Bulletproof Broadcast by ugly_robot
The king has order all his domain to watch his parade. And everyone knows the traitors will be intermixed, holding up their own signs.
Can you react fast enough, discover those who would alter the kings sentiment, and gun them down before they reach the cameras? Are you fast and ruthless enough to enjoy this parade?
I wanted to do an 'error correction' game for signal - and decided to give some authoritarian styling to juice up what is ultimately a 'remove introduced errors from the signal' game. Had fun coming up with sentences and swaps that still make sense, even as you cull the words.
Typing this at 12:30am "sunday" of the solo-como - this jam went... Surprisingly smooth? Not the game is particularly impressive (simple ideas are a victory for me) - but I am so glad I didn't have to spend hours debugging an engine crash. Thanks godot, thanks git, and thanks chat-gpt!
3 songs? A smattering of SFX? A main menu and tutorial? Rarely do I have time for any, lol.
Okay - I did have one 6hr rabbit hole (the 'limelights', too complicated to explain here) - but I still came in under budget on time! Lets call it 3:30pm sunday
All my games are small and ugly, of course - but I felt pretty efficient this time, finally bit off a size I could chew haha. Anyways! Not that impressive - but I hope you enjoy!
Thanks to: voicechanger.io beepbox.co godot jsfxr Google Drawings and my S.O. and slef for their invaluable support!
| Link | https://ugly-robot.itch.io/bulletproof-broadcast |
| https://github.com/necarlson97/bulletproof-broadcast | |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/bulletproof-broadcast |
Ratings
| Overall | 8th | 4.265⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 15th | 4.103⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 17th | 4.059⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 161th | 3.603⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 33th | 4.191⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 47th | 3.803⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 7th | 4.394⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 15th | 4.176⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
@hotaloca thank you! Yeah - having the sentences 'decompose' to something that still made sense was the first idea I had for the game, and kinda the guiding task throughout. Glad it came through!
@enryu-mirik haha yeah, I was lucky that dev'ing went pretty smooth this time! Thanks!
@jiri-hysek hah! Nice one. Thanks!
I like the mechanic. It's very, so to say, rhythm-gamey. Like you need to react as fast as possible. I personally think that a little randomization would make it let's say replayable for the second time because the moment I saw the number on the king I realized that I can do two endings, so, I naturally had to see both of them :laughing:
But when I was playing the second time, I realized that I have seen these messages already, and I know which one I need to kill. Also I'm not entirely sure, like, how it fits the theme, but I assume the signs that members of parade are holding are considered signals, but it's just nitpicking. But nevertheless, I really like the concept and great job, especially for the 48 hours!
Good for you for seeking both endings! Keen eye.
And yeah - my the original thought was "Oh - I'll do a game on error correction, like Hammond's distance, parity checks, that kind of thing. But theme it in a way that is more familiar to people." - kind of like 'Human Resource Machine', I guess?
But then it devolved into this, haha, but you can kind-of still see the DNA of "a signal is trying to be sent, there are errors being introduced into the signal, and you need to be selective in how to correct them" - that kind of thing.
Anyways, thanks for playing! And I _loved_ n0minal, great work again.
God save the King :D
Now that I think about it, this game kinda reminds me of state of emergency in that regard. i.e how it has a pretty light-hearted feel to it which helps hide how dark the subject matter is lol.
All that said, I do have some qualms with some of the design of the game. I think having the sign holders sweat as a tell wasn't really a good idea because I could never really see that sweat at all. Maybe it was because of how far the camera was, or how the sweat didn't really stand out enough, but I never really tried looking for it. Also I think the game really could've used some sort of failstate. I did a 3rd playthrough where I just shoot everyone and it was fine. Thematically it's still hilarious that this was fine ( and frankly, it also checks out .... ), but I think some sort of penalty outside of the final score screen would have helped. Or maybe a gameover if too many loyalists die.
None the less, great game here. Good stuff overall
Yeah - I toyed with being able to click-to-shoot, but I thought the moment of panic-mashing the keys when the protesters show up was funny, and would be maybe trivialized by just clicking around. Maybe not. Anyway, thanks for playing and good comment!
@slef <3 thanks! Can you believe I had time for 3 songs?
@sinemual Thank you! Sorry to hear about the lag - optimizing for web can be tough. And good catch on the missing source code, fix, added the github link. Thanks!
