Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory - isometric RPG based on the tabletop game

[thesecret1]

From what I've read, Paranoia was disappointing because