Reliance (Post-Jam)

THIS IS NOT THE VERSION SUBMITTED FOR COMPO

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This is the current in-progress version of Reliance, post ludam dare 49. It's still actively in development and has a long way to go, but players can see a more realized version of the vision here.

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Arrow keys to navigate responses, z to submit a response. Survive for 10 turns to win.

Reliance is a game about being dependent on fickle, powerful forces for your survival. You became stranded on some unknown, uninhabitable, distant planet and would have died quickly if it wasn't for the planet's sole inhabitant, a mysterious, cosmic force.

This force helps you at first on a whim, but may eventually become disinterested and forget about you. You must keep the force engaged in your plight long enough until a rescue shuttle arrives, but not irritate to the point that it would rather smite you. The problem is, you don't know anything about what it likes and dislikes.

Reliance was conceived as an existential deduction adventure. The cosmic force's disposition towards different topics is randomly generated each game. Every time you commune with the force, a prompt appears. A set of dialogue options is presented that touch on various topics. These topics affect the force's engagement with the player. You have to balance between becoming a boring sycophant that the force forgets about with becoming such an irritating nuisance that it would rather be done with you.

Unfortunately, as is common with jams, I was not able to fully realize the project. I only have 4 canned responses for every prompt that were originally place holders that always address the same topics. I only managed to write 24 prompts for the force (12 when irritated, 12 when content.) The game is sorta playable but lacks a lot of what the design hinges on to be interesting. Also, the prompts are poorly formatted.