Vice Signalling by Dogshroom
Infiltrate a secret society and decipher their secret signals to stop a conspiracy against the Emperor.
Play in browser (please play in fullscreen)
You are an Inquisitor who has infiltrated the den of the conspiracy—Stulti et Avari—a secret society of the rich and powerful.
Your task is to figure out who the real conspirator is and execute them.
There are three endings to the story, and your choices will influence the outcome.
Decipher Stulti et Avari’s secret signals.
And use the secret signals to lure out a conspirator.
The attitude of Stulti et Avari’s members changes depending on the signals you use. Lure them out before they lure you into a trap!
Tips/Tutorial:
Do not mix symbols from different cultists - focus on following a single one. You can reply with only one signal, while cultists may show sequences of up to three signals.
Dialogues can be restarted using the mirror in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
The game can be paused with the spacebar or by using the mirror in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
Your ending depends on your reputation with each cultist. Reputation is cumulative: it builds based on your responses and determines the protagonist’s final decision.
Our team:
@murlocslasher — technical lead, programmer, sound design.
@dogshroom — game design, technical design.
@muraena — art.
@pt — art.
@ermik — music, sound design.
@luka420 — narrative design, story.
@luminella — brainstorming, editing and much needed moral support.
No AI was used while making Vice Signalling!
Fixes: - Pause now works correctly. - All endings are now achievable. - Added a web build! - Web resolution scaling fixed
| Itch | https://memento-holodosi.itch.io/vice-signalling |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/vice-signalling |
Ratings
| Overall | 44th | 4.186⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 264th | 3.629⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 47th | 4.13⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.507⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 9th | 4.736⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 125th | 4⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 185th | 3.5⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 22th | 4.486⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 91🗳️ | 113🗨️ |
working on it, it will be ready today
(def checking your game out after we finish fixing ours, looks fantastic)
and a very interesting concept of the game is to transmit signals using your hands
I ***loved*** your game, again. It was a very creative use of the theme, with a beautiful art style and very mood appropriate music. Also the writing was stellar. I was silly and didn't realize i could pause but once I did the deciphering and reading was alot more straight forward.
Its great to see your teams work again and I can't wait to see what's next.
Thank you so much for playing and leaving feedback! Going to check all of your games out ASAP!
Also wanted to add that we have fixed the game, so if you're willing to give it a proper go, you can do it now. Love and peace!
Answering your question, we're making a full-fledged game as a team right now (and yeah you play as an Inquisitor again), but it'll still be a long time before we can show anything. We'll definitely let our followers on itch know once it's out so if you give us a follow, you'll get a notif ;)
Thanks for playing our game again and good luck at compo!!
To be honest, the choices being vague was intended: I wanted the Inquisitor to seem incompetent and the level of absurdity to slowly become more extreme by the end of the game. And there were definitely no "right" choices, so it's all good! You had the intended experience hahaha
And thank you so much for valid feedback! We were planning to add a feature so a player knows how his choices influence the attitude of the characters but didn't get to it yet T_T
I'll ask our artists to share their stuff hehe
We'd be happy if you gave us another chance <3
Absolutely phenomenal work from the whole team! Played through the game two times, and still can't say I didn't miss anything, but at least now I'm satisfied.
Would be very cool to do some more complex hand gestures sometimes (as part of "saw them, learned them, can use them"), but I imagine that would blow the scope immensely.
In any case, this is a very strong 5/5 for me!
Your comment means a lot to me personally. I’ve been following your gamedev journey from afar for quite some time already and love your stuff.
*Somebody mentioned the mechanics😖-I’m crying game designer tears.*
Our entry was greatly overscoped, so we had to limit replies to just one symbol.
Didn't know your team also participated, will definetely check out your entry tomorrow!
I feel like some additional cues to draw your attention to which hand-signals each cultists would be really helpful (audio cues, a visual highlight, etc.), but also am very aware that those sorts of features are beyond scope of the jam workflow. :sweat_smile:
Regardless, this project is still super impressive! Would love to see what a refined version of this setting/style/mechanics would look like with more time and iteration! Thank you for sharing! :smiley_cat:
Resolution scaling in the web version is now fixed. We’d really appreciate it if you gave our game another go!
