The Best Policy by Empyrealhell

[raw]
made by Empyrealhell for LD32 (COMPO)
Winning a debate isn't easy, and sometimes you have to use underhanded tactics to gain the upper hand. Using logical fallacies as your weapons, you have to try and sway opinion in your favor against a myriad of savvy opponents.

Use the arrow keys to navigate the menus, and enter or space bar to select options.

The bar at the top is the current opinion. As your debate rages on, it will sway back and forth. The goal is to have opinion on your side at the end of the five rounds. Your credibility bar, just below the opinion bar, shows how much the audience trusts you. As this depletes, by using fallacies or by being slandered by your opponent, your actions have less impact. As you defeat opponents, you gain their abilities, so you can take on the top dogs of debate.


UPDATE: It should now work with the correct visuals and easing on chrome. The font it uses to render may not be available if you are running on a non-windows OS, so you may still see icons missing in that case.

UPDATE 2: Fixed a typo that was causing the politician debate to crash the game.

UPDATE 3: Final round of bug fixes. Corrected a + to a *, which drastically weakened certain abilities. This should make the later encounters winnable. Also corrected a display bug on large menus, and a bug that let you skip fights by holding enter.

UPDATE 4 (4/30): There were some issues with the AI that were masked by the small bugs I fixed after the compo ended. I spent about an hour tracking it down and fixing it, so the AI is now much smarter about the skills it uses. If you feel like this is going against the bug fix spirit, I've made the update optional, just select to use the old AI when prompted at the start.

Ratings

Coolness 54% 3
Overall 3.55 231
Audio 2.96 412
Fun 3.45 250
Graphics 2.47 881
Humor 3.48 183
Innovation 3.87 108
Mood 3.07 434
Theme 3.97 103

Feedback

crazya02
20. Apr 2015 · 04:32 UTC
Game doesn't run for me, just shows a light blue screen.
daleth90
20. Apr 2015 · 04:36 UTC
I think the link has some problem.
I can only see a blue screen. :(
jk5000
20. Apr 2015 · 06:19 UTC
A fun idea. But why should I absolutely lose to every one.
hunttis
20. Apr 2015 · 06:20 UTC
Some opponents seem to crash the game (at least the politician), but I like the idea.
Great! I really love your idea, quite unconventional ;)
The creditility bars are very readable, I would like a visual meter for the change of opinion as well.
Your system is very well thought out, congrats!
LTPATS
20. Apr 2015 · 08:46 UTC
This is a really cool concept! There's a bug where if you spam the spacebar during a debate, you win (it also messes with the music). Regardless the game is really fun and I enjoyed playing, great job!
bace1000
21. Apr 2015 · 06:40 UTC
Really easy for me, but very fun!
IBM
21. Apr 2015 · 06:49 UTC
Really thought it was a great idea and loled when I saw what it was about. The concept was clear but I really believe that it would gain a lot by making the strength and weaknesses of the tactics more visual.
Cliff Lee(CL)
21. Apr 2015 · 09:55 UTC
Great concept!!
But I am not good at this :(
Prowler
21. Apr 2015 · 14:59 UTC
A battle of wits? Nice idea!
Full score for the theme!
Tuism
21. Apr 2015 · 15:07 UTC
I really want to like this, but I think I'm too dumb to understand how Ad Hominem beats Genetic Fallacy.... Or something.

Basically comes down to learning what each of the Pokemon moves do, and doing the most damaging ones and then doing the ones that heal you when you're down too far? Something like that?

Do different attacks have different "elementals" so that one is more/less effective than another against specific moves?

I really can't tell. It just all seems too random. Needs a pokemon-like system to really figure it out.

Great idea, just difficult to engage with.
tummyache
23. Apr 2015 · 04:55 UTC
Took me a while to get it, and I wish there was some narrative to go along with it. In the end though I really liked it. It's really simple and really effective.

One of my first thoughts was "I wish this was longer so these decisions had more of an impact". But I don't know that I would have actually finished it if it went on for more than 5 rounds. Probably a good decision on your part.

Nice job overall. Enjoyed it.
gillyadrien
23. Apr 2015 · 05:03 UTC
Fun little game, I managed to beat it!

After a few victories, all opponents seem to use "breaking the circle" constantly, which ends up in them losing their own credibility and opinion scores.

But besides that, it was great; good work!
KaiseanGames
28. Apr 2015 · 20:36 UTC
At some point it becomes mind-boggling. In a good way.
panurge
05. May 2015 · 18:13 UTC
A nice idea with interesting, thoughtful gameplay. I enjoyed playing, even if I did get beaten repeatedly by a child... :)
nameoftheuser
10. May 2015 · 19:59 UTC
Very good job
jhell
11. May 2015 · 09:56 UTC
Wow. Very cool. Great music and general audio atmosphere. I also like the idea for the theme. My only critic is that I kept this feeling of "what the hell am I doing" more or less from start to finish ^^. I figured a few good combinations, but other than that it was mostly random. Maybe give more precise indicators regarding the different abilities, with numbers?