You are tasked with writing bills as an "evil" Senator. Cause as much harm as possible to your country but be careful! Both your donors and voters expect certain things and you'll have to make them happy just long enough to make everything awful!
I appreciate social narrative in games. Having completely silly and contradicting outcomes from having to do things in a hurry is a nice piece of emergent humor.
Your game reminds me of a newspaper game by Lucas Pope, which had the same sort of gameplay. This one is fairly well executed, but there isn't much variation in the gameplay in my opinion, when posed next to some games of the similar style.
I submitted two cancer research bills and my voter approval shot up to 247%! The voters love cancer research!
I'm not sure what your political views were so I found it hard to guess which bills were supposed to be evil :P Perhaps you can colour-code the bills based on their evilness.
This is an interesting concept, from an aesthetic point of view I would prefer the bills to move smother, it would make it easier to read. Also I couldn’t really work out how each bill impacted the metrics.
Pretty funny and as others have said the feeling of having to cobble together something quickly to please voters added emergent humor.
That said, actually winning basically involved determining the creator's definition of 'evil'... will mandatory religious education gain or lose me evil?? Oh evil, why must you be so subjective...
Interesting idea, and I must echo Artylo in saying it reminds me of The Republia Times, be sure to check that out if you haven't seen it already.
The idea of trying to slip through diabolical measures is rather fitting, though the inherently political nature of the game can sometimes make it clear which options are considered evil.
I don't think political subjects should necessarily be avoided in games, but it would be more accessible if the options were comically overblown evilness or niceness, rather than actual political issues. If you do want to use your game for commentary, it could be worth considering what "evil" positions seem to actually have plenty of political support.
Interesting idea, but as others have said some way of making evil an objective goal seperated from your personal morality would be better. For example, if you have "evil" as exterminating the human race, pro-birth control and anti-environmental legislation would work towards it. If on the other hand societal and governmental collapse is the evil goal, legislation that over-complicates things or specifically targets groups or individuals negatively would work towards it.
Awesome concept—loved it. I think the cards on the left should scroll smoothly rather than jumping; their overall motion is unclear. I couldn't drop a card after I picked it up. This is an LD game I'd actually like to play more of. Great job!
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I'm not sure what your political views were so I found it hard to guess which bills were supposed to be evil :P Perhaps you can colour-code the bills based on their evilness.
That said, actually winning basically involved determining the creator's definition of 'evil'... will mandatory religious education gain or lose me evil?? Oh evil, why must you be so subjective...
The idea of trying to slip through diabolical measures is rather fitting, though the inherently political nature of the game can sometimes make it clear which options are considered evil.
I don't think political subjects should necessarily be avoided in games, but it would be more accessible if the options were comically overblown evilness or niceness, rather than actual political issues. If you do want to use your game for commentary, it could be worth considering what "evil" positions seem to actually have plenty of political support.
For example, if you have "evil" as exterminating the human race, pro-birth control and anti-environmental legislation would work towards it.
If on the other hand societal and governmental collapse is the evil goal, legislation that over-complicates things or specifically targets groups or individuals negatively would work towards it.