Hey! Thanks for playing, glad you like the visuals!
That is indeed how that game's supposed to be played, kinda. The core idea of the game is the moral choice of choosing who to let pass, who to scare and who to kill in order to ensure the survival of your village. Let someone with bad intentions pass, you get bonked. Shoot the ground and scare someone who was chill? They'll be mad and bonk you. Kill someone with good intentions? They won't be able to bring resources to your village. You can learn about the people's intentions by looking at the meters of hunger, thirst and sickness top right of the screen, and also what they have to say. But in the end, you can never know for certain, and that's what the game's about!
Can you just kill everyone and do all trades? Sure can. That'll give you one of the endings. It'd be similar to just letting anyone pass in Papers Please.
Our main objective with the game was to create an internal discussion on moral dilemmas, make the player consider the consequences of their actions, and what it feels like to be a weapon of destruction tasked with caring for what they were once designed to kill. You can learn more in the GDD if you want! Whether we achieved that, that's another issue hahaha.
At any rate, thanks for playing and leaving a comment :)