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FREEDUMB!
FREEDUMB!
By brothers-arcade
View on ldjam.com
Comments
cambryx
2017-05-01 08:44
Really interesting concept. I haven't played anything similar to this before. The graphics were extremely good! Mood and humor were also excellent. In the beginning I didn't really know what to do and I have to admit, that I personally don't think this game is a lot of fun. But in the other rating categories it is great. Good job!
If you want to try out our game, feel free to leave some feedback :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/42-mikronikus
zeriver
2017-05-01 12:47
Innovative idea and well executed. Graphics are well done and match satire kind of game. Gameplay is pretty fun (maybe a little repetitive after a while), it's hard to keep track of all twits but that's the challenge.
Thanks Zeriver! you can actually scroll up and down the twitter feed if that helps.
anim-ace
2017-05-01 19:42
pretty interesting. however it feels a bit one-note regarding length, but i guess thats fine for a game jam game.
As an aside, i shot a nuke at myself and it kept going into the ground and never blew up. I guess america is invulnerable to nukes.
Thanks Anim_Ace, that is a known "feature". We will deploy a new build to fix that. Thanks for the feedback.
This is a really well executed piece of satire. It doesn't really have compelling gameplay and to be honest I had no idea how to spot the right countries at the beginning. But nevertheless, the idea is fresh and interesting. Also, I had the same issue as above when I nuked myself. :D
Nice game, the humor is well executed I first though the @merica and #usa meant I had to nuke myself, causing the "america can't be nuked' issue ;) The clues were quite subtle sometimes, and I appreciated the Bonnie Tyler reference x) Well done !
ithildin
2017-05-03 17:43
Great take on the theme!
Gameplay is a bit simple, all the challenged reduced to reading for a while until you've gathered enough clues and just hit the red button (in one playthrough I mixed Montreal's Notre-Dame with the cathedral in Paris, which resulted in freedom delivered to the wrong city :expressionless:), but I think it works well here.
Art and sound were really polished, and added to the satire. I loved the missile lauch animation in particular, it felt quite smooth.
Great job! :smiley:
As @tombuston, i nuke USA first :D Then I get it! Nice caricature and graphics.
lol I don't read twitter, just bomb randomly =)
Good job @brothers-arcade!
You read so many useless tweets until that one clue shows up and you know exactly how is in need for some freedom. I just love the critical/satire take on the theme. The pixel art is very lovely and great done. Sadly you can't nuke yourself :( The music is well chosen and fits perfectly.
Thank you for making me laugh :grin:
Nicely done!
Ahahahah liked how you implemented the theme! At first I did not understand what city to send some democracy, then I understood everything, congratulations! Really enjoyed the graphics!:thumbsup:
harusame
2017-05-03 19:00
hahaha ! Good job it's fun xD
A great satire ^^ I like graphics, sounds and animations ^^ Do a twitter-like is a really good idea :)
On my top-5 JAM entry for this LD ^^
dragojt
2017-05-03 19:09
Weird but humoristic game, so 5/5 in humor! The idea is nice about this meme xD
The game had an interesting idea. I liked the idea of the twitter feed that could give you clues as to which city you should attack. However, I did feel like some of these clues did not really show me which country was to be attacked. When it said "Tutankhamen would have been a better leader" and "our economy is failing" I thought it was Egypt but it wasn't on the map.
All in all the game was good but if anything a little difficult.
pix3m
2017-05-03 19:20
I enjoyed the satire, what better than to mock our president by making a game out of how he thinks? Acting on questionable sources of information, and lacking in nuance with an overly simple world view.
I got the "America can't be nuked" bug though
khorm
2017-05-03 19:23
Accidentally bombed lagos and apologized, read some tweets and liberated china, then jammed out to a metal version of Star-Spangled Banner, I dont know what more to say.
burgee
2017-05-03 19:34
Highest humor rating I've given. I don't know why 'freedumb' took me so long to recognize for what it was, but it's pretty witty.
I totally bombed paris, because AMERICUH.
I must have done the right thing because I got an instant you-win screen and jammed out a bit.
Satire is a dangerous game to play in a game jam but you pulled it off well, just expect a divided audience =)
well made and terrifying(but if you are terrified is just proof that you haven't lost your mind...maybe ).
Very interesting game, with an interesting mechanic. Though I did find it a bit hard to tell which city I needed to liberate based on the twit feed. The game also seems a bit short even when you hit the correct city. Overall well done.
lololol Hilarious and frightening concept. Art and music is great. Good job :) if you get a chance check our our game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole
spaceman
2017-05-05 17:35
This was hilarious. I loved it!
psilon
2017-05-05 17:56
Great humor! And the graphics is match the theme. Great work!
