FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD25 → Decommissioner

Decommissioner

By crowbeak

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness294
Mood343.77
Theme1013.81
Overall1153.50
Humor1193.31
Innovation1763.28
Fun2972.98
Audio5821.35
Graphics6872.00

Comments

ripter 2012-12-17 04:49

There is no start.py

rose 2012-12-17 04:52

Amazing! I love it! I can't say much more without spoiling it for other players... let's just say you did a great job of making the player into a villain.

FYI I'm running MacOSX and I didn't see any "start.py" - I had to double-click a file called "decommissioner" to play.

leothecool 2012-12-17 05:09

Totally worth playing till the end!

crowbeak 2012-12-17 05:10

Ah, sorry... I changed the name at the last minute. It is decommissioner.py to start.

somfunambulist 2012-12-17 05:12

Really cool game. I love the humorous dialogue. The format is really refreshing, I used to love playing games like this. Very cool story!

crowbeak 2012-12-17 05:12

@Rose: Thank you. :D I've been trying hard not to spoil it myself.

quarry 2012-12-17 05:24

Lovely text adventure, really felt like ADVENT

suve 2012-12-17 05:36

Quite nice. A shame it's so short (or hell, maybe I did something wrong?), but overall, leaves a good impression. The theme doesn't become apparent until the very ending, but it strikes hard and gives this dystopian feel that I so much enjoy.

teh_eria 2012-12-17 05:40

Play til the end! The vibe the cmd console gives goes really well with where the character works. Well done!

metadept 2012-12-17 05:41

Nice story, nice twist, well-written all around. I also spent quite a bit of time managing robots; you could make a whole game out of that!

falkreon 2012-12-17 05:46

YES PLEASE.

crowbeak 2012-12-17 05:47

:D Thanks for the positive comments, guys. It warms my <3!

@metadept: I knoooooow, programming the robot sim was fun. I want to improve it -- right now the constants and formulas can lead to some wonky results. xD

apophenia 2012-12-17 05:56

Oh man... I've tried to play this four times, but it keeps crashing during various different points of the robot simulation. I'm not sure what's wrong... I'll have to bookmark it and try again later. :(

hints 2012-12-17 06:05

Honestly, I started this up thinking, "Oh great, another text adventure...", but by the end I was thoroughly enjoying it.

crowbeak 2012-12-17 06:08

@apophenia Can you tell me how it's crashing and which version you are using? I didn't get to test the Windows exe at all, and my brother told me that he had a problem with the update function after making a typo.

@hints :D Yeah, I didn't want it to be just a text adventure.

apophenia 2012-12-17 06:16

@Crowbeak I might make a video of myself playing it tomorrow if that would help. It seems to crash consistently during the simulations whenever I make a typo, or the next command after I make a typo(?).

crowbeak 2012-12-17 06:26

@apophenia Hmm. Alrighty. Thanks for the feedback.

crowbeak 2012-12-17 06:27

And if you did the video thing I would love you forever. <3

arch-jslin 2012-12-17 07:11

What a twisted in the end! I still rated Graphics though, I think the text content can be counted as graphic. :p

aeveis 2012-12-17 07:14

Very well put together! I enjoyed the story.

simianlogic 2012-12-17 07:19

Really well written, but I wish there was a little more control over what happens.

crowbeak 2012-12-17 07:34

@arch.jslin Haha, I did spend a decent amount of time on formating the simulation tables. xD

@SimianLogic Yeah, me, too. :( I was running out of time. Had two big branches planned but had to merge them into one ending.

tomk32 2012-12-17 08:15

"Time passes. Universes are born and die."
"But your ferret still loves you!"

This game contains some classy lines. Thanks :)

xymostech 2012-12-17 08:18

This game was amazing. Gave up the first time when I thought it was going to turn into a robot simulator, and was pleasantly surprised the second time, when I actually made it through.

khaotom 2012-12-17 08:26

I knew there was a twist coming! Didn't expect it to play out like it did. Nice work.

svenardo 2012-12-17 09:58

Haha, funny. Like these games better with a text parser, but hey, the story is what counts, and this was amusing.

vrav 2012-12-17 10:30

Nailed it.

crowbeak 2012-12-17 10:45

I don't even know what a text parser is, unfortunately. xD I will look into that.

jomomomo 2012-12-17 16:14

Worth playing to the end, really memorable story for a 48 hour game!

spolvid 2012-12-17 23:31

Duuuuuuuuuuuude. What an ending.

tobiasw 2012-12-18 00:30

Wow, this escalated quickly. Knowing there'll be a twist made it a bit less surprising and I kinda suspected what the reality is like when I heard what I'm doing for a job, but your writing delivered it superbly so I could still enjoy it! (If "enjoying" is the right word. So cruel.)

