"Glory to not-quite-Arstotzka. Move along."
The "Papers, Please" style of game isn't quite my thing, but it seems solidly well built. I can't fault you for making a game in a genre I personally don't like.
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Spy Quarter's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audience's Choice - Asset Implementation | #1 | 4.632 | 4.632 |
| Audience's Choice - Player Experience | #1 | 4.276 | 4.276 |
| Audience's Choice - Game Design | #1 | 4.447 | 4.447 |
| Grand Winner | #3 | n/a | n/a |
Ranked from 76 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Hi, we didn't make the tutorial for submitting the game in time for the Game Jam. The description of the rules can be found on the game page in the description: https://xentioxgames.itch.io/spy-quarter
This is a very interesting and creative game. I can get S rating after making several attempts. I hope this game will be expanded with more content in the future, such as more diverse bondage types, more hairstyles, costumes, etc. Maybe you can also develop story mode or mini-games like interrogating captured female spies after a match and so on.
Wish you guys can make more interesting DID works in the future!
I played this game to review it for the Jam. then I played it again. and again . and again.
This game is shamefully good. As others have said, I would pay for a fully realized version at the drop of a hat. While it clearly draws a lot of inspiration from That's not My Neighbor, it stands on it's own in both theme and game-play loop, specifically by putting more of the onus of detainment on the player, which is unusual for the genre. At the moment, that system is fairly bare bones, which is one of the few things I would like to see expanded and reworked, but it already does a lot in terms of giving control to the player.
For the investigation section, everything is done quite well. My biggest complaint is that there aren't more things to track! Obviously, things should start at an easier level for new players, but I do think the game would benefit from difficulty curve- whether that's player-led or dictated by a campaign, I'm not picky.
Overall though, this is a simply wonderful little game, and I'm very excited to see what the dev team will do in the future!
Once the controls “clicked” it was really fun! Really great job, my only complaint was that due to random chance, I had to play a second game to get a spy get taped :)
Submitted
BATTLEBONDSGlad to hear you enjoyed it! But... Are you sure? If you didn't get an S grade at the end of the game, then you missed some spies!
They should make mistake in this fields:
Apearence, ID number, their name(you should ask them about it, press on them to select option about name), name of last mission, dates of last mission, their department, their rank
Very enjoyable game. Very impressive !
Really appreciated the overall Aesthetic, it all fits nicely together. (Maybe the chibi in the tying up instructions poster is the one thing that tonally stands out)
Having instructions be part of the decor is a really nice touch. A bit overwhelming since they all are available at once rather than progressively introduced. I was a bit confused in regards to the numbers displayed next to the restraint type (only figured out what they mean and that you have to interrupt the binding to have lower levels by reading other reviews) and where to click to do the purple binding.
The one thing lacking is probably feedback to the player after their actions.
Maybe another idea to go further would be to have lighter capture elements come into play in the middle of determining if the agent is a spy or not.
CAUTION: SPOILERS BELOW
Summary:
A Papers, Please clone, where you have to assess if each agent is a spy or not by validating their documents. If they aren't you must restrain them correctly before moving on.
My Experience:
Let me start with 2 admissions here: 1) I'm not a fan of Papers, Please at all, and didn't enjoy playing it, and 2) I found the instructions below the game nearly overwhelming at first. I'm writing that down because when I say that this is my absolute favourite game of this game jam and I've already played it for hours, I want it to be clear how unlikely I thought that was to happen. The art is fantastic, consistent, playful and functional; the game encourages you to observe the agents carefully so it had to be great, and it really is. The expressions and variety of restraints - I think 10 in total - are all fantastic. There are so many small, subtle details that can give away a spy that I still don't always catch them, the challenge of which makes it more rewarding to get the S rank at the end. There are many games I would like to see continued at the end of this submission period, but it would feel almost criminal to let this one go to waste. With the raving out of the way, let me just quickly note the bits I wish to see improved, because it's a short list: entering agent callsigns by hand is a bit annoying; not being able to cross reference the documents with the screen leads to a lot of flicking back and forth; restraint limits feel arbitrary and not super impactful (other than to stop overkill everyone, maybe?) and the animations to bind someone are way too long after a while. Of those, honestly, only the last one about animation is anything I would care about in the long run. So yes - I very much loved this
Theme Fit:
Not only does the theme fit very well, it's now the only way I can imagine a non-violent (or, I guess, less violent) version of Papers, Please. It's fun to be able to tie up anyone on demand, even if it's wrong, and it meshes with the task perfectly. As close to perfect as I've seen in a bondage game, let alone one made for a jam.
What Could Be Improved:
- A tutorial: The game is a flood of information at the start. In a fuller version, it would be good to be eased in instead.
- Speed up/skip animations: I can understand the design idea of wanting to see someone tied up slowly and have the option to go "oops, I didn't press the button in time" and overdo it; however, sometimes you just want to get to the 3rd stage and it takes quite a while for each step to tick up, and it would be very hard to do it accidentally.
- More impactful resources: Again, I can see the design that wanting people to tie "just enough" means putting limits in place. The resource seems to be random though, and I can't help but wonder if it matters at all. But then my head races to the idea of it being something you manage over the course of a campaign, and all those ideas lead to...
- More content: Not feedback for the game jam, more of a plea to keep this game going. I would happily pay for a fleshed out version of this game, and I really want to see more of it in the future!
Thanks for such a comprehensive review of the game! We are glad you liked it and we will continue working on it. As we wrote earlier, we just didn't have time to do a lot of things because of time limits, for example, the tutorial is already thought out, but not implemented.
We will try to solve all the problems, so we thank you for such a detailed list of recommendations and wishes!
Really enjoyed this one! Perfect implementation of the theme and the setup for the bondage being on your decisions of whether someone is an imposter or not is fantastic. Some of the giveaways are very subtle too, which adds a good deal of challenge to the game. Awesome work!!
Submitted
BATTLEBONDS
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