Ludum Dare #27compo
Boxer's Seconds
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No boxer is complete without a second in the corner to keep his spirits up between rounds. In Boxer's Seconds you're responsible for hiring as many seconds as you can. But there's a catch: the candidates will refuse to work for you as long as the other candidates they personally hate remain alive. Study the candidates and order assassinations and hire as many seconds as possible!
Features:
- Lose a few rounds and the difficulty will go down. Win a bunch and it'll go up.
- Mute audio with F4, toggle fullscreen with F11.
- Ants! They'll happily take a joyride on a piece of paper if you move it around. Or you can crush them.
- Autosave! Close the game and later you can pick up right where you left off.
- 4,000 possible names! 38,000 possible faces! GAZILLIONS of possible character descriptions!
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I wanted to interpret the theme in a way that didn't have to do with time. I googled the definition of "second" and learned that the guy in a corner who advises the boxer between rounds is, in fact, referred to as a second.
I tumbled the idea around in my head. I'd decided I was going to do something deliberately slower-paced and more to do with logic and strategy to contrast the direction most other entries have taken. I came up with Boxer's Seconds, in which you're a professional boxer tasked with hiring some seconds to replace the one that just quit on you. The problem is that each second hates some of the others and would never work for you while the ones they hate remain alive. Your job is to choose which candidates to order assassinations on and which ones to hire. You get points if you hired the maximum possible number of seconds, and you lose points when you didn't hire as many as you could have. It's not so simple as that, though - you'll have to read up on each candidate to determine who it is that hates who, first.
I hope you enjoy playing as much as I've enjoyed making it!
Tools used:
MS Paint - for all game art that isn't generated on-the-fly
GIMP and ResHack - for icon-ifying the application icon
Ableton Live - for a few percussion samples/synths
TED Notepad and Notepad++ - for text file editing
BlitzMax - for programming, naturally
A special thanks to Lucas Pope, who developed Papers, Please, for being one of the big inspirations for the interface and graphic style.
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Track my post-compo progress!
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35589
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No boxer is complete without a second in the corner to keep his spirits up between rounds. In Boxer's Seconds you're responsible for hiring as many seconds as you can. But there's a catch: the candidates will refuse to work for you as long as the other candidates they personally hate remain alive. Study the candidates and order assassinations and hire as many seconds as possible!
Features:
- Lose a few rounds and the difficulty will go down. Win a bunch and it'll go up.
- Mute audio with F4, toggle fullscreen with F11.
- Ants! They'll happily take a joyride on a piece of paper if you move it around. Or you can crush them.
- Autosave! Close the game and later you can pick up right where you left off.
- 4,000 possible names! 38,000 possible faces! GAZILLIONS of possible character descriptions!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I wanted to interpret the theme in a way that didn't have to do with time. I googled the definition of "second" and learned that the guy in a corner who advises the boxer between rounds is, in fact, referred to as a second.
I tumbled the idea around in my head. I'd decided I was going to do something deliberately slower-paced and more to do with logic and strategy to contrast the direction most other entries have taken. I came up with Boxer's Seconds, in which you're a professional boxer tasked with hiring some seconds to replace the one that just quit on you. The problem is that each second hates some of the others and would never work for you while the ones they hate remain alive. Your job is to choose which candidates to order assassinations on and which ones to hire. You get points if you hired the maximum possible number of seconds, and you lose points when you didn't hire as many as you could have. It's not so simple as that, though - you'll have to read up on each candidate to determine who it is that hates who, first.
I hope you enjoy playing as much as I've enjoyed making it!
Tools used:
MS Paint - for all game art that isn't generated on-the-fly
GIMP and ResHack - for icon-ifying the application icon
Ableton Live - for a few percussion samples/synths
TED Notepad and Notepad++ - for text file editing
BlitzMax - for programming, naturally
A special thanks to Lucas Pope, who developed Papers, Please, for being one of the big inspirations for the interface and graphic style.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Track my post-compo progress!
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35589
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Comments50
Really original perspective on the theme. :)
Well, this one is pretty solidin the amidst of so many buggy and incomplete feeling games, it has that Dukope (www.dukope.com) feel to it, excellently polished, if It wasn't for a certain dose of repetition, I really would say that every man is pretty much unique (and has some pretty cool quirks)(Talking about man, you could've tried adding some females too, if it was supposed to have any, I didn't get them in my gameplay run).
In my opinion, you just got one thing wrong, and it was theme part, although you stimulate the hyperfast hiring/killing thing, this is a game that is best played slowly and patiently for achieving best results, I don't know if it was supposed to have a time bonus or something, if there is one, I'm sorry couldn't notice. (But I liked the tick tick clock-"oh shit, i'm out of time"-part)
This is yet, another game that I would recommend you, author, to implement and develop deeper, it would make an awesome full game if released with some story and/or other cool features ;D.
Good to see alternative interpretations of the theme. Love the little details, being able to add in notes and actually scribble in a signature. Well done :D
(And others: thanks for the feedback!)
Love the randomized character generation, btw!
X-Or: Awesome! I spent a lot of time trying to get the generation just right. I think I could have improved it more if I had more time, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
It's a nice concept and well executed
It was very cool and the first bug scares me so much oO
But for some reason, it just doesn't feel fun to me. Maybe it just isn't my kind of game, but the auto-generated walls of text aren't that interesting to read, and solving the puzzle doesn't really feel rewarding to me.
Thank you so much for not making a twitch/timed game. I really liked that I could sit down and be thoughtful and think through it. I didn't know a boxer had 'seconds', so you learn something knew every day. I did feel bad signing my name, though, since it sent some people to their deaths just because they had different ideas about the role of Pluto as a planet :_(
Those ants, though...
I wonder how many "Too long, didn't read" comments you will receive for that..
The effects like ants sticking to notes and stuff were great, though.
Very innovative concept, well done!
It's so well made that I'd have to either:
1) Make a zillion spreadsheets
2) Program a solver :)
Both would be a bit overkill...
Seriously, this is one original entry!