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OK, I have to admit, I had to throw in the towel, after trying for a few dozen attempts. I may be missing some strategy/trick, but getting past 3 security guards was... difficult :D. I managed it once, reaching the boss, but, nothing seemed to happen? I guess maybe because I only had 17/20? I then thought that maybe I had to directly confront the boss, but walking into them just gave me a game over... Which I have to admit, kind of made me a bit frustrated :D

I then tried for about a dozen times again, but kept running into the problem of not getting past the 3 security guards barrier.

Still, I love the concept, one thing I'd maybe change, which affects both the message and the difficulty (although it could swing the difficulty too far into the easy direction) - make the people that follow you hinder security guards. Either they could outright block their path, or they could slow them down significantly when they walk through them. It'd help with the difficulty barrier at 3 guards, and also fits the message well, together we are strong, while at this point at least the main gameplay loop itself is a solo affair.

Still, good job! Glad this is playable now, I had fun with it and appreciate the overall message and theme :)

Thank you so much for playing and your comment <3

I will have to see how it ends up when finished, it may very well end up overwhelming after all 😅. But I am glad it seems to be the right amount of information in this concept :). Work on it will continue after the jam, with plans for at least 3 different outcomes for the ending.

Glad the atmosphere I wanted to set with the DOS-startup sequence worked out :)

Oh boy, this had me entertained for hours. Stubborn and fond of idle games as I am, I ran my head against the wall for hours - no success. Switched difficulty to easy - no success. Meticulously thought through strategy, tested which measures would scale the best, no success. Tried my absolute hardest to click like a madman to reach public transport as soon as possible - no success. Threw up my hands, saying to myself: "Okay, this seems to be unwinnable, but now I am curious if it's even theoretically possible" - activated an autoclicker, exploited lag from the clicks and holding space to make time flow as slowly as possible - still... yupp, no success.

... And, without spoiling exactly how it DOES work and how you can win and save mankind, when I discovered that one, I fully realised this was a 6/5 for me, personally. Genius, especially because there is additional messaging to how the solution might seem to a proper centrist.

Love it, the aesthetics and music also work really well and are polished. Amazing work!

Thank you for playing and leaving a comment, it really means a lot to me to have people play my games <3

That was some very good use of the text rendering and what the engine can do, also a good story, mixing a good amount of satire and stuff that just feels real. I like it a lot :)

It was quite a lot of fun! As for the glitches: The ones that ended up being annoying were picking up tools being quite fidgety, sometimes the interaction just didn't seem to work unless you repositioned yourself several times and the tool you are currently holding would often be put in weird positions on pickup, sometimes blocking my way out of the shed (I think this might have been because I was too impatient and moving while picking it up?). Also, watering and tilling sometimes seemed to follow weird rules as to which tile would be affected. Was playing the web version in Firefox on Linux.

This looks like a fun little Action-TTRPG, the over-the-top cyberpunky, world-of-darkness "try to keep your humanity" setting has some potential. Although, I must admit, reading through it, it was a bit too over the top for my personal taste. But the systems seem to be well thought out from having a look at the rules. I'd love to hear if someone tries this out online or IRL with some friends, I think it could be a cathartic little funtime stomping around.

Well, this is a fun little project that I could see myself doing with some fellow nerds. It can also be easily expanded upon, with more things that add/substract HP. Unfortunately, I haven't had an RPG group in over a decade, but I hope this gets some attention and maybe some people on an RPG Discord somewhere will add channels explicitly for it :)

Thank you so much for testing it out and giving such a detailed response, it really means a lot to me <3

I'll have to check out the Half Earth game, it looks really interesting, and I didn't know about it :O

I definitely want to continue on this project and will do so, although at a less stressful and slower pace. It will most likely be a few months before it's in a feature-complete state, but it will get updates after the jam, so stay tuned :)

I'm completely inexperienced in both art and music, so I am relying on (modified) free assets for art, and free assets for music. (Sound effects, I was able to get enough know-how under my belt to get some decent beeps and bloops by now). The music is an awesome music pack by Retro Indie Josh, check it out here: https://retroindiejosh.itch.io/music-pack-13 .I was lucky that there was a free music pack with old DOS-Adlib style music that I could use fittingly like this.