Good thing there is a pause button because I needed it. A lot.
My main critique is that I didn't get to do a lot of that deduction. Characters are constantly making signals, but because the dialogue proceeds automatically, I have no time to decipher most of them. While I can enter signals into the bottom to figure out what they mean, doing that makes me miss parts of the scene - and replaying the scene to deal with that takes forever. That meant I missed a lot of the depth you put into the character writing. I know I could've paused more, but doing that every half-second gets tedious. The ability to rewind line-by-line (and maybe advance dialogue with a button-press) would allow me to dive into the hidden signals more.
I also didn't get a chance to use much of the language, because I could only reply with one symbol. That's a shame, because it looked like there was some real complexity to it! (I know this is probably because writing a dozen versions of each exchange isn't feasible for a jam, but I still wish I could've experimented more.) The game didn't let me try to solve the mystery, either - I was suspecting Stultus Frivolus because he kept disagreeing with defeatist statements about the emperor (or at least "begrudgingly agreeing"), but at the end my character accused Capricious without my input. I guess I was wrong, but I would've liked the chance to choose who to execute myself!
Overall, the game looks and sounds great, and the narrative & writing are really, really well done. I got really into the mystery and the social/language deduction aspect. I think the main point of improvement would be giving the player more time to think during scenes, and giving them agency in the puzzle/mystery aspects. Awesome work, guys!
And thanks for really great feedback! We already have plans on how to improve the game and hopefully the changes will fix exactly those issues you've described. For now we haven't gotten to it yet bc we're all busy with work unfortunately but hopefully soon the game will become more enjoyable!
It’s actually a bit challenging to play. I have to keep an eye on both their gestures and the dialogue text. Since English isn’t my native language, I constantly need to pause to understand what’s going on.
Still, that doesn’t take away from how much I adore this game!I would love it even more if Chinese language support could be added!
It's amazing, I wish I could make something similar.
the gesture system is also impressive — it is not too easy nor too difficult to get a grasp of. i would only probably wish that the signs would be a bit slower, maybe in the beginning of the game. i sometimes got a bit lost cause i tried to follow the dialogues and then missed the hand signals, so then i tried to look at hands and missed pieces of dialogue haha.
maybe there could be a tutorial that leads you through at the very beginning so that you got a good understanding of the system at once. i was at first not sure why i could read signals composed of two or three gestures but when it comes to me i showed only one gesture. thought maybe i did something wrong :) and i also wasn't sure about the ways to get differet endings. i've read in the description that it depends on your reputation with each cultist, but maybe i would prefer to have some possibility to act on my own in the ending as well.
a cool game and a great interpretation of the theme!
i'm not sure i fully understood the gameplay. as someone mentioned in the comments, that i wanted to answer all questions with one gesture: "yes, I agree.", but i'm not sure with whom I agree with, because as I understood it, cultists might disagree with each other? which of them do i then agree with? a bit confusing x)
anyways, impressive entry!
The gameplay turned out to be quite challenging, as it’s hard to keep up with reading the dialogue and watching the gestures at the same time, even with a pause feature.
Nevertheless, it’s a very good job.
The art, music and overall vibe also matched with the gameplay beautifully well.
I really dont have that much feedback, other than that I accidentally pressed the replay button once. I was also expecting to choose the culprit at the end (I suspected the lady on the right :p), so I was a little sad the game just pushed me into an ending with one of them. Those are really minor nitpicks though.
Incredibly well done! This was amazing.
I liked the premise and intrigue of the game. Though early on, it was unclear on when you are able to interact. Maybe an audio or visual queue on when to take action would be helpful. Great entry though!
The writing is incredibly good for a game jam I was intrigued the whole way through and i seeked all 3 endings.I think the hand signals are such a brilliant choice that really complements dialogue and adds so much personality to each character. it me to stay focused on the dialogue so i don't miss any important clue and they also fit perfectly within the overall aesthetic of the game. I loved the variety, the game makes use affectively of all the gestures which is great!