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fierydrake

[Release*] Bogost in the Shell

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I really love the look of this game. You get huge returns from the simple primitives you used. If you were to do any additional development, a tutorial, or just more easing into the game for the player would make this game feel much less overwhelming. I want to read the thread and get a better understanding of the game and try it again.

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I had the same experience with this as I did with the original Syndicate, which is "This looks awesome, I have no idea what's happening or how to do anything, I think I'm too dumb, ok I'm dumb goodbye."

 

So I can say unequivocally that this game is as good as Syndicate.

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Apologies! I kinda got bogged down and didn't find time to tutorialise or even break it down properly. By which I mean -- yeah, this is totally old school drop you in the mix kinda cool, yeah! yeah? Oh. :(

 

You do just click to hack and try to form a chain of citizens to Nick's location while avoiding the police. Then you click on the brain above the skyscraper Nick is in to win.

Just beat the clock!

 

The police will patrol if they see someone hacked they will move towards them and "ask them a question" for 4 seconds, if you don't select them in that time they will cause an alarm which will knock out that node and increase the speed the timer ticks.

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I really liked the style of this. I'm not reading threads before I play, so I didn't actually realise I could control Nick. I was just hacking pedestrians and trying to line them up. Didn't really know what was going on!

You shouldn't be able to control Nick (he's the one red guy who walks to the skyscraper and hangs around inside), only hack his brain and upload a nasty virus to make him regret his actions. :)

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I really love the look of this game. You get huge returns from the simple primitives you used. If you were to do any additional development, a tutorial, or just more easing into the game for the player would make this game feel much less overwhelming. I want to read the thread and get a better understanding of the game and try it again.

Thanks Spenny. I could push in a tutorial and do a bunch of small tweaks I've been wanting to add but not had time, maybe later this week.

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This looks lovely and it's a nice use of the old Syndicate persuadatron mechanic. I never quite got to Nick, but I think you could do a lot more with this! I'll second Spenny - a few more levels with a nice difficulty curve would add a lot to the game.

 

Also, so much fun to see Bogost wearing Google Glass. =P

 

 --Rev

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Thanks Rev, you're the first to mention the Bogost graphic which honestly was the first thing I made and I smiled to myself the whole time. :)

 

The plan is to spend a few more hours making a very basic and small level to introduce the mechanics. And also to fix the most blatant bugs and omissions (for example, I don't like how clunky detection is at the moment.)

I'd quite like to do something better with the camera, but no one has mentioned it yet -- I feel that at max zoom it's somewhat fiddly but zooming in is a bit annoying as well. Anyway, I'll try and start on some of that tonight.

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Continuing to work on this when I have time. I want to address some of the control problems and bugs with the game.

The first thing was to make it clearer what is happening when the cyberpolice approach one of your uncontrolled hacked people-- I have added a little "?" bubble above their heads that you can click on to answer the officer's query.

I have also added a couple of sound effects--one when the "?" bubble appears and one when you successfully dismiss it.

 

It was also bugging me that you could continue to control and hack with people who no longer had a link back to base through other hacked brains, so I have improved the game logic to require that all hacked nodes must remain connected to the base node.

 

Version 0.3 20150519_1

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TODOs:

* Quit button / improved menu

* Fix camera zoom and pan

* Improve in-game instructions/help

* Tutorial level

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I could see this being a lotta fun, especially if there was a way to hide nodes in alleyways, etc - or if the means for doing so were a little more obvious.

 

The question mark and associated feedback are awesome, though I fear you still need that tutorial. Took me a while to catch onto the response mechanic.

 

Definitely into this. Love me some Syndicate/Ghost in the Shell sneakiness.

 

 --Rev

 

PS: I'm continuing The Fanboy's Lament for a little bit, anyhow, and it was suggested to me that further dev should happen in the Game Dev forums, as we're more likely to get feedback there. Thought I'd pass that on.

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