Oh boy, this was kinda cathartic, you really got the format down for the cringey, slapdash workplace online training courses. Damn this was clever.
Play Training
Safety and Security at the Liberty Macvonden Building (ITC-1141-A)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Bad | #4 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| Sound | #11 | 3.636 | 3.636 |
| Graphics | #15 | 3.455 | 3.455 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Overall Good | #24 | 2.727 | 2.727 |
| Modifier | #28 | 2.818 | 2.818 |
| Gameplay | #36 | 2.273 | 2.273 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have implemented the modifier, how have you done so?
Can be played with LMB only, some minigames have "one button" mechanic, recurring "one button away from disaster" themes
Any additional information for voters?
You do need to actually download the game. There's a kayfabe-breaking README in the Documentation folder if you get stuck.
Comments
Wow! So much content here. How you threw this together in a week is mind-boggling. I think you totally nailed the wonky corporate aesthetic and the voice acting was outstanding both in quantity and 'quality'. Also, each of the minigames would probably have been a worthy SBIG entry on its own. Brilliant.
Submitted
Tom Hanks Christmas TankThe idea of a game corporate training program game seriously popped me, I love that type of vibe. I also really loved how much attention to detail went into the whole thing.
I was fully on board from the opening and into the hygiene presentation, then going into digital safety and security and really liked that it included a different mini game for variety, but even at this stage I was starting to feel like ‘I get it’. I did start pretty much everything just to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything, but luckily I realised you can cheat the awareness bar to see the ending, which was a cool way to pay off the whole experience.
So yeah, the "It has to be fun to play" rule just isn’t there, and while there’s huge potential for SBIG the good unfortunately wore off a bit too soon.
But as I said awesome premise and attention to detail, so just with some editing I think it would be really great, and after saying all that I really enjoyed that you made it and appreciate what you were going for!
Submitted
Members Only Golf ClubThanks for playing!
This was one of my most experimental games so far, and probably the weirdest thing I've made for SBIG Jam. It came together a lot better than I thought it would, at least in terms of overall experience and presentation. A lot of features, the login prompt and certificate in particular, I wasn't sure were going to make it in at all.
The length seems to be the number one point of contention, and it's not really a surprise to me. It's something I realized during my first full run-through very late in the development process. At that point, though, the mistakes had been made and there wasn't much I could do to fix it. Earlier, I'd shifted from only making the content that I thought would be great to trying to make the game experience as complete as possible, which was my biggest mistake. Some of the content I'm really happy with, but some of it is one step above filler (I especially hate the "worksite safety" presentations).
Unfortunately, at present time I have no plans to update this. It's very much a once-and-done project, even among my SBIG games.
This work of art was certainly an interesting experience, right from the fake-out 'play online' on the itch page.
I genuinely was not expecting this game to have a story, but damn that story was pretty amusing.
I know that a lot of the stuff said in the 'instructional' presentations was intended to be a whole load of bs, but the scary thing is that I can genuinely imagine an employer trying to tell their employees some of that stuff (especially the 'pretending to be compliant' stuff)
I can't tell if the one crash I experienced was intentional or not (It was in the part that looked intentionally unfinished) so I'm guessing it was intentional. But if it wasn't, it's just the icing on the cake :^)
Hell, it wasn't just 'so bad it's good'. It was also 'so unfunny it's hilarious' (with the completely deadpan delivery of all the absurdity, combined with that one scene with the 3d stuff that I genuinely wasn't expecting but was somehow absolutely hilarious when I encountered it, especially in context of the rest of the game).
The choice of implementing 'one button' as a thematic corporate buzzword was also pretty interesting to see.
I did lose interest a bit in the presentations towards the end, but I guess that too was probably intentional, to really capture the spirit of these sorts of mandatory e-learning things.
Overall, it was pretty darn good.
Submitted
Inconvenient Space Rocks 2Thanks for playing!
I've been using the word "kayfabe" a lot when thinking about, and sometimes when talking about, this game. It's a term from professional wrestling which basically refers to maintaining the illusion that staged events are real. I wanted to make this look as much like a janky corporate training application contracted out to interns who didn't give a shit as much as possible. I was careful to break that illusion only when absolutely necessary, and I think it works well because of that.
The crash you experienced is almost certainly a fake one. There are a few points in the game where there is no content so fake crashes were put in to hide that fact.
The "story" is definitely cringe, and I was shocked a bit by how cringe it was once I put the videos together, but I felt it was perfect for this game and this jam so I left it in.
I shoehorned the "one button" modifier in as much as possible. To be honest I was hoping for a different modifier; "one button" I could work with but it wasn't ideal.
