Hello! We just completed the global game 2018 and we decided to learn PICO-8 for that! We started from scratch apart from looking at a few tutorials, so everything is a bit messy, but here we are!
The theme of the GGJ 2018 was 'transmission' and we decided to make a game of communication in space.
The feedback is still rough (hard to grasp what is happening at some times), but we are quite happy with what we did 2 days without knowing anything! PICO-8 sure is fun to use and, strangely, we had a lot less problems fixing issues in this game than with other jams, as due to the fact that everything was in our control we soon learnt where the errors were.
Let me know what you think!
Here are the game instructions:
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HELLO WO#?! is a game of communication in space
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Commands
- X to confirm a selection
- Z to view diplomacy status
- Arrows to move the selection cursor
- You are the planet 2242 Sagot.
- Your goal is to communicate with other planets in order to form alliances and avoid being destroyed.
- You cannot actually win in the game (as of now), but you can try reaching the highest number of allies possible
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Your planet has a small home icon.
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At each turn, you are given a recipient to message.
- You can either choose a good message or an insult.
- Press X to select the message
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After you choose the recipient, the message appears above your planet and the needed translation to communicate with the inhabitants of the other planets appears on it
- You have 60 seconds to form a transmission route between you and the target planet.
- Use arrow keys to navigate towards the target planet
- All planets in-between will affect the message due to interferences, you need to find a route that helps deliver the correct message.
- Press X to send the message to the target planet when you have it selected.
- If you are out of time, the message will not be delivered and it will count as an error
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After the message raaches the target planet, you will get an effect based on your intent and whether the message was correct
- if the message was correct and you were friendly, the target and all other planets in its faction will raise their friendliness
- if the message was correct and you wanted to insult, the target and all other planets will lower its diplomacy status. However, all other planets will rise it a bit.
- if the message was an error or it timed out, all planets (and the target in particular) will be angry
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After that, a new turn will start
- all planets will have their interferences re-rolled
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When the diplomacy value of a planet reaches a given threshold, it may become an ally or an enemy
- if the diplomacy is too low, the planet will become an enemy and won't show anymore what
- if the diplomacy is high enough, the planet will become an ally and it will not interfere anymore with your messages!
- if you have 4 enemies, you lose the game!
- Final notes:
- During the game, you can keep Z pressed to view the diplomacy status and faction of all planets
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