The New Kid

huvaakoodia 2017-04-28 13:34

Yes, social networks! An idea worth development.

Trying to diversify my subject affinity was the last thing on my mind. I made 8 art student friends easily with near 100% chance every time after the first few. The only issue was simply running out of art lovers, so I had to lower my standards for a few scientists.

The mechanic is overly simple and taken that there is no personality to anyone or any dialog between people, befriending them turns to be a very drab process indeed. You should have allocated time to making/finding some audio-visuals to fit the theme.

Once I reached about 12 friends (in the WebGL version) increasingly terrible lag started cropping up. I'd be interested in knowing what exactly is going on in the graphics drawing routine. It is just a dozen balls and lines on the screen after all.

It functions and the idea is fine. Have a :school:

saurabh 2017-04-28 13:40

@huvaakoodia Thanks for the feedback! We changed mechanics of the game away from dialogue to a more strategy based game half way through as we didn't think we'd be able to make it in time, so this was more of a last ditch effort. As for the lag, it's do with lots of for loops and line renderers in the update rather than start method and something i really need to get around to fixing soon!

jk5000 2017-04-28 14:45

The idea for this game is super simple, and really easy to understand. What is even more important, the game is pretty fun to play. Perhaps a bit short, but that is okay.

red-fan-games 2017-04-30 02:38

A novel concept, I have not seen much like this before. Fun to play in a special way.

cameron-seebach 2017-04-30 19:57

Yay! Another game involving basic graph theory! The CS major in me would love to see a larger, denser network with force-directed layout (maybe it's force directed already? Couldn't tell), and maybe some measure of "centrality" or "importance" that has meaning in-game.

But this is a good effort given the time constraints. Would enjoy seeing it developed further.

cameron-seebach 2017-04-30 20:00

Also a bit of a bug - Safari + Unity doesn't support fullscreen, which makes reading the instructions and the opening text very hard. Consider opening a bigger window on Itch and properly scaling to support it. Works fine on Chrome, as you know.

scriptorum 2017-05-01 07:38

I like the premise. It's too bad you ran out of time and couldn't develop the idea further. The choices are a bit slight, especially with you showing the user the success percentage. Still, there's something entertaining about watching our network expand... :handshake:

jk5000 2017-05-01 08:45

I have now also rated your game.

geeitsomelaldy 2017-05-01 10:39

With better graphics and a UI overhaul this could be quite a fun game.

zarkonnen 2017-05-01 11:10

This is definitely an interesting premise. There's various games about making friends and socializing of course - the Kudos series or any number of VNs spring to mind - but I like this abstract puzzle approach.

shamps 2017-05-01 11:12

Great idea for a game! Have you read Dataclysm by Christian Rudder? The layout of your game reminds me of a cool diagram from that book :) The setup (making friends at first few weeks of school) fits the game very well, and I like the simple clean UI. The 'friends' could be given more personality, but I understand this would take time. I like the gameplay, but it felt like I was simply gambling at times - I simply clicked on the dot with the highest percentage most of the time, as this felt like the most logical way forward. If there was more strategy to the game, I would find it a lot more engaging. I also noticed a bug where there were two separate social groups in one level (though this may be intentional, I'm not sure - see image)Social game.png

saurabh 2017-05-01 11:35

@shamps That was a bug that just cropped up when we tried to fix the lag. Should be fixed now! Unfortunately we didn't really get time to polish the gameplay to make it more strategic or add personality to the characters (although that was one of the starting goals). Definitely something we would like to develop more.

zelos 2017-05-01 11:52

I like the idea, but I feel like you don't really look at your stats and the stats of the friends too much rather than just click around if the chance to befriend them is >50%, which makes it a bit too simplistic.

The song is pretty cool and the graphics serve their purpose well. Nice work.

shiitman 2017-05-01 12:20

I like this minimalistic game. It could be balanced a little bit better (e.g. you could get penalties if you try to befriend the same person more than once), but it good anyway. Very nice music theme! Looking forward for post-jam version.

ysty 2017-05-01 12:54

I like the strategy of having to diversify your interests, it's a simple mechanic that works very well. I'd love to see where this game would go if developed further, it's a really cool idea.

realitycheck 2017-05-01 18:09

18 friends! Hey, that more than I have in real life :laughing:

Nice little game. I kinda wish there was more info to base your decision making on, rather than just a percentage chance of the circle becoming your friend, but I still enjoyed clicking away and making little round buddies.

Good work.

puppetmaster 2017-05-11 16:55

Only 16 Friends :flushed: I'm so alone! Very cool and unique visual presentation for a game. I like also the music. It give a nice mood! Well done, keep up the great work.

nekusoul 2017-05-12 12:27

Nice concept. You really want to play just one more go and try to reach a new highscore, although the random elements can really mess your run up quite a bit.

apostate-games 2017-05-14 09:03

Very interesting concept! Enjoyed playing it!

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