Such a well-designed game! It introduces the idea of a citizens assembly while managing to stay fun and light on text. It's kind of wild that something so polished was made so quickly.
I love all the extra features that add playfulness. The owls are adorable and the ending dance sequence is great.
Thank you for your all your kind words and support, eileen! 💚
It would be easy for a game about making policy to feel dry. We really wanted to add features that were fun and playful while reinforcing core themes of community and participatory democracy.
The game is very polished and well-designed. Never thought that constituting the assembly and arranging the seats can be a mechanic as well. Love the cute owl animations and sounds too!
A small flaw is that voting was dragging out a little, and it seemed contrary to the spirit of democracy that the facilitator has an agenda of passing pre-determined motions (instead of accepting whatever the people decided). That said, this is probably as far as this theme can go.
Thank you! We wanted to experiment with different mechanics that would help people genuinely think about good group facilitation.
The question of what citizens' assemblies should be able to vote on is fundamental dilemma, both in terms of game design and in real-life citizens' assemblies.
In actual citizens' assemblies, there have to be constraints on topic to allow the facilitators to plan and the participants to focus on the subject at hand. We don't want them to be so open that participants can talk about anything, because that would make it impossible to arrive at meaningful agreements in a reasonable length of time.
At the same time, we don't want the parameters to be so narrow that new solutions are overlooked or that the outcome is predetermined.
In the context of this game, it's reasonable to want more freedom for the participants to direct the agenda -- one day is definitely not long enough to fully deliberate on topics like the climate emergency!
We knew that the idea of a Citizens' Assembly (and policy-making in general) could come across as intimidating to some people. So we wanted to make the characters as cute and inviting as we could.
Thanks so much! Adding music to the dance generator is a great idea. We didn't include it in the prototype because we didn't have time to make it sync to the BPM chosen by the player, but we will include it in a future version.
Comments
You guys were able to make politics entertaining and interesting at the same time, the design is very good! And I love all the little owl noises haha
Thanks so much! We're glad you enjoyed it, and we also love the little owl noises. 😊🦉
Such a well-designed game! It introduces the idea of a citizens assembly while managing to stay fun and light on text. It's kind of wild that something so polished was made so quickly.
I love all the extra features that add playfulness. The owls are adorable and the ending dance sequence is great.
Thank you for your all your kind words and support, eileen! 💚
It would be easy for a game about making policy to feel dry. We really wanted to add features that were fun and playful while reinforcing core themes of community and participatory democracy.
The game is very polished and well-designed. Never thought that constituting the assembly and arranging the seats can be a mechanic as well. Love the cute owl animations and sounds too!
A small flaw is that voting was dragging out a little, and it seemed contrary to the spirit of democracy that the facilitator has an agenda of passing pre-determined motions (instead of accepting whatever the people decided). That said, this is probably as far as this theme can go.
Thank you! We wanted to experiment with different mechanics that would help people genuinely think about good group facilitation.
The question of what citizens' assemblies should be able to vote on is fundamental dilemma, both in terms of game design and in real-life citizens' assemblies.
In actual citizens' assemblies, there have to be constraints on topic to allow the facilitators to plan and the participants to focus on the subject at hand. We don't want them to be so open that participants can talk about anything, because that would make it impossible to arrive at meaningful agreements in a reasonable length of time.
At the same time, we don't want the parameters to be so narrow that new solutions are overlooked or that the outcome is predetermined.
In the context of this game, it's reasonable to want more freedom for the participants to direct the agenda -- one day is definitely not long enough to fully deliberate on topics like the climate emergency!
This game is so well made, honestly might be in the top 10 best games I've played even though it's still a prototype.
That's so kind of you to say! It means a lot to us -- thank you.
We definitely worked hard on this prototype. We also set aside time for testing, and got very helpful feedback from our playtesters!
Wonderful game.
Much appreciated!
omg the owls are SOOOOO cute!!!!
Thank you!! We also think they're really cute.
We knew that the idea of a Citizens' Assembly (and policy-making in general) could come across as intimidating to some people. So we wanted to make the characters as cute and inviting as we could.
I enjoyed the game too
We're so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing.
Very cute game! I enjoyed the mixture between education and entertainment. One feedback is that I'd love to have music for the dance generator =)
Thanks so much! Adding music to the dance generator is a great idea. We didn't include it in the prototype because we didn't have time to make it sync to the BPM chosen by the player, but we will include it in a future version.