The joke overstaying its welcome a bit is a definite issue, and one I did discover late in the development process when there wasn't much I could do about it. At some point I decided that I wanted to get in enough content so the game felt mostly complete, and quality fell by the wayside. I really like some of the presentations, even some of the later ones, but some of the others are one step above filler.
I really like the parody of workplace safety videos! I've for sure come across plenty of these in my time. Personally I think the joke kinda got drawn out a bit too far for it's mileage. I feel like it could have been more concise. I definitely appreciate the effort put into this. It shows well. Nice work!
- Josh
Submitted
Vegeteble StoreizThanks for playing!
Yeah, "I like the joke but it overstays its welcome" seems to be the most common feedback I'm getting. I did realize that was the case, but only on day 6 or 7 of the jam when it was basically feature frozen. In retrospect, it would have been better to keep the scope more limited and the content higher quality.
EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK REPORT:
Name: Ned Reid
ID0: DAF7EBA5C640518892D655DB6FAC81C76CCF4853
ID1: D032596C386BDC44CD94BEB9CC56FDA16B8A7EB3
Course No: LMG-ITC1141-302-A
What was your prior experience before partaking in this online training course?
As a new employee at Liberty Macvonden, I have had no prior experience with the online training courses provided by XCVG Systems. However, I had seen preminary material provided by XCVG Systems in the past week.
How did you partake in the training videos?
The same way I always do: barely listening, while playing a game on my phone in the meantime.
Did you complete the course in one, or multiple sittings?
Multiple. I had a meeting but left it on, then kinda forgot about it for a couple of hours, then came back
Did you find the course engaging?
No.
Did the online quizzes and games help to re-enforce the lessons learned in the training videos?
Yes.
Do you agree with the following statements:
I feel more safe at work after partaking in this course:
Slightly Agree
Defeating Cal Lapone was a good motivation to completely the course
Slightly Agree
Completing this course has made me more interested in the products of XCVG Systems
Slightly Agree
How would you rate this online training course?
Prefer not to say
Thanks for playing!
I didn't bother leveling any of the audio. All the music tracks and sound effects went in as is. I think I did adjust some of the presentation audio, but usually just to boost it into distortion.
The game "crashes" deliberately at several points, generally to cover up content that doesn't exist.
Once again, you've delivered a masterpiece of ingenious crafting, full of humor and knowledge. Hats off to you.
Submitted
Salaryman: Fun TimesWell I said I'd play this game first and I did.
Wow, as someone who has spent a lot of time doing e-learning modules and skype calls for orientation this hits really close to home. The voice acting was great, the graphics were funny, some of the games were pretty cool. The disaster one was a masterpiece of corner cutting.
Once again you've outdone yourself on the meta aspects of the game, making the save system a company AD login system and the certificate at the end. Oh and I did make it to the the end, but after a bit I did end up cheesing the knowledge bar. I defeated the boss though, and I'm lucky I have enough useless random knowledge and IT knowledge to bluff my way through it.
As someone who has had to deal with the real thing I do respect the attention to detail and some of the more subtle jokes, but I do agree that it can drag after a while. Which frankly the IRL ones do as well, except I get paid for doing those lol.
Nice work!
Submitted
StalewaterThanks for playing!
I've actually only done a little bit of Head Office Mandated Fun, so I'm pretty happy I managed to hit the mark according to several people now.
I always try to have a bit of meta stuff going on. I think the last two I did (Beach Defend 2000 and RiftBreak) were more interesting and certainly more technically interesting, but this one worked out better than I'd expected. I took a bit of a risk in presenting it as a training game wherever possible; the cover art is incredibly plain and the game page offers few clues on what this actually is, as well as the fake "web version". Kayfabe is only broken in two places: a bit of bold text on the game page, and in the README buried one level in the documentation folder. I think, though, if I hadn't gone all the way it would have been a lot less immersive.
The Disaster! game almost didn't have the "scene that people were upset about but is the only part left in" at all. It was the last thing I implemented, and for most of the week I didn't even know how I was going to do it. It's not perfect, and it's not exactly what I wanted, but I thought it was hilarious the first time I saw it in action so I decided to roll with it.
As for being a bit of a drag, yeah, that's something I discovered during my first full playtest and in retrospect I wish I'd gone for shorter, more focused content, especially given the length of the jam. At some point it edged away from being a parody of mandatory corporate fun and became mandatory corporate fun. If I ever do a full postmortem I'll probably focus on this aspect, but I've already shared some thoughts on it in other comment responses.
After seeing your posts in the Discord all week about your power points and such i was really wondering what the hell this was gonna be. fortunately i finally got to experience it and i can say you hit a lot of the goals i think you were going for.
