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A jam submission

The MediatorView game page

Navigate a region through an era of tensions, negotiating with countries to maintain peace.
Submitted by ethyl — 1 hour, 12 minutes before the deadline
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The Mediator's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#7403.8703.870
Overall#10983.5893.589
Presentation#12413.6813.681
Enjoyment#15963.2173.217

Ranked from 69 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?
In most games about war, conflict, or politics, you usually play the role of the warmonger, or someone on the ground fighting against the enemy. However, you rarely play the reversal of that: the neutral party. You don't play Paradox games to play a historical game of Switzerland or to pretend to be the League of Nations or the UN. You don't play historical first-person shooters to negotiate peace. In this game, you are that neutral party, trying to prevent other nations from delving into war.

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

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 51 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted

Really nice game. I went full support-mode and instantly lost (lol) in the first try. That was fun to play.
Good job!

Submitted

Nice game and idea. It would be nice if things were made clearer at the start, but I understand how hard that would be. I love the use of country balls, as well.

:D

Submitted

Pretty cool idea, reminded me a bit of Papers Please. Some interesting decision making with the different effects of each choice. My biggest problem was that the interface with the papers at the bottom felt pretty buggy; I'd often try to click on one and it would snap the previous one I had touched to where my mouse was even though my cursor wasn't on it, making it hard to see the page I wanted to look at.

Submitted

Love the idea, a big fan of 'Grand Strategy' games.  Had fun playing and would love to know more about the development of the project, how it was made!

Submitted

Really nice game! Had fun playing although I am not really into politics!

It feels like a very finished game with the added music and sounds. Also I love how you implemented the papers please theme in here. I love that game!

I didn't get far but it is definitely worth continuing working on! 

Thanks also for the feedback on our game!

Submitted

Interesting take on the theme! This was fun to play, great work!

Submitted

Very fun and original spin on grand strategy games. It really makes being a peacemonger fun

Submitted

Great spin on the grand strategy and politics simulator genres. Also, amidst a bunch of fake countries one the territories being straight up named Poland made me laugh harder than it should have.

Submitted

Very neat idea, really like the diplomacy and resource management aspect!

Submitted

Interesting concept for sure, and very fun! Good job 👍

Submitted

A really cool game, reminds me of the game Lapse combined with HOI4.

Submitted

Didn't expect polandballs in this jam! Very interesting, with good visuals with the map and newspaper, and the concept of flipping HOI4 on its head was super unique. Strategy games tend to have very shallow diplomacy, so it was a good change of pace to have one entirely focused on it. Would be nice to have a few more events, but overall I enjoyed this game!

Submitted

This was a fun game! I would've liked it if the flags of each nation matched the color they were on the map, that'd make it a lot easier to remember and identify them. Also, in the news articles, when a territory of a country was mentioned, it would help if the name of the country owning it was mentioned as well. I like the map, but it was hard to read on my screen. The news articles had issues with the mouse as you said, but responded really well to touch screen input.

Developer(+1)

Well the territory's country is mentioned (once at the very end of the article if i remember correctly, making it pretty easy to miss), but yeah I ran out of time to customize the dialogue to make it clearer to players what is going on and whos impacted, but hey thanks for playing!

Submitted

Sure thing! It’d make a fun small game if you take it all the way to full release. I’ve a game similar enough to know this works, but different enough for yours to be unique, wish I could remember the name of that game

Submitted

Awesome idea and would love to see this developed into a game with much more depth. The map is also a nice touch! My only complaints are that the controls can be finnicky and for events that impact another nation, I couldn't remember what was the flag of that nation so I didn't know what their cooperation and power were at. But again, as a huge fan of paradox games as well as papers please, I really liked this!

Developer

huh, I never realized that flag issue (that would've been such an easy fix 😭), but thanks for the review!

Submitted

Very interesting concept. Seems like a cool idea that has lots of room to be fleshed out if given more time. Had a lot of fun

Submitted

These people just can't get along :D As a Paradox games fan, I appreciate the spin on the way these games usually work. With some more event types this can get even better. Fun game!

Developer

Thanks! I had a couple other events in the works (like uprisings if you said no to independence), but never got to fully implementing them

Submitted

Really cool idea, just seemed really difficult

Developer

Thanks! I added a section on the game's main page talking about not getting the good ending; check that out if you have time.

Submitted

A really interesting idea! I like it when people work with a theme they are clearly interested in. Id say that it wouldnt work as well if the theme wasnt so specific and original for someone, who normally doesnt care about history. I liked it!

Developer

I agree, there's definitely a niche here where just a select amount of people will find this game really engaging (like you said, people who like history, and generally people who play grand strategy games). Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Really good concept ! Maybe is little bit difficult ^^ otherwise it’s very fun. Congrats to the team.

Developer

As a team of one person, I appreciate that!

Submitted

Neat idea, but quite difficult. Is there actually a win condition? I thought enough states getting independence might be it, but couldn't achieve it. I believe the actions overall are net negative in cooperation, so it's always a matter of time until you lose.

While visually interesting the map doesn't seem to actually serve any purpose, I guess it's also thematically relevant to the "anti map-painting" premise.

Nice Easter egg that only Poland has its name unchanged for a Polandball game. And I had quite a funny moment when the first choice was Ardoirre asking for their 700k back.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

So there is a win condition, after 16 rounds of meeting with states, you automatically win (while I stated in the introduction that the coalition would last 16 months, i never got around to clearly showing the player time progression, so that's my bad)

For the map, I wanted to illustrate how your actions impacted the region, though there was a lot more in the works for what the map could've done (+ I had spent way too much time on it just to throw it out at that point)

Thanks for playing!

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 51 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page