The Markus Polo Hostage Situation by Chris Hay
CLICK TO PLAY ON OUR ITCH PAGE

STORY
Investigate a hostage-taker to diffuse an unstable situation in this text adventure police procedural! Created over a weekend in October 2021 for the Ludum Dare 49 game jam (theme: "unstable").
Warning: This game features adult language and themes, and is not suitable for children.
Should play well on a mobile phone or desktop/laptop. If the audio doesn't play, we recommend trying the downloadable version. Save with "SAVEF" and load with "LOADF" to transfer your progress!
HOW TO PLAY
Type two word commands (e.g. check notes). Choose an option in multiple choice. And type inputs when requested! Tap/Click/Press Enter to proceed, whenever you see a flashing cursor at the bottom right. Save progress with SAVE or SAVEF and then resume with LOAD or LOADF.
Note: Music won't play in Safari browser but will for others like Firefox and Chrome.


CREDITS
Coding by Chris Hay aka E.R.C.
Art and font by mig-moog
Music and sounds by Nat aka Nathanaël Wsiaki
Story and writing a team effort
| Link | https://eldritchrenaissancecake.itch.io/the-markus-polo-hostage-situation |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-markus-polo-hostage-situation |
Ratings
| Overall | 196th | 3.957⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 535th | 3.609⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 826th | 3.239⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 779th | 3.5⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 267th | 4.174⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 121th | 4.045⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 266th | 3.714⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 197th | 3.978⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
great stuff!
I too have made a multiple choice story game for this jam, but otherwise our entries are quite different :)
So first off I was faced with this, a fraction of the input text was clipped off. Playing in not full screen almost fixed the issue making it still be readable though.

The game was way too linear for such a genre in my opinion. You couldn't really do anything that wasn't intended and even the correct solutions were completely spoon fed to you. Any of the choices you did prior to the last one didn't really matter either. They were just one extra sentence and loop back to the previous point. The only point really I think that didn't outright give you the answer just before you needed to type it was the searching the web. And even then you couldn't possibly know the answer the game was looking for and it then tells you the solution.

So yup, really didn't take any advantages from the text adventure genre and could have as easily been just multiple choice game. I guess all that time save coming from not having to implement the text interpret engine could have then gone to make the story branches a bit more interesting.
The story was actually pretty well done. I usually don't expect to see such even in story focused jam games (and usually don't either). But this was simple enough and told in a way to keep the interest up. Kudos! 👌
Well yeah, this is exactly what is was trying to do...

I don't think a "banker manager" is a thing. Was it just a hack to not confuse "call bank manager" and "call bank"? 😅

The music had this one point that really reminded of Gwyn fight track from Dark Souls. I was fully ready to meet a flame sword wielding old man and parry the crap out of him. 😎
I did all three endings but still think my first original one was "the best" one even though the game didn't feel that way about it...

Anhyways, good job! 👍
Nice stuff!
I loved the graphics!
This was great. Just the right length. Just the right amount of help. 👍
I feel like the game is a bit to linear with the only path i found being the last choice with the endings. And i think you missed a big chance to make something super funny (which is hard to do but always very enjoiable).
I had a great time! Well done!