Signal Desk by fnelix

Quick Start
Tune in and find important radio messages from your agents. There are new rules for each day (see sticky note). The game spans 6 days.
Keep an eye on your battery level. End the day by hitting the bell.
- Accept all important messages,
- ignore or reject the noise,
- do NOT accept bad information.
Notes
- Progression and narrative presentation are a bit rough. Daily scoring is a mess. In the end I ran out of time.
Instructions
Switch radio ON
Tune to signals
PRINT to inbox
SORT your inbox: ACCEPT / REJECT
END DAY with bell
Rules for the day on sticky note
ACCEPT important information
REJECT bad information
Watch battery power
Play on itch.io
| Link | https://fnelix.itch.io/ld59-signal-desk |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/signal-desk |
Ratings
| Overall | 152th | 3.452⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 153th | 3.286⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 151th | 3.381⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 51th | 4.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 98th | 3.714⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 51th | 3.775⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 160th | 2.353⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 131th | 3.5⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
For me the actual gameplay was a little confusing and repetitive. I was never really sure what I was supposed to do with the ones that neither said to accept or reject, and the summaries at the end weren't really clear about what things I did were "good" and which were "bad" (like missing bad info, is that good or bad?). The complexity never really appeared so I was just accepting and rejecting based on names. At one point it said to reject a certain frequency which made me go "aha I can see how this is going to grow in complexity and become a challenge to keep all the rules in mind", but that frequency didn't come up, and there were no further rules other than names. So I'm a bit mixed on it.
Awesome job on the presentation though, I love it.
On day three my inbox glitched out and I couldn't progress.

Good stuff!
@matt-giuca @jk5000 @stasm You are totally right to be a little confused by the gameplay.
I was going to introduce increasingly complicated rules, and have your choices have at least some meaningful (narrative) consequences after each day leading up to day 6. Then goal was a hinted-at moral choice that runs counter to the obvious puzzle mechanics. But I ran out of time, so the presentation of consequences is almost totally missing and the puzzles after 2-3 days unfinished. I then tried to salvage the gameplay by some ill-advised and tired last minute changes to scoring and reporting, which made things worse.
Really glad that you managed to see past these issues and find some potential in the game!
@frib Super cool that you checked out both endings!
Thank you for the game!