Peter OS

co-authored: @joost, @mantsje
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.93
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.48
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.19
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.42
Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.96

Description


In Peter OS you'll get to play as Peter as he is spending some time on his phone. Peter has many interests among which the curation of meats, clicking of eggs and much more. He also has an active social social life so you'll get to meet many of his friends. Sadly, he has a slightly outdated phone (don't we all...). So along the years he has accumulated many applications and even some malware along the way. So much so that many of his apps crash regularly and that using his phone is a constant RAM usage optimization game.

As soon as Peter gets too many notifications his phone crashes and with all those apps he seems to be getting them about every ten seconds. Of course he has installed some widgets to manage his RAM and keep track of the time, but he still tends to be overwhelmed from time to time. Can you get to know all of Peter's friends? Can you unlock all of his phone's secrets? Can you even keep the phone going for long enough?

Goal and Theme of the game

The goal of the game is to explore Peter's social life whilst keeping his phone alive. Just about every ten seconds you'll get notifications of apps installed on his phone or from his friends chatting or making plans. We've taken some clear inspiration from games such as Emily is away, idle games and of course our smartphones nowadays.

Bonus for the avid readers :)


We decided to challenge ourselves with a more story-driven game this time, however as is tradition: making all mechanics and such took up most of the time. Therefore we feel that some of the stories are a little less fleshed out than we hoped, but nevertheless you'll find there is plenty to learn! Pro tip: If you play your cards right you can get recruited by the FBI! ;)

About us


We are a team of three friends from the Netherlands who love making games and programming. We wanted to make as much of the game on our own as we could. Just how much we did you can see below. We hope you all enjoy our little game, and maybe, just maybe, if you enjoy our game leave a like/comment. We also love to hear feedback! :)

About our game


* Built with Unity
* All textures are fully custom made!
* All sounds, tracks and other audio effects are taken from other sources. We do not own the rights to the songs we play and we do not intend to use any of this in any commercial form and ask our players to do the same. By playing and downloading our game you agree to these terms :)

Controls

You're phone is old and on the verge of crashing. Every 10 seconds you get a notification. Each notification might have side-effects if not handled well.

Don't get more than 10 notifications to keep your phone running! To get rid of them, click on them or their app and have some interactions where possible. Similar to your own phone the notifications should mostly disappear when you handle them logically :)

If you encounter any bugs feel free to let us know!

Thanks for playing!


Check out our Itch.io page as well

Installation and Tips


When running on macOS or Linux you may run into some trouble getting started. At least for the linux build you'll have to add executable rights to the main executable.
To do this on linux run the following command: `chmod +x ./Peter\ OS.x86_64`
To do this on MacOS run the following command: `chmod +x ./Peter\ OS\ MacOS.app/Contents/MacOS/Peter\ OS\ \(TM\)
` and then open the game with ctrl+click > open

Changelog & Bugfixes

- Calm down dad
- Patched some of Peter's OS. It looks like the game freezes less now
- Fixed a bug where multiple apps would open and you couldn't click anything anymore
- Fixed a bug where SMS would send many duplicates of the same message
- Fixed a bug where ignoring someone wasn't handled

Comments54

Gryph0n3 Oct 2022, 23:11
Short and sweet moody narrative game, love feeling overwhelmed with notifications! Sorry dad!
okshirl4 Oct 2022, 00:35
This game looks great from the screenshots, but I can't play it for some reason. I will come back and rate it later :)
Ale
Ale4 Oct 2022, 01:02
I got really frustrated after everything started freezing and nothing would respond to my clicks. 10/10 shitty phone simulation!

This was a cool concept, although I'm not sure what I was supposed to do to stop the notifications from killing me. The SMS app was easy (except for dad lol), but none of the other notifications would go away. I guess that's just part of the shitty phone life. :shrug:

Graphics were really good, and that boot animation was awesome.

...also I noticed that the game includes a spotify app with some full songs. I'm not a lawyer or anything, but that seems like maybe not a good idea.
mandy8584 Oct 2022, 01:08
Was kind of confused with the app always crash, but nice looking game. The snapchat and message application was nice!
LDJam user 2686474 Oct 2022, 01:19
In-game volume controls would have been awesome
Aside from that, loved it. Wish more of the apps work but it was so much fun just to goof around jumping between windows really quickly trying to stop the flow of notifications
LDJam user 306251
LDJam user 3062514 Oct 2022, 02:50
I would get this popup and click "Return To Home" but the pop would remain onscreen and render all other elements unclickable. Is this supposed to happen?
Mantsje
Mantsje4 Oct 2022, 07:33
Hi all thanks for the responses and your feedback., we greatly appreciate it!
@okshirl For some reason the WebGL port is giving us some troubles. We should have functional versions for Mac, Windows, and Linux available (For Linux (and possibly macOS) don't forget to add executable rights to the main executable. On linux this means `chmod +x ./Peter\ OS.x86_64`). So maybe give one of those a try instead?
@ale and @killerI isn't it beautiful when you have to ask yourself: "Is this a bug? or a feature?" Let's just say that we'll be patching some things in Peter OS along the way as we are dedicated to allow Peter to get more life out of his phone than is currently possible. The first patches have already been applied so maybe you could try them again for a better experience :)