Well executed, the presentation was very solid. Even though you had pixel art, the globe still matched the motif (nice touch with the pixel shadow).
As for the gameplay itself, pretty unique concept, who woulda thought fake news would be so hard to sort out!?
toulou
2017-05-05 18:05
Oh my god I love this game ! This is exactly the kind of minimalistic yet creative idea of gameplay I like. Funny, inventive and terribly topical. I just had a bug in my first playthrough, I tried to bomb the USA, but the missile never exploded and I got stuck. But that's it :p
zaibakk
2017-05-05 20:36
Cool entry for this jam! I loved the humor! Nice job! :)
listonos
2017-05-06 19:19
Great satire and well furnished game. Definitely original. Not much content though, play for like 30 seconds and you have seen it all.
Thank you to each and everyone one of you for giving us the feedback you have. It's nice to know the humour we wanted to project was well received.
mrkenz0
2017-05-07 08:08
Hilarious! 5 stars for humor! I enjoyed randomly bombing any city. Funny, but also sad! Haha
That was a cool little game, I loved the retro graphics of trump and all the sound effects, it all looked pretty polished. I was pretty confused about who I was supposed to bomb though, I tried following the twitter feed but it really wasn't clear to me at all which countries each of the tweets were coming from.
Oh yeah and there seemed to be a bug when you bomb america, the missile rises and falls but there is no endscreen, it just gets stuck.
There is a fresh build waiting for quality assurance that will address "bombing the USA bug". As soon as that is uploaded to itch, we will comment here.
Why do you all want to bomb the USA?
jod
2017-05-07 15:46
Lovely sound effects! Very well done indeed. Very simple, clean feedback loop, very good for a ludum dare game. Would be good to have a fail state, though. Or maybe there was one and I just didn't notice ^^;.
wujood
2017-05-07 20:24
Awesome idea! Nice work!
kodiqi
2017-05-08 07:12
This is a well constructed game, very nice graphics (love the Twitter feed), with a clear mechanic and inputs. It's like a take on Carmen San Diego games, only you bomb the cities instead once you've figured out which city is being talked about. There's not a lot of replay value, you could add some by allowing the player to continue bombing other cities after the first one in an attempt to create the longest streak (with new tweets to identify the next target). Still, for a game in 72 hours it has a lot of polish. The "purely coincidental" is a bit of a cop-out though :P
Thanks for the feedback Kodi, your not wrong about the Carmen San Diego reference, was one of the touch points we talked about. Thanks for your feedback.
invader
2017-05-08 10:46
LOL. Cross of 1989 DOS Nuclear War, Defcon and Twitter. Definitely 5/5 on humor (although it covers a very serious topic) :)
gris
2017-05-08 13:20
I liked the twitter feed idea. Love the humor. Maybe a timer to create some suspense? Congrats!
LOL. 5/5 on humor. Super fun and interesting game! War, war never changes.
Thanks Gris Timer is an interesting idea, could be combined with Kodiqi's idea of multiple cities to create a "survival" mode.
lereveur
2017-05-08 17:35
I send democracy and freedom on several cities, by chance it was the ones intented to be free. Simple, good idea, easy and speed to play, well done. Maybe it would be interesting having to "free" more than one city, as higher difficulty modes (like "easy : 1 city to free"/"medium : 3 cities to free"/"hard : 7 cities to free").
Very well made. I loved the gameplay and I did manage to win in the end! But the sound when you click on the map is too high and it hurts my ears. Otherwise, great game!
takusan
2017-05-09 17:29
Well made, though could use more gameplay (other forms of freedom :D ). Still, works well the way it's intended to, It's surprisingly fun to fnid the clues among the chatter. Like @lereveur stated, it could use the difficulty modes, like timer and more cities to 'liberate', or continuous gameplay with leaderboards to see who would bring the most freedom. That would require more cities and varying clues, so not really jam material, but it could sneak into further updates :)
Well done, I was surprised by it as a whole.
Fun game! A little hard to figure out at the beginning, but once you get rolling it's really quite fun!
As Clickmation said, the noise when you click on the map is a bit too high-pitched, but other than that I really don't have any critiques.
**Keep up the good work!**
Woah, am i going to be the first to leave a critical comment? I guess it can't be helped (for various reasons; my post is already too long to contemplate on them here as well).
So why did i not like the premise of this game? In short, i think that oversimplified satire is actually harming its cause.
In more details, well, lets see..
(DISCLAIMER: don't read the following if you might be offended by too long text and/or too serious approach to satire, humor, politics and nuking in general and/or this game in particular)
First, what is the message of game narrative?
