I see it's not a randomness problem but a lack of clarity problem. I designed the Filibuster to not be obvious what way, or how much it changes the vote but you do make a good point that it hurts the message of the game. The difficulty is definitely unintentional, like I said when I play tested the game. It seemed fairly balanced but I created it and knew all the bills by heart so it wasn't really a good test. For example, you mentioned the "Make stealing catalytic converters legal again bill" which is actually considered an anti-auto subsidy bill because car owners have no course of action but paying for a replacement part if their catalytic converter gets stolen, or at least that was my logic. If I were to have made this game again I would have put a little message at the end of each bill saying what it was or at the very least made it obvious what bills are for or against political positions.
Once again, thank you for sharing your opinion with me. Feedback is the best way to improve.
Thank you for the honest review. I could pretend the difficulty was intentional and claim that it's meant to show how hard it is to be a senator, but in all honesty I just didn't have anyone to test the game but myself. The filibuster, however is meant to be somewhat tedious because that's how they are in real life. The way filibustering works is that the longer you do it, up to 2 in game hours, it increases the odds of a bill passing in your favor, but it's never guaranteed because I wanted there to always be a chance of failure. I feel like that made my game unnecessarily difficult, I will not include such heavily luck based mechanics in my future endeavors.
You leaned more into the Thalassophobia than the calming ocean angle of the other diving game. Reminded me of my first time in Dark Bramble. Truly terrifying what you managed to accomplish.
It feels janky, but in a way that feels intentional, sort of like Job simulator. It emulates the stress of a service job and once you get used to it it's very fun.
Truly impressive what you all were able to accomplish! I could see this being a full fledged game! There are a few times I got caught on the geometry, but that wasn't really an issue until the final level. The ambiance and the Arctic Eggs inspired graphics are perfect! The best submission I've played yet!
The game looks great, and the audio is good, but the spring mechanics are too janky so I can't beat the third level. Maybe it's just my computer though I know how it can be with these things.
The mechanics could be a bit better communicated, perhaps if the fish flashed a color when damaged, loved the snowball effect of the upgrade system where you go from barely being able to catch a salmon to wiping the entire screen in one go.