'think of an idea that is too complex, barley implement it, and then say "eh, I'll just randomly generate a few waves and call it done"'
Finally, this time I tried much harder to:
'think of a simple idea, implement it fully, and give the player a few crafted things to chew through, and end the game before it gets too repetitive'
Not sure if I fully achieved that - but I got much closer! Anyways, thank you for the kind comment!
@bambutcher haha thanks! yeah, always hard to find that goldilocks of "what still counts as the theme, but is unique enough players won't have seen it in other entries". Long live the king!
Good note about the sweating - I was trying to have it to be a subtle hint for players who maybe didn't understand as well what the 'sentiment' thing was. Just a last-second indicator that couldn't be relied upon to always spot traitors, but could help the player be like "Oh, I guess _that one_ must've been why I lost a point there." But, not really sure if I struck that balance.
And yeah haha when I was implementing the loyalist-kill-counter, I was like "how many loyalists should you be allowed to kill before the officer stops you..." and thought "eh, thematically maybe it is more interesting if he never stops you!"
Plus, I have a tendency to make my compo games too hard, so for this game I tried to err on the side of "I'd rather players wonder 'when will I be forced to restart' rather than 'I am constantly being forced to restart'".
(Obviously, it is much better to create an experience that has 'perfectly balanced challenge' - but I've never been able to achieve that, so if I must choose a side, I've started trying to choose 'too easy')
Anyways, just some of my thought process - but thank you for the great feedback! And thank you for playing!
because i also went with a word game built into an authoritarian world, although "game" is a generous term when i compare it to this submission.
im really impressed by the game loop and how you expressed the mechanics. as well as the polish and seamlessness created in 48 hours...i have a lot of practicing for next LD jam.
Would be nice if I could click the person I wanted to ... get rid of. There were times where I was ready to take out the person in the next line, but the spot light was still on the previous parade and I accidentally killed a loyal follower.
And I loved your entry! Your first one too? Great stuff! Yeah, you'll figure out which tools you like best, and that'll help speed up the work alot. But mostly, you just gotta make lots of mistakes on the way! Thanks for playing
@amirrajan yes, yeah - clicking would definitely be easier / more intuitive. But sometimes, at least in a jam game, it is fun to do weirder controls. Anyways - the king has assured me he forgives you for any undue execution of loyalists - as long as you kept those pesky rebels away!
Thanks for the comment!
@telkan hah! nice! Love it
I wonder how the game would change if you just had a gun and could should anyone on screen instead of predefined targets. 😁
@zirrrus yeah - kinda surprised with how grim the game became. Anyway, thanks for trying it out!
@roroto-sic yeah! glad to have an art style which works well enough and which I can finally do fast enough for jamps. Thanks!
@bumble Thanks! Haha glad you were able to take some agency!
@pres2300 Thank you! Yeah most of my games are silent - this one as a few sfx, and 3 songs! (sorta)
Anyways, thanks for noticing!
@wouter52 Yeah, surprised to see how grim the game became. Glad to hear you found it the right amount of challenge! Really hard to gauge - thank you for letting me know!
@cedaoan Thank you! Yeah, really tried to focus on tweening as much as possible this time. Glad you noticed - thanks!
@avhatar thank you! I'm flattered. Glad you enjoyed!!
Love that type of games)
And such minimalistic design
@last-angle thanks! Yeah - was the toughest part, but a fun little word puzzle. Glad you noticed!! Thanks for playing
I love how much you managed to get out of such a simple concept. I'm just pressing numbers and getting praised for it, but it feels wrong and it makes me want to do the oppoiste of what I'm being asked to do. The final decision was a very easy one to make and it rounded out the experience with a satisfying conclusion.
Also, the graphics look way better than you give yourself credit for. Great job making this in 2 days!
Thank you! Yeah, I'm glad I worked in a way to get the player to 'rebel' - though I didn't want to make it too joyus an ending. Only way to get there was on a pile of innocents...
And I'm glad you liked the art style! Everything made in 'google drawings', if you can believe it. Thanks for playing!
Gameplay was simple but worked really well in the context of the game, it let the mood and writing shine through which was all it really needed to do! The short button mashing section in the middle was unexpected and very fun. Overall this did an amazing job at building a mood, and it's great to play a jam game with a proper beginning, middle, and end!