[Released] It's Not Easy Being Pentametron

[ad_hominem]

[EDIT] The game is now released! I have no idea if it'll break on everyone else's machine, but it seems to be doing okay on mine. Get it here: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-9/rate/457257

 

--------------------------------------------

 

Hey everybody,

 

I've been working on this for a bit now, but held off on posting anything because I wasn't sure if it was going to go anywhere. I'm still not sure, but I guess I'm holding myself accountable with this post. This is my first game jam, and my first time using Unity for anything other than a place to dump a bunch of text for other people to deal with (I'm the writer on Beacon, which uses Unity).

Given my inexperience, I wanted to keep things very simple. The basic idea is to make a vaguely Papers Please-style game where you have to sit at a desk and sift through an ever-increasing pile of random tweets, pairing them up as iambic pentameter rhyming couplets – essentially being Pentametron in a shitty analogue office setting. I've got the basics up and running, with ~250 different iambic tweets that can print out with maybe 40 or so different possible rhymes, and a scanner/shredder to feed them into to submit them as pairs.

 

 

Realistic next steps:

• Add a basic scoring system to keep track of the ones you successfully pair up.

• Add in a bunch of non-iambic pentameter tweets so that you're also tasked with counting out the beats in your head.

 

Optimistic further goals:

• Add in distractions and 'events' that will get in the way of you doing your job.

• Sound effects.

• Create a win state and fail state for the end of the work day.

 

Pipe dream goals:
• Create a weird wobbly physics arm and robot claw to replace the cursor.

• Make it fun?

• Mostly the weird physics arm.

 

[RKSanders]

Cool idea and it's looking great! Maybe your scoring system could be tweeting out your pairs and scoring them with likes. Or maybe you're creating office memos that for some reason get likes. Anyways good luck!

[Zirrrus]

Really neat idea, and stunning pixel art!

[ad_hominem]

Thanks for the kind words!

 

@RKSanders, that likes scoring system is a good idea. I was planning on using the monitor to display some kind of score popup, and a 'likes' metric makes sense.

 

Because I'm a smart and sensible person, I immediately disregarded my list of realistic next steps and spent this evening making one of the most common office distractions – your co-workers. An NPC can now pop up randomly in the middle of your work and disrupt your day. You can currently drag them around the screen if you need to see something but (as of right now) you can't get rid of them. I'm not sure how I'll handle that yet, whether they just go away over time or whether you'll have to do something specific. And your coworkers are all other Twitter bots, because of course.

 

[theschap]

The presentation is so so good. Great work on this so far!

[phill]

This looks great! Can't wait to get my word nerd on and bust some rhymes! Also I agree that the funky physics wobbly arm is of the utmost importance.

[z_bill]

So good! I like the idea of an aimless Papers Please where it's not especially clear what you should be doing. Also, organizing tweets on paper and anachronistic machines to highlight their stupidity is good work!

[ad_hominem]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement – it's been a huge help in keeping me motivated to get this thing as close to finished as possible.

 

I'm going to get my head down this weekend and try to knock off the last few bits needed for it to work as an actual game, but in the meantime here's a sort-of-working wobbly physics arm:

 

[ad_hominem]

 

Okay, I'm calling this done! You can download the game here: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-9/rate/457257

 

I have no idea how it'll run on everyone's machine, but it seems to be in a pretty stable place from my testing.