Ludum Dare #47compo
Newster - A Fantasy Social Media Sim
PLAY IN BROWSER HERE!
https://namidasai.itch.io/newster
Will you spot the truth in the stream of fake news?
Or will you be TROLLed like a gullible dwarf?
Newster is the new exciting social media platform, taking the world of Eias by storm. Elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls or even humans: you are all welcome here. Newts to your heart's content!
Our most prominent users have navigated the platform expertly, sharing only credible, relevant content. To encourage this behaviour, we have included in the interface a simple score system that informs you of how credible you are. Now, you too can become a top newtser!
Latest newts from our top users:
"*I need to stop newtsing, I've been scrolling all day. My wife is pissed!*"
\- TomTheHappyTroll
"*Dwarves, elves, goblins, trolls... It doesn't matter. Be kind to each other. #WeAreAllHumans*"
\- WeAreAllHumans
"*Day: mine. Night: drink. Repeat. #ItsAWayOfLife*"
\- UrR3gularDw4rf
So what are you waiting for? Go out and share the best Newts to become one of the greats!
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This is a demo for a social media simulator based in a fantasy world.
Features:
- Unique text-based experience displayed through a social media timeline interface.
- 4 inter-linked storylines spread across 165 posts from a wide variety of fictional users.
- Grow your credibility online: share content that is accurate and relevant to become the top influencer on the platform.
- Get immersed in a fully-fledged fantasy political landscape through the eyes of an aspiring social media influencer.
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LDJAM 47 COMPO: The theme was "Stuck in a Loop." Whilst brainstorming, the idea kept coming back of interpreting the theme as "Stay in the loop" instead, and soon after came the idea for Newster, a social media simulator.
When the core mechanics were in place and it was time to write some content, my wife and I made a joke about how it would be funny to have social media but in a fantasy setting, whilst still using current news as "inspiration." Well, here you have it.
I've been learning gamedeving and Unity since April 2020. I really love game jams because I get to try something new every time!
Enjoy!
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48h Timelapse:
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Game Engine:
*Unity 2020.1.7f1*
Fonts:
*Key Virtue by SushiHueDesign* - https://www.1001freefonts.com/key-virtue.font
*Belligerent Madness by Font Monkey* - https://www.1001freefonts.com/belligerent-madness.font
*Typewriter Scribbled by Manfred Klein* - https://www.1001freefonts.com/typewriter-scribbled.font
Tools: Unity
Comments36
However the only way to win is to report accurately. I think there should have been an ending for if you share the stories for only one side or the other, and maybe a third ending if you only share the love stories etc. (Or I missed if there is a way to do this)
@dominium11 thank you so much for your comment, really nice to hear after the jam mayhem and you're there submitting and thinking "what did i even create, what is my life, will anybody actually play this"
I love the idea of this game :heart: This game has the potential for greatness. But as is it's just too narrow. That is nothing to scoff at but I couldn't express myself in the game. Which is precisely why I couldn't truly enjoy it. It needs more axies of measure than just this "credibility meter". It needs something along the lines of what @ausstein suggested. If I had more meters jumping around I could express myself without feeling punished when I shared something the Big Brother disaproved of. That's at least the feeling a get from this.
My own suggestion is that when sharing stuff on social media you can usually write short message above the thing you are sharing, therefore when sharing, add a pop-up with a couple of buttons as "Agree/True", "Disagree/False", "Suspicious"(possible fake news), "Humor", "Love/Share", etc. and let the changes to the meters be different depending on the option you chose.
Personally, I think this is a fine addition to the jam. :thumbsup:
Totally agree, compo is hardcore! Definitely want to play more with additional meters. I was thinking that you would have to manage different audiences, choose your target audience etc. rather than just the credibility meter, but decided to keep it simple to have a core experience that kinda works rather than over-scoping for this jam!
Really like the added expression idea, gonna snatch that and put it on the to-do list. Thanks again! :heart:
I wasn't sure what I was doing. I am very anti-social in general! :laughing:
Art work is wonderful.
The "share" sound effect is a bit annoying.
@james-joubert thank you for playing! Totally agree, I hate the sfx overall, but my wife thought I was overthinking it and told me to leave them in. :shrug: I should have secured more time to work on em, live and learn!
@indigo thank you for your feedback, appreciate it! One of those cases where you start with a lot of ideas but then the hours fly by and have to cut features. 48h jams, innit? Thanks again!