@ale about the songs: yeah we know, but as stated in the description: we do not own the rights, have no commercial purpose and by playing/downloading you agree to not do that as well. On top of that we've cranked down the sampling rate in such a way that the quality is awful enough to not entice any sort of infringement :)
ActuallyTheMoon
ActuallyTheMoon4 Oct 2022, 07:55
The intro text shows up sooooo slowly xD Aside from that extremely cool concept and excellent graphics!
Mantsje
Mantsje4 Oct 2022, 07:58
@actuallythemoon hahaha, Slow and old phones take a while to boot you know ;)
But yes it very much does, you should see it run in the editor in Unity xD
It does however gives you ample time to read the little prologue which accounts for something I guess.
Biggu4 Oct 2022, 08:31
Nice game ! More apps would be great !
Mantsje
Mantsje4 Oct 2022, 08:48
@biggu I agree but deadlines are cruel and the crunch was real :stuck_out_tongue:
Did you see all the functional ones?
Music Player, Netflix, Noodle Egg, Noodle Meat, Email, SMS, Snapcat (for now)?
LDJam user 268934
LDJam user 2689344 Oct 2022, 09:02
So original This is a jam pearle imo.
Somtimes you do somthing compleetly new This is one of the games i would like to play a full version of .
LDJam user 168286
LDJam user 1682864 Oct 2022, 09:06
Really nice game ! I really like the graphics, and the concept in itself is really nice !
Really loved the message mini game ! The message were really fun :)
A pity that the game had some issues after a while... I couldn't click anything anymore all of a sudden... But at least, it really had to the feel of having an old phone !
Good job~
ThatzNiko
ThatzNiko4 Oct 2022, 09:49
Man this game is really original!!
Vhalenn
Vhalenn4 Oct 2022, 10:26
The game looks so good ! Great game even if notifications are really intensive !
Arfilish
Arfilish4 Oct 2022, 10:38
As fan of Simulacra i pretty much liked this game, though it feels buggy at many moments. Visuals are good, audio is good but could be better.
Kilian BAPTENDIER
Kilian BAPTENDIER4 Oct 2022, 11:34
Nice entry, I have nothing else to say. I felt overwhelmed but curious, you did well!
SageWare
SageWare4 Oct 2022, 11:36
The graphics are fantastic, and the idea itself is wonderful. The messages were very entertaining. I love old technology like the phone you designed.
Talenvin4 Oct 2022, 11:58
Really cool game, I love the ambiance and how it can be scary.
You're always overwhelmed, the concept work really well !
NiceKot
NiceKot4 Oct 2022, 12:06
That's an unexpected concept! The most fun was interactions with the people, but I got constant RAM error message. If only I could actually close or delete some of the apps... especially netflix. It was the only app that did open and kept spamming me :D but I guess that's the point :)
Black Potion
Black Potion4 Oct 2022, 14:25
Hahahah it's so frustrating, good job :D I love the concept and the art
MsPlanlos4 Oct 2022, 18:05
Simple but awesome graphics! Love it, very original!
Erlioniel
Erlioniel4 Oct 2022, 19:52
I was laughing as hell while was checking the mobile phone. It was way funnier than in real life! :smile: :smile: :smile:
LDJam user 11377
LDJam user 113774 Oct 2022, 20:30
Cute game that builds anxiety as you play (in a good way). I must click egg and respond to all messages. My phone glitched however and I started receiving duplicates of every message then things spiraled out of control hahaha. Great artwork and spotify implementation!
Dodidouda
Dodidouda4 Oct 2022, 20:39
Lovely entry! Absolutely dig the graphics and the humor. I laughed at Barry's selfie.
After a while it becomes impossible to click on some notifications, and I wasn't sure these were bugs or were on purpose, to show that the phone is dying lol. That part was a little frustrating but I guess this is the point of this game haha! Overall great entry, good job!
Gn0cchi4 Oct 2022, 21:25
I'm usually skeptical of "meta phone games" but this one really carried itself on its charm and on the unique twist to the premise! Great job with the pixel art especially.
Brandsma
Brandsmaauthor4 Oct 2022, 21:38
@jeanne-rossat @dodidouda @nicekot Yeah, there are definitely some bugs that we would love to fix still. The ones you mentioned had our main concern. But such is the life of a game jammer.
dhim
dhim5 Oct 2022, 08:19
I can confirm that with your tips the app now works on mac Os !
That probably means that I can run the same tip on previous entry not working on my system!