(Bonus points for the wordplays and little jokes sprinkled throughout the game.)

h-attila 2012-12-18 01:16

Well written text adventure. I can't really write much about it without spoiling it, other than it's definitely worth checking out and playing till the end.

31eee384 2012-12-18 01:37

Fantastic. Realized what the twist was early on, but you delivered it so well that whether or not I predicted it was irrelevant. Great game.

I did tick you down a bit on "Fun", though--the robot simulation commands felt a little clunky, and made those parts seem a little tedious. There was a relatively long delay between times when I could type in commands--not sure if that's the fault of the windows python packager you used, or intentional. That combined with the "deadly typos" you warn about contributed to that feeling.

Everyone, play this game to its conclusion!

crowbeak 2012-12-18 01:47

Some people seem to predict the twist, others don't. I definitely understand dings on the fun stat. Glad you guys like the writing -- I feel like the ending could use some work. xD I finished writing it in the wee hours of the morning, though I had it planned early on. Thanks for playing! <3

hume 2012-12-18 04:47

Not a rating comment (I'm going to retry) but I had a "deadly typo" issue on OSX too -- mistyped a command and appeared to get a new simulation with the same number, then a few commands later it crashed.

hume 2012-12-18 05:23

Does it make me evil if I played it a second time to see if I could avoid...that thing that happens?

WE MUST HAVE MORE PRODUCTION

crowbeak 2012-12-18 11:51

OH NO! D: Thank you for the heads up.

I meant to make multiple endings, but ran out of time. Future improved versions will have multiple endings.

tompudding 2012-12-18 11:55

Wow, really really cool. Some very funny lines, and very dark!

zenmumbler 2012-12-18 23:21

I rarely play text adventures but this is a great, short and rather horrific one perfect to try out. As to the ending, I guess he could still take a stick and write stuff in the sand...

crowbeak 2012-12-19 04:34

He could... except no one could read it.

crowbeak 2012-12-19 05:16

I think I found the bug, guys. So far, however, only the Mac version has been recompiled because I am nowhere near my windows PC and won't be for another couple of hours.

starspell 2012-12-19 15:48

The story was quite interesting. However I'm not sure that the player counts as a villain in my eyes, the people that you meet in the second part of the story are much more the villains.

And I'm not sure that they would really put you to work - rather they might as well just kill you.

Interesting concept, well executed.

crowbeak 2012-12-20 12:00

Starspell: I can see that. Definitely a point worth arguing. But if the game makes you think about such things, I still consider the game successful. :D

You're also right that they might just kill you. I was finishing the story at like 1 AM and was thinking more about driving the point home. xD One of my plans for continuing development is to smooth out and add to the story, including multiple endings.

Thanks for your input!

william_edwards 2012-12-21 09:56

Excellent! A true 'game' game!

shieldofvalour 2012-12-22 01:23

Not a valid win32 application

crowbeak 2012-12-22 17:50

Hmmm... I compiled it in Windows 7. Wonder if that makes a difference.

grungi-ankhfire 2012-12-22 20:14

This was awesome. Cannot say much without spoiling, but it was a really great game. Congratulations!

crowbeak 2012-12-23 03:13

Thank you! :D

spelchan 2012-12-27 21:23

Fun but I correctly predicted the ending when I started my first simulation. Sadly I fear that the reading nature of this game will prevent it from getting played by a lot of people. I would suggest that you could have one or two character shortcuts for the commands. Also, instead of having to type the decommissioned numbers, I would print out the list of unassigned robots and have the player verify that they are to be decommissioned.

crowbeak 2012-12-31 20:56

Yeah, I know the reading will keep a lot of people out, but with my limited skillz, my options were limited. xD Thanks for the suggestions.

gamerespect 2013-01-01 05:07

Really nice text adventure. Great use of the theme, and insanely funny. Kind of guessed the ending thanks to all the comments saying what a great ending it was, but it was awesome all the same. Nice job!

cardboard 2013-01-07 06:06

Very intense and engaging. And great storytelling. Your game was a joy to play.