1. One infamous president is a clinically dumb asshole. 2. Nuking innocent people is bad. 3. Certain country might have little control over its president.
Now what's wrong with that?
1. This sounds like a dangerous overstatement. It is a common mistake to portray your enemies as being dumb and then being taken by surprise when they are not as dumb as you thought. It's just so much easier to make fun of someone you don't like than take some action or at least recognize more real threats. 2. Nothing wrong with this one, when it's taken literally, but.. it seems to me that the real message (whether intended or only perceived that way) is "trying to bring liberty to other countries will actually bring them death and destruction". And this is no better than "don't kill" mantra. Sure, sounds sweet, but what's your reaction when you're faced with armed mass murderer and have a gun in your hand?.. It is very convenient to have "no interference" policy, but it is no more than refusing to take responsibility. Of course, this message can be also interpreted as "way too often, [but not necessarily always,] bringing liberty ends up in bringing death" and then there's nothing wrong with it, but conveying such complicated message through such simplistic narrative is unlikely to go well. 3. I won't dissect this one too much. Same argument as to 1 can be applied here, but to a lesser degree i believe (because much less people would take it literally/seriously).
"But hey, we are just having fun here! Don't take it too seriously!"
No, that's not a good argument. You can have fun all you want, but public political satire is a political statement. This statement is likely to polarize audience and lower the level of discussion/perception. Those who generally agree with you are likely to be encouraged in believing in their position without thinking too much; those who disagree and/or offended by it are likely to be similarly encouraged in believing in theirs and also that their opponents are dumb.
"So what now, satire is bad?"
Not necessarily. Satire is a tool. It can be thought provoking, but it can also be hindering rational thinking. It can bring up morale, but it can also alienate others. It should be used with care.
Finally, i should mention that i was deliberate in not giving you examples to prove my point, because it would take away from the argument. I would be much more happy if you would think about my statements (and possibly find examples that prove them) than blindly accept them just on the strength of example.
And that's it for this ridiculously long comment (yay, length limit is lifted and i can post this in one go!).
fylipp
2017-05-11 20:03
Interesting game concept.
Thanks for your in depth critique Caryoscelus. Glad we inspired some food for thought. For a little context, we are not American, wonder if that changes some of your thoughts. We satired the perception of America and how the current president embodies all the negative stereotypes that have persisted about America since the Bush administration.
Thanks for your in depth critique Caryoscelus. Glad we inspired some food for thought. For a little context, we are not American, wonder if that changes some of your thoughts. We satired the perception of America and how the current president embodies all the negative stereotypes that have persisted about America since the Bush administration.
Oops
Very, very well done. I did experience lag on web.
2017-05-12 20:16
This was a fairly amusing piece of satire. It's a very simple and straight forward piece of satire and thats not a bad thing. Loads of political cartoons, games, and other media try a bit too hard to have loads of depth to them. So this was a pretty fun 1-off joke.
That said it's got a good framework of graphics and art that fits together pretty well. I could certainly see this expanded with a broader story of either derpy fiction or something that pokes fun what what's currently going on in Washington with a bit of a cartoony twist. That would give you ample reason to incorporate some other fun kid games. Would be interesting with a story to tie everything together.
That said I felt like this version of the game was a bit short. Just one nuking of a city as a singular event felt like it could have been done in something like a set of 3. With some type of nemesis working against you to ensure that you paid attention to the Twitter feed and did this quickly. Though the Twitter feed was a bit of a pain in the rear to use. The scroll bar was a bit sensitive and made it hard to back track.
So nice work and I thought it was simple yet strong. Nothing wrong with a Satire that just does a quick jab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shr5iGdQs3M
Love the idea, I wanted more but the concept was really interesting. And the music was really good, especially winning. Good entry! :D
I Played this on Livestream Yesterday at the request of the Developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekGMbpHGKUE
Congrats: I laughed hysterically for a solid minute. Totally over the top ridiculous. Thanks for sharing! This will help me survive the next 1.8 Years until Impeachment.
devpaul
2017-05-15 14:25
Very well done! This is hilarious I really wish it was longer and maybe a little bit more complicated, maybe you should add a freedom + hate meter and after a successful strike the freedom meter should go up if you mess up the hate meter goes up, if it hits max every country starts nuking USA or something like that.
somnium
2017-05-16 13:04
Quite amusing satire. Your distillation of a few recognizable traits into a game-concept worked well, and the "Twit"-feed even doubled as a way to display additional satirical content.
Gameplay-wise, the game was simple, but as a vehicle for the satire it was sufficient. It was a bit hard to scroll the feed, but other than that, the UI and presentation was effective and built the mood.
>The news are fake. SAD! >Social Media is Truth! >Unleash the Freedom!