But at some point the apps don't recognize clicks :(
Lorwon
Lorwon5 Oct 2022, 08:30
I really liked the concept !
The pixel art you made by yourself is awesome.
The game is very well made good job :)
Krebzor
Krebzor5 Oct 2022, 08:38
hahahha I hate it!! good job, that weird german song in the background was killing me xD and I also had the pop up that just stayed there, and I was constantly asking myself is this a thing?? Also loved the egg game xD! Going to uninstall some apps now xD frozen.JPG
pragmascript
pragmascript5 Oct 2022, 11:25
The phone boot animation killed me
LDJam user 278146
LDJam user 2781465 Oct 2022, 13:13
Love the artstyle and the names of some of the apps :)

Ran into some bugs - people would spam me with a lot of messages, sending each message twice and at some point clicking on anything stopped working so I had to quit.
MaxKyckling
MaxKyckling5 Oct 2022, 14:16
Holy shit this is amazing!
This was genuinely so much fun to play. It was relatively easy to understand, polished, funny and just overall a really, really cool game. You guys really NAILED this. I only rated 4.5 because I'd typically get stuck on the "this app has crashed... return to screen" whenever I played (sad little bug).
Arktas
Arktas5 Oct 2022, 20:35
Dad going crazy for me spamming my message box and crashing my phone, otherwise it's fun to discover what we can do on the phone, like the spotify working well :) Nice entry keep coding !
Savolae
Savolae5 Oct 2022, 20:53
Very good, nice artstyle and an original idea on the theme. Unfortunately I also ran into some bugs but it was very fun when it worked!
YellowKamel
YellowKamel5 Oct 2022, 21:15
Cool entry, nice fit for the theme! Having said that, I felt it a bit strange that I could be trapped in a state where I could not do anything about the notifications and had to wait for the Game Over State. Maybe make that a bit quicker, if you decide to improve this later! :smile:
Also "Über den Wolken" is a nice inclusion even though I'll probably lose my twitch channel over it now.
Mantsje
Mantsje5 Oct 2022, 22:35
@gryph0n @okshirl @ale @mandy858 @thomas-yanuziello @cosmonautical @killerb @actuallythemoon @biggu @senso @jeanne-rossat @thatzniko @logovostudio @vhalenn @arfilish @kilian-baptendier @sageware @talenvin @nicekot @black-potion @msplanlos @erlioniel @beefsock @dodidouda @gn0cchi @dhim @lorwon @krebzor @pragmascript @chybby @maxkyckling @arktas @savolae @yellowkamel

For all of you that are still wondering. We heard you about the bugs! As per Ludum Dare rulings we have been bugfixing a few major ones as to not limit the experience without altering the gameplay. Not all bugs have been patched from Peter OS, but at least the most obvious freeze one should be fixed.

If this was a big problem for you, maybe have another look! :smile:

Cheers
jvolonte
jvolonte6 Oct 2022, 00:51
Cool game! So many references, I kept searching for more ^^

Great entry, I enjoyed it!
Rorroh
Rorroh6 Oct 2022, 09:29
I'm incredibly stressed out but at least I have a job with the FBI now. 10/10
Brandsma
Brandsmaauthor6 Oct 2022, 10:54
@rorroh Nice going haha. That's quite the feat you accomplished.
Mikushi
Mikushi6 Oct 2022, 10:58
Great style, love the attention to details and the many different apps. Also reminded me why I silence most apps, that stuff is stressful!

Was a few bugs with SMS, not sure if it was "in-game" or the actual bug, received some of them twice.
Brandsma
Brandsmaauthor6 Oct 2022, 11:00
@mikushi That was indeed a bug (or perhaps a feature?). Either way, fixed it and just uploaded a patched version.
sterco_raro
sterco_raro6 Oct 2022, 13:03
Really well made, I love the graphics and the gameplay (although it IS stressful :grin:)

Sometimes the game will stop getting input from the phone screen but maybe it's a feature to prevent you from taking bad choices :D
Wouter52
Wouter526 Oct 2022, 13:33
Haha love this game! It is put really well together and the little eastereggs are so funny!
Those people in the messages are very much how it goes in real life sometimes haha
Austin Sierra
Austin Sierra6 Oct 2022, 18:04
RIP my cat fun game phone simulator good idea for a game. I think some messages in the phone sent automatically though like the one to my dad
CooLguNxDD6 Oct 2022, 18:49
phone man! but, my phone is so bad it time to upgrade to 100+ gb ram! nice work!
LDJam user 2987347 Oct 2022, 07:58
phone simulator game such as replica is one of my favorite!nice to see such amazing work in such a short time gamejam!(rate back?)
Doot
Doot8 Oct 2022, 12:04
That's a cool prototype!

The idea is very fun, the graphics look great, and the sound design works well.
Gameplay wise, it would be really fun if each notification would make you do something specific. I guess it's what was intended, looking forward to see a post jam version then!

Also game is quite full of bugs, but it goes well with the "crappy telephone" setting haha.

Nice job!
LDJam user 2429719 Oct 2022, 13:15
Funny game! Your right wasted way to much time playing over and over. I loved the art style. Great job, this looked like a lot of fun to make.
Ehon
Ehon13 Oct 2022, 22:41
Really unique take on the theme, I really like computer/phone.tech simulations and I liked this one as well. Solid entry!
FoggyDude
FoggyDude15 Oct 2022, 08:31
This was really fun! At some point in my first play the game kind of broke so I couldn't press any of the apps or open the messages, and also some fellas kept spamming me and I couldn't send them a message so they'd stop. Oh and also:

Other games by @brandsma

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