The Discloser -- Post-Mortem

Time to go over a few things about my compo entry, "The Discloser"!

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The Good

• Dialogue -- While there's room for improvement (they are rather generic), I am relieved that I managed to type up as many dialogue variations as I did before time ran out. I feel like this added a lot to make the "world" feel more alive, since I couldn't convey much through the graphics alone.
• The conspiracy board -- Although simple, I'm quite pleased with how the whole note and string system worked out, and I'm glad I got it to work so smoothly. Allowing players to move notes around to arrange the conspiracy tree however they feel was an ultimately unnecessary touch, but one that makes the players feel more involved in the game's decisions.
• Music -- Though there was probably room for one or two more instrument layers, I was still pleased with the end result. Dynamic music always helps the mood!
• Randomized conspiracy tree -- I was proud of the fact that the tree randomizes each time. Ultimately it has no real impact on gameplay, but it FEELS like it does. Maybe later on if I expand the game and give groups unique traits, that could change...

The Bad

• No save -- The game really should have had a save system so that you could quit and come back to the investigation later, especially given how long it can take to play a game.
• Dead ends -- I should really have made it easier for dead ends to be thrown out, as they really begin to clutter up the board, especially in the late stages where very few of the newly-uncovered groups are actually involved.
• Readability -- The icons are not always helpful at first for a new player to know what's going on. For example, I really should have used a separate icon for each time of day, instead of the confusing-at-first letters. Also, putting the data count in a document page instead of a hex would have made it a lot clearer to know what the number even represented.
• Tree direction -- Speaking of readability, the group links really needed some kind of indicator showing which way is deeper on the tree (i.e., which group is the master and which is the puppet). I think a simple arrow attached to the string probably would have sufficed, and I even thought of that during development, but I forgot about it in the midst of everything else that needed to get done.
• Difficulty -- The game gets crazy difficult, especially near the end, mostly due to the low success rate when investigating groups deep in the tree. While I made all failures increase the odds of later success, it sometimes felt like it wasn't enough. I've seen people so close to winning, but just couldn't prove the last link because of research taking so long and leading to a failure, and having to start again.
• Repetition -- Although there's a fair amount of dialogue variation, eventually it gets old, and it's common to just click through it. It could have used a lot more variation, but I just didn't have the time.
• Awareness -- A big feature I had cut out of the game early during development was a group becoming increasingly aware of your investigation activities, and eventually at some point it starts manifesting as a failure chance on your activities. This was going to encourage you to investigate other groups more and let their awareness die out. But I couldn't think of a good way to communicate it to the player, and I had bigger fish to fry, so I cut it out. Still would have liked it though.

Ideas For Improvement

• Awareness -- Per the above. I'd still like to put it into a full version of the game, especially if there were group-specific consequences to awareness getting too high (such as the Police Department attempting to arrest you, or the Hackers deleting undeciphered data you've acquired).
• Group-specific dialogue -- If I had a lot more time, I'd have happily added dialogue variations that were specific to each group, in order to keep the player reading. Maybe generic ones would still play from time to time, but if each group had unique dialogue and interactions, players would definitely want to stop and read it more.
• Ally groups -- I had the idea that if a group is proven not to be linked to the conspiracy, you might be able to ally with it, which would confer special bonuses onto you. For example, the Police Department may provide data obtained from criminal groups, or the Hackers may allow you to decipher data faster, etc.
• Enemy groups -- Similarly, a master may confer traits to their puppet, and vice versa. For example, gangs may make nighttime investigation harder, or the Sanitation Department might decrease the amount of data you find during an investigation, or the Hackers reduce the chance of data being useful. Proving the link between the groups would also sever this passing of their traits.
• Different types of data -- Originally I had thought that data could take many forms: simple documents, encoded documents, encrypted documents, etc. Each would have their own method of deciphering, ranging from finding a codebreaker, to hacking the encryption, to just spending extra time sifting through a mountain of documents. Each may have some way to get it done faster.
• Player backstory -- The game should choose one out of some random backstory options for the player to show how they became aware of the conspiracy and why they want to disclose it to the public, probably tying into whatever the conspiracy's plan is (i.e., the plan should not be just a vague threat like in the compo entry).
• Multiplayer? -- The idea of multiple people investigating together has an interesting ring to it. Players would each select which activity they're doing, and after everyone has selected it, they are all performed simultaneously, with the results being delivered at the end. Multiple people could also collaborate on an action in order to improve the odds of success. The difficulty of the game would have to be increased to compensate obviously.
• Much larger additions -- If I had a team and/or a budget behind it, I would gladly make the game far more complex with more actions to do. This would include things like being able to purchase items to make investigations easier, actual dialogue options with contacts, some kind of stealth minigame for investigation, failure consequences, etc.