I'm also happy the art style is coherent enough to land :)

And yeah, the end goal is to make it a mix of a visual-novel like experience, and a political simulation, with ultimately aiming to be an "anti-economic" sim. You can read a bit more about the early development was in my devlog here. Basically, it was inspired by old economy sims that were hugely popular in Germany (and some parts of Europe), made by German developers that often combined dry statistics-heavy gameplay with a bit of life-sim stuff. Like Der Planer is one I remember from my childhood, where you manage a logistics firm and also your real life petit-bourgeois life and marriage, actually quite an ideological nightmare of a game :D. Also, one of the bigger ones was MadTV, where you manage a private TV station, setting the programmes to be watched, getting money from ads that require high enough viewer counts - all in an effort to make money to compete in a very basic dating sim with the CPU players to win the heart of a talking show host of a philosophy/culture show (which you impress by giving gifts and broadcasting intellectually challenging cultural broadcasts, which always tank viewer-count, but impress her :D ).

The whole idea of making a different status quo graspable beyond Utopian thought, with a more down-to earth scenario showing both everyday life and not shying away from challenges and possible contradictions is a bit of a pet obsession of mine. So, yeah, this is kind of a passion baby, it will definitely not be abandoned.

Thank you for playing and commenting! <3 And, yeah, the experience was designed to be stressful and annoying, while making progress still possible to reach the ending. Sorry about your hand, though 😅

Thank you for playing and commenting, it means a lot to me :)

And I'm glad this worked well as a caricature of service work.

Ah, I feel you on that, losing progress is so easy to happen and frustrating as all hell.

I was playing the web version in Firefox on Linux (Manjaro KDE), so, could be something with the compatibility there. Will try the downloaded version too, later, to see if the bug persists.

A really nice and tranquil, meditative experience. The music takes it - the dynamic changes especially were very atmospheric. I also enjoyed the setting of those old pirate radio stations.

One small thing: There was a bug where when you leave the broadcast seat in the back while keeping space pressed, it would continue to broadcast, but you could still drive and pump gas, sort of trivialised the challenge a little, but did not dampen my enjoyment, grooving out to driving down the endless road while broadcasting those pirate waves

Nice work :)

Wow, this is really, really good. It has a nice gameplay loop, and feels appropriately eerie and depressing, while also addicting to see number go up, helplessly accepting your position and starting to enjoy number going up.

If there is one thing I would criticise, it's that I was perfectly able to invest heavily into sustainable things and employee benefits, all while having absurdly high benefits of over 35% for a ridiculous amount of time. I think what would give this more of an edge would be to include rival companies that basically force you to truly optimize your growth instead of just growing, as is the dynamic within capitalism.

Also - the help butten never worked for me, unsure if it's not properly implemented or something went wrong on my end. It was also hard to understand sometimes, what makes the board happy - and it's regrettable a member of the board will never change their opinion once you reach full strikes on them (at least from what I could see), even as I stuffed their fat faces with dividends and profits.

Oh, and the aesthetics were also great, big props to everyone involved!

In summary - I love it, easy 5/5

It's a really cute and well-made game! I played through it three times, and unless there is another, secret ending (which there might be?) I think I got them all. I enjoyed it a lot, the writing and art was really good, and the interactions felt meaningful.

I guess my only criticism would be, that it only very tangentially relates to the jam, there is a little bit that I discovered, but unless I missed something big, it's more on the periphery. That doesn't change at all that this is an amazing visual novel.

