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[DDams]

A tiny game about loneliness and friendship.
You play as a talking blob who can contact his friends through phone or mail.
Will you manage to make the others blobs talk to you so you don't feel alone?

Play this game (Flash)

Please see "Help" section inside the game for detailled instructions on how the game plays, and how the others blobs will react to your actions.

Enjoy !

[EDIT]Seems I overlooked the forum's section (and rules) before posting.
Can a moderator please move this post to the more suited "Feedback" section ? Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience[/EDIT]

[Syrion]

I played it and I liked how it seemed quite a bit metaphorical. I had the impression that it is actually rather similar to the "art games" in that the simple gameplay symbolizes an aspect of life, but it doesn't seem forced at all, maybe not even intended.
Aside from that, though, as a game itself, I didn't enjoy it that much and supposedly didn't fully understand it. If the point is to get happy, is there any reason to react negatively to any of the other blobs? Still, it seemed to be a nicely strategical game about little decisions, as you can hardly make all the blobs react positively to you at the same time.

I tried your other game with the blobs, Creatures, and actually liked that more, as it just felt more appropriate as a sandbox game and it was rather interesting to watch the impact of new blobs with different attributes on the already existing group.

Overall, I like what you're doing with those games

[DDams]

Thanks for the feedback

I was clearly influenced by art games (especially Rohrer's and Increpare's) and tried to be a bit metaphorical about relationships throught this game.

In fact, the core goal of the game is to avoid loneliness, which you can achieve by making the other blobs talk to you. The others blobs tend to talk to either the persons they hate the most (when they are angry) or the ones they like the most (when they are happy).
So if you send them angry messages, they'll dislike you, and talk back to you. The opposite is true if you send them happy messages. If the other blobs are neither your friend or foe, they won't care about you, and won't talk to you. So to get a lot of contacts, the best "strategy" is to mix between people who like you and people who hate you.

Maybe I shouldn't have added score points for being happy, which seems to ruin the core idea of the game.

[aeiowu]

interesting game, I gave it more of a shot than I normally would have being that you're looking for feedback. I think that's an issue with the obfuscated rules though and the game's general lack of direction.

I had to read the help section, and even then I didn't quite get the method behind the madness. I guess with art-games that attempt to illustrate an idea through a system or set of rules, then those rules need to be pretty clear so they can be fully explored after one play-through. It's actually the exploration of the rules themselves by means of gameplay that often provide the greatest opportunity for a player finding meaning in the experience. If you can get this to the point that the help section is completely unnecessary, then that'll be a pretty good indicator that the game has a clearer focus.

As for specifics, I felt I had no reason to send anything other than happy messages to other people (like MisterX mentioned) and I also didn't really get proper feedback as to the consequences of those choices. If I sent out a phone message, I could only send one but it didn't feel any more powerful (no visual cue). Furthermore, why do I care if they are happy or mad? What's the rub here?

I think the game could benefit greatly by taking a harder line on the rules and providing the player with a greater sense of immediacy, however you do it is up to you though. I think you've got a decent basis here, you just need to reduce the sauce more.

[agj]

You need to consider what your message is with the game. Right now, the game communicates that there is no reason for being mean to people, because being nice means happiness for everyone. That's not a bad message, though it is an obvious one. In my opinion, you need to rethink the rules so that some struggle is necessary, at least, to achieve this happiness.

[Alec S.]

I think this game has an interesting idea, but I agree that there needs to be more explanation of the actual mechanics of the game.  Right now I don't really know what actual affect my actions have on the game or why I should choose one option over the other.  I think the idea has promise, it just needs a bit more focus.

[HybridMind]

I really like the style of this game.  The music, sounds, graphics, and idea are really great.  I feel that there is not enough information or feedback yet about how my actions or strategies are affecting the game.  I do not feel like the communication loop is closed that allows me to really engage or have fun with this game yet.

It is really nicely animated as you send the little happy and sad faces back and forth.  It has all the right things going for it polish wise but just doesn't make sense to me yet. 

I guess it seems odd to be asking for more feedback from within the game if I imagine I am you the developer I would think.. well.. I have all these great colors and expressions going on.  But I really just didn't grasp a strategy from the time I was playing it. 

Would be definitely interested to see how this develops and I really dig the concepts you are messing around with mechanic wise.  This may be tough to keep from feeling like a toy versus a game but only time and your goals will tell I guess.  I'm fine with liking either but would still want more feedback in either case!

Good luck

[DDams]

Thanks everyone for the feedback !

It's now clear to me that I need to rethink the whole rule system for a more meaningful game.

@Hybridmind: When you say that you feel that the game doesn't give you enough feedback, do you mean that you can't understand what the effect of your messages sent to other blobs are?
Maybe I should add some animations showing that positive message improves friendship when received, decrease anger, etc... (like in the Sims).

I'll try to work on a improved version as soon as i'll get some spare time, and post it here for freedback

[HybridMind]

@Hybridmind: When you say that you feel that the game doesn't give you enough feedback, do you mean that you can't understand what the effect of your messages sent to other blobs are?
Maybe I should add some animations showing that positive message improves friendship when received, decrease anger, etc... (like in the Sims).

Yeah, similar to other comments here I'm just not getting enough sense of the results or point of my actions.  I mainly just sent happy calls and emails to other blobs because 1) I wanted to try being nice and see what happened and 2) Couldn't see a reason game play wise to be mean.... 

EDIT:  and also.. those poor blobs are so cute that I didn't want to be mean to them..

It was confusing to me when they would be mean to me right after I was nice to them..    But not like that doesn't happen in life so maybe your simulation is good after all .. heh.  Perhaps you've modeled kindergarten...

[DDams]

Maybe I should add some blobs who only reacts to negative messages (just like people who only enjoy conflict and get bored when people are nice )

If I adjust the loneliness feeling rates (it increases automatically over time, but decrease when someone talks to you), it should give a reason for players to actually talk to mean people in order to avoid loneliness

I'll try this, thanks for the feedback !

[mirosurabu]

That's an interesting simulation of social interaction! At one point I thought that jealousy plays a role, but after reading the help section I realized it doesn't.

For example, if I send love to person A, and we have person B who's in good relationship with you but in bad relationship with person A, depending on her personality person B may respond to you with hatred. That might be a good idea for your system.

I'd really like to see this pushed forward. Like adding more messages to the system - like question, apologize, confusion and so on. (or I should just go and finish my old social simulations)