consistent map, since it was a long lead up path to the boss, but now IDK.)

I was initially trying to do a pacifism route, but as often happens with rangen I was sometimes put into a level with no option but to fight.

Still, very fun! And again, really liked the art. Felt very polished.