The gameplay was excellent. I agree with the others that it was too simple, but the concept is great and I'd love to see this expanded upon. This vaguely reminds me of a game by Lucas Pope (the developer of Papers Please) where you have to select news stories for a newspaper to influence public opinion about the current dictator or revolutionaries. The cool thing about that is that your actions have an impact on the game world, which I think would be an awesome idea to incorporate into your game if you were to keep working on it.
I didn't win, but I enjoyed reading stories! It felt like I'm scrolling a fantasy twitter :D
Good job!
Re. The sfx: yes, I hate them. Also just realised that I accidentally removed the code that sets the volumes at start. Folks, never leave SFX for two hours before deadline! Live and learn!
@ale thank you for your feedback! I love Lucas Pope’s games, yet did not think of that. Imma snatch that idea for the to-do list. I think it could work well to impact the world, but I’d see it as a late-game kinda thing, once you’ve built your number of followers maybe? Thanks again!
Kinda hoped for a bit more depth - soomething like crossreferencing, etc. As it is now, some post from DwarvenPress seem to be fine(they just citations of particular people with attributions - genueinly puzzling that games considers them fake) as well as some non-news emotional posts.
The idea of telling the story in background of actual gameplay is really cool, hoped that the story will unfold further.
Art style is really nice for compo.
@frozenfire92 thank you! I definitely was thinking of Reigns whilst making it. Team Nerial FTW!
@steambrain thank you for your feedback, appreciate it! I was originally thinking of making the cross-referencing more subtle, but due to the time limit and that I would not have time to thoroughly test for balance, preferred to cut some of those features and stick to a simple system. A lot to play with in that concept and I'm looking forward to expand it further!
@gilad-bar-ilan @gettingrekt thank you so much for playing, glad you enjoyed the experience!
@thesedatedprince thank you, I definitely will! I actually hesitated adding a soundtrack or not. I definitely see the final product as a mobile game a la Reigns, and if I am simulating Twitter, would the music take away from the sim aspect? But if you think it should be added, I'll definitely get more opinions on that topic to see what the final product's soundscape should look like!
Once again, thank you all for playing, really appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming! :thumbsup:
Although, gameplay could use a little more flavor. For example, I guess like/dislike buttons don't actually do anything, which is a shame.
And a little but very important bit of criticism: if you have some sort of abbreviations that are generally unknown, let along specific to your game's world, be sure to explain them to player. I've spent half my game guessing what CMD is.
This is not a fault on you as a game developer. It is programmatically sound, looks pretty good, and has had a lot of effort put into it. However, this is not something you should expand upon into a full release unless you want to rather permanently divide your audience and make yourself a political actor, rather than just a game developer or a storyteller.
I don't think there's much more to it, so I will finish with this. I compare our games because they have a good share in common, but a fundamental difference is the value and role of social media in each game. In mine, it is an oppressive, misleading, unhealthy piece of work that does essentially all harm and no good. This is the clear narrative of the game. In yours, while I find some unhealthy tendencies typical of social media, just as in my own, it is clear that in your game, social media does not receive any blame for this, rather the problem is groups of people who have opinions. I think this misses an opportunity to take a step back and look at just what we're doing and if we truly can justify the abstraction between the real world, especially as it has been in the past, and how social media makes us think and act.
It took me a little bit to figure out what was going on. After rereading the instructions did I realize sharing was the only thing that matters, not likes and dislikes. And from there moved on.
I liked that there was some tricky wording placed throughout. Sometimes I'd just glance at a paragraph that looked "official" and share it but lose some points. Only after I read it over again would I catch the hint of bias to it. Serves me right for skimming!
One of the more unique entries this LD. I like seeing new things so it was a breath of fresh air. Good job!
@oneiromancer thank you so much! Yeah, I had an idea for the Like/Dislike buttons, but ran out of time. 48h jam innit! Re. the abbreviations I was trying to replicate that experience I often have on twitter which is to see an abbreviation and have no idea what's going on. I think it'd help if there was a search bar to look for all the newts referencing that abbreviation. Added to the todo list, thanks again!
@wfmg thanks for your comment, I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts!
Regarding your comment on the "agree with me" simulator: it does seem odd to me you had this experience since, as @peachtreeoath pointed it out, the goal is to find the unbiased news reported rather than the opinionated ones. However I agree with previous comments that it's a bit shallow as it is (I would have liked to add more cross-referencing options), and if your playing experience resulted in that feeling, I'll make sure to tweak and test plenty during future development.
I think we have a fundamental disagreement regarding game design decisions and message we wanted to communicate with our games: that's alright though, we all have different favourite colours after all! I think I'll leave the social media criticism to your entry and stick to political satire, and we can both continue doing what we enjoy. :thumbsup: