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Manifesto's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #890 | 3.629 | 3.629 |
| Presentation | #1144 | 3.484 | 3.484 |
| Overall | #1393 | 3.263 | 3.263 |
| Fun | #2411 | 2.677 | 2.677 |
Ranked from 62 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
It is a game about joining forces to take down the man. You join crowds together to capture landmarks.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing art
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
I think this is a clever interpretation of the theme. Super smart use of color: I love that the objective icon mirrors the in-world landmarks/progress bars. One of the coolest things about this game is the amount of implied narrative. When I came across a small crowd in a wooded area in the first level my mind immediately began to piece together who these people were.
Honestly, I think with the two colors of crowds, the main objective being to capture landmarks, and the title "Manifesto" you don't really need to additional descriptions to explicitly tell the player what each of these elements represent. This is maybe just a personal preference, but I think there's an opportunity to draw people in by leaving some gaps and allowing the player to wonder.
Very cool, and nice job :)
Yeah, in a more fully fledged game I would 100% agree. But in jams we walk a very fine line between leaving something implied and just making your game this arcane mass of confusion.
That said, if we ever continue this project, storytelling will probably follow a more implicit approach. I think this is truly a game that gains a lot from those subtle moments. Thanks for the thoughtful comments :)
Clean and simple interface, yet really fun to watch all the people move around, and avoid the police! With the amount people to be moved around, it runs surprisingly well... I am impressed! Good job on an interesting and polished game! :D
Thanks!! We tried to maintain the minimalist style as much as possible, glad you liked it! As to the performance we implemented the Boids algorithm, regarded as the first in crowd simulation. The trick to it running well is kepping people just far enough away from each other, as the boids calculate their velocity and heading based on their local neighboors and also avoinding physics collisions as a bonus.
Complementing what Diogo said, we could probably optimize it further just by doing some extra spatial partitioning. Or maybe doing some compute shaders (if we do a standalone build). I will eventually test how many tiny meeples we can run with some extra work put into this.
I feel a Hidden Folks vibe here hehe. But damn the anti protests colliding with protesters is the interesting concept! Good work.
Ooooh wasn’t aware of Hidden Folks. Nice suggestion. One of our inspirations was Kids. We didn’t exactly start there, or even planned on doing the blank world look. But that is where we end up after iterating on what we had on art and what direction we wanted for the feel of the game.
This by far the coolest art style yet.
Confetti yay! This game made me happy! I love the interpretation of the theme so much ! It's one of my favorites for sure!
Thank you so much! We are crowd simulation researchers so the theme resonated with us
That's awesome, my spouse/the main coder for our game does nematode brain simulation research! And I do social psych/socio-lingusitcs applied stuff! I'm not surprised that you are coming from a science background it felt very very "right" and I really love to see people from the sciences do creative work! If you do other stuff like this please let me know!
That's amazing! We actually work a lot with psychologists, mainly in giving crowd agents personalities and emotion and seeing if people can perceive it. Not much on brain simulation hahahaha, tough it does sound very interesting. We're definitely planning on continuing work on Manifesto! And thank you again!
Superb idea @MakaSasquatch @DiogoMuller would love to see a bigger world and more gangs, also some nice Sfxs too. Overall good one :)
Very creative use of theme, I like the art style a lot.
Great game fellas! Would love to see it on PlayStore :P
Bold request. We will see about that :)
Nice concept and nice art style. It just works.
Thanks!
Loved spreading the revolution with my comrades, and it also looks really good, did you used a shader or it's just in the textures?
Flat-shading with post-processing outlines. Wasn’t the most optimized approach, but worked in a pinch. I’m not much of an artist so most of the art in my games is janked up from code.
Like the Artstyle and the Crowd Movement !!Really good Game and Concept.
A very unique concept! I love the connection to the theme. In the browser it was a little choppy performance-wise, I bet it performs better downloaded. Very cute, fight the power!
Sorry about the choppiness! Didn’t have much time left for optimizations.
A very interesting way to look at the theme, as well as an interesting way of abstracting riots and protests. Always fun to see physics games focusing on crowd control. The minimalist artstyle and soundscape are sharp, extremely readable, and support the game’s theme of fighting against a cold and monotonous world.
If there is anything to criticize, it’s that the pacing is perhaps a bit too slow. Police forces are fast and can disperse your protesters pretty easily if you can’t outmaneuver them, meaning that levels take a while to beat.
Thanks for the compliments! Happy to hear the theme resonated
Love the look and the sound. Footsteps give some ASMR vibes to me. Pretty cool gameplay idea. Would love to see some incentive to play more aggressively, instead of simply running circles with pigs around the objective (besides timer).
The pitter-patter sounds were a really good idea by my colleague. Added so much depth
I really like the art! But I was a bit lost on what to do.
Thanks! Sorry about the confusion, we couldn’t playtest too much on goal clarity. You click on the screen to center a crowd and grow it as you find bigger groups. Then you stay by the colored landmarks to capture them
I loved this! It feels like I'm driving a very fast racecar made out of people and I love it.
Funniest description so far, hahaha! Thanks!
Good Game! population against oppresors!.
Like it should be!
No gods! No masters!
Stick it to the man!