My only critique is that it is long af. to fully experience this beauty you'd have to take a good chunk out of your day(unless you are working at the Liberty Macvondan building).
The login window is a cool touch, and the opening sequence is really well done. The use of a "goal" to keep people interested in learning about working at Liberty Macdonovan comes across just as cringe as if some 40 year old Karen in HR thought it was a good idea. It took me back to the safety videos you'd have to watch before entering a job site. The presentations on different aspects of the building were great, and the experience really was that. An experience. You don't play this game, you suffer though it to earn a paycheque. and i think thats beautiful.
Submitted
Dress To ImpressThanks for playing!
The length definitely works against it, especially given the length of the jam and the length of the rating period. Some parts of the game are shakier and/or more filler-y than others; at some point I went from focusing on creating quality content to just focusing on cramming content in. In retrospect I wish I'd made something a bit more focused. Oh well, it's SBIG Jam.
When I recorded the voice and put together the videos for the Cal Lapone scenario, I was like, wow this is even more cringey than I thought it would be. Given the nature of the game and the nature of the jam, though, I treated it as a feature instead of a bug.
Christ, this brings back some corporately mandated memories. This isn’t just any parody, it’s clear you have experience with the subject matter. The details were spot on - corporate slides, uncharismatic presenters, instructional vids ripped straight from YouTube, terrible UI and a lazy and cynical gamification aspect to the whole thing. It’s all there plus some punchy dry humor. Definitely gets points in the SBIG department.
But as much as I feel like you did really have fun creating the whole thing, it’s just too long for a casual player, and was hard to engage with. Most of the time I was watching slideshows or videos, and with no overarching narrative and middling pacing, the joke did languish after completing one section. I think that with a tighter scope and focusing on just one aspect, alongside a solid hook to keep me going, this could’ve been a great little satirical piece.
Still, I enjoyed what I did experience. I will now wash my hands, but only because I want to seem polite after this interaction.
PS: my anti-virus thought ITALauncher.exe was malware. Just FYI.
Submitted
DØD SØ FUBARI've actually never worked for a gigantic company, though I have had to go through some institutionally-mandated fun in the past.
I agree 100% on your criticisms. In fact, I realized the same thing during my first full runthrough of the game. Unfortunately that was on day 6 or 7 of the jam, so I released what I had anyway with only minor tweaks. I'm not sure if I'm going to do a full postmortem on this one, so I'll summarize briefly my thoughts on it here. Originally it was just going to be cybersecurity/online safety training, but when the "one button" modifier was announced that made me think of emergency stop buttons and gave me some new ideas, so it was expanded to a bigger experience with 4-5 areas. At that point the plan was to only do the stuff I had good ideas for, and just leave the rest as missing content. But then I realized the more was missing the less real it looked, and the focus became "add more content" instead of "add good content". I think that was my greatest mistake; some of the content here is just filler, and at some point the parody of a boring corporate pseudo-game becomes a boring corporate pseudo-game.
I'm not sure why ITALauncher would get flagged; it's a .NET Framework executable with about 8 lines of code. Fortunately you don't actually need it to play the game, it just runs Austin.exe (the actual game) and exits.
Thanks for adding your thoughts. Not to complain of anything, as this is what allowed me to actually participate in the first place, but I think the jam being (around) two weeks long as opposed to, say, one weekend does allow this sort of feature creep to take control over your project.
This isn’t necessarily bad, but it is something to be mindful of; content is king, that’s true, but as you said, “not a lot of good content” is better than “a lot of meh content”.
P.S. I didn’t really mean to insinuate you worked for a corporation. This type of “institutionally-mandated fun” is kinda uniform everywhere :)
P.S.S. A program starting another .exe file raises some eyebrows, maybe? VirusTotal says at least 2 anti-viruses consider that file malware (interestingly, not my own, which just makes this even weirder). But then again, I have to ask why that frontend is even necessary when Austin.exe works fine.
I think two weekends/one week is about the ideal length; there's always a risk of feature creep but it strikes a good balance. Keep in mind a week, or even a weekend, is different for a NEET, a student, and a salary worker. Two weekends is about the shortest jam I'd consider doing in my current position. I've done some 1- and 2-month jams and the risk of feature creep is much more pronounced on those. Magical Girl Game Jam 2 was 2 months long and my initial game idea for that was so horrendously overscoped that I ended up scrapping and salvaging it into something completely different.
Why does ITALauncher exist at all? It's 100% because ITALauncher sounds more like a real training executable. Could I have renamed the other exe? Yes. Did I think of that at 11PM a day before launch? No, no I did not.
Playing this game was a truly excruciating experience. 11/10.
Submitted
Low-Budget Quantum Tunneling
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