Quite fun, has a bit of "What We Do in the Shadows"-charm! Am excited to find out what will happen next. Although, I must admit, I was a bit puzzled why Victor would not just feed but decide to go along with the demands for money.

Loved it, it's very much a short and sweet experience, and I adore how close to home and real situations it is. Indeed, anyone reading this should contact a union - even if you are self-employed or out of a job, having the connection is always worth it, not just for you, but for us all.

Okay, I tried three times, but I did not manage to keep the farm even once, phew, this is tough. I did get the nightmare, though, which makes me wonder if I did something wrong and there might be more content to get.

Either way, ignoring the glitches, this is a fun little take on the "you can't win" scenario.

Such a bittersweet and inspiring experience. People tend to really underestimate how much hope and creative energy was set free in the very beginning of the Soviet project, and how much of a complete and utter defeat it ended up being, a proper tragedy, when it became nothing more than another machine exploiting its people to accumulate national capital in the 30s. How would workers' clubs look today, indeed? I imagine them like a mix of an arcade+restaurant a la Chuck E. Cheese's, only without the commercialisation and a bit of a different focus, with a makerspace integrated into it. Maybe some kind of hostel facilities, too, for visitors.

Oh boy, now to head off for my amazing Ramen sponsored by Amazon!

Liked it a lot, can't wait to do this again in a few months when they come out with the next charger cable! The questionnaire was questionable though, some of the answers almost felt subversive and satirical!!! :O

That made me feel very unsafe, and I hope the next state-sponsored questionnaire will remove answers that could make me feel uncomfortable or like I am being challenged! Thank you very much for your consideration.

A really nice collection of excerpts and annotations! Chosen well and with nice, relatable additions. Really good job!

Really well done! The monotony and senselessness is on point. The art style is also quite nice and fitting well together. The only thing I could imagine adding would be that you can actually work up to the 500$ if you are insanely perseverant - only for the music to not be a way out at all, like getting a few cents more per day or something from streaming.

Like it a lot :)

Thank you for having a look at it, will continue to update in the future :)

Thank you again! That is weird - those strings certainly don't exist within the code, so either there is something really funky going on in the processing/rendering of the text, or maybe you misread by accident? Not pushing it onto you as your fault, just, that sounds like the most likely explanation to me at the moment. The font is not the most legible after all, and the gameplay is designed to induce additional stress.

Will have another look into if something might cause messing up rendering text either way, thank you again so much for the feedback! <3

Okay, I played for a little over a month and reached CYCLE GOD before I assumed there won't be any more progress :D

I liked it quite a lot, the monotony, the stress, the keymashing, the unthankful customers, my game is actually quite similar. Very good job!

Hey, I remember you, you made the awesome Camus Sisyphus game!

Love this one, could imagine this expanded as a full on museum-walking-sim, where the areas change over time, depending on where the player spends their time.

Good job!

Love it, very small, quick, simple - and the message is succinct and biting.

Without proper organising and consciousness, superficial anti-capitalism will always be marketable. #girlbossmoments #sotrue #yeahitsucksbuteverythingelsemeansgulagandterrordontyouknow #coffeewithoutcream

This looks quite interesting - can you leave a comment when it is playable?  All I see is "This game is currently unavailable"

I like the concept very much, reminds me a lot of my own game, actually! The buildup to the finale is a bit long and gets repetitive - and unless I missed something, I don't think there were any proper consequences for turning people away. That makes the decision to pay for them interesting, because it really is only up to the player's conscience, but it also kind of fails to deliver the idea I think. What could work well is keeping track of all the people you turned away and why they had to get through, and then confronting the player with a statistic at the end, like "before the evacuation, you caused 6 people to lose their job, 3 marriages to divorce, 5 cats to starve" or something like that, just showing how impactful limiting access can actually become, and how the person in the toll booth will eventually have no way of changing that, due to their own financial circumstances.

Also, I tried saving up money to cover people's payments at the end, but I was kind of sad that this wasn't an option.

But overall, I love "drudging through work"-simulators, and this was an interesting take! Good job!

I do like the basic idea, trying to imagine a world outside of capitalism's dynamics is I think always an important exercise. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the game - on the page with the final advice for the player, the text went beyond the bottom of my screen, and I was unable to scroll down. Also, while the overall setting and the ideas are interesting, I fear it might end up too removed from people's experiences to properly imagine this state of being - what I would have tried to emphasise more would have been a better exploration of transitioning states, and the organisation behind the scenes that makes it possible. That is just my gut feelings, though, I could be wrong about how people will view this. Either way, very interesting read and great project! :)

The artwork and music were amazing, the storytelling worked really well, building up the suspense. I had some small bugs in how text was displayed, but nothing that hindered the experience. I like it a lot, especially for your first finished game, this is great!

It's an interesting twist on a simple game, and the scenarios chosen were well thought out. If I had a working printer, I would have loved to print and play it with some like-minded friends. The explanation inside the rules about individual responsibility is an important touch, the only thing I personally would have added, is highlighting further that this very dynamic of "corporate greed" is not a moral failing as such, but something that develops necessarily from the mode of production, when you produce to extract value and are in competition for maximising it.

I like the aesthetics a lot - at first I was a bit confused on what to do, thinking it was a matching game where I'd have to line up matching emoji. At least if I didn't miss something, that's not the case, and you just have to get 4 on top.  That makes this more of a small virtual fidget toy with animations I guess, as clicking wildly gives you the same kind of success as thinking and manoeuvring does. That's no harsh criticism, though, because that does feel quite fun in its own right :)

Thank you for taking a look and giving feedback <3

I'll definitely continue working on it, but it might take a while - I definitely overshot the scope a tad bit for a jam project and overerestimated my own energy reserves when starting out. But it will continue to get worked on! So stay tuned.

Thank you so much for playing and giving feedback, really means a lot to me <3

Oops, I think I accidentally introduced the difficulty bug while pushing a small update right before the jam, will have to fix that one after the jam period, should be a quick fix. That's what you get for being tired and only testing the absolute basics 😅

I thought I had eliminated all the ways the customer interactions could lock up, will take a closer look, thank you for reporting!

The cheerful mix *should* only be referred to as "Crap" mix, I'm uncertain what happens there. Weird interaction that I haven't heard reported or encountered myself before, can you give some more details so I can look into it?

Again thank you lots for the feedback!

Ah, no sweat, it was a last minute question, after all. Good that I took initiative, then. Am pretty spent for the day, but am excited already to check out all the entries in the coming days :)

Hmm, there is nothing substantial I can change before the deadline anyway, I'll just go ahead and beg for forgiveness instead of waiting for permission 😅

So, I had been creating a game for Zeno Jam 8, which incidentally has a very well working theme for this jam, and have been working on a sequel for it to submit for this jam. Unfortunately, due to a bit of personal issues, mental health and inexperience/overambition (it's only my third game) in the sequel, it is not even half-done, stuck in a very, very "you can see some ideas but there is basically none of the main mechanics implemented"-state, because I got hung up on creating the fundamentals that will be necessary later in the background, as well as some initial stuff to set the feel of the game, in the time that I was able to work on it.

The game I created for Zeno Jam 8 was made almost completely within the time frame of this jam, as they overlapped, and the small update I pushed after that jam period was also within this jam's time frame, of course.

I'd like to still release what I have for the sequel as a rough prototype to present the idea, but I just realised I might just make both games entries for this one - so I can have a "proper" game, as well as a rough concept. Getting an answer before the deadline today would be appreciated of course :D

Thank you :)

Really enjoyable! So far, I got to the first boss, but I will try again for sure. I'm used to shoot-em-ups having slightly more agile controls, but it's only a matter of getting used to the way the ship handles here. The grappling mechanics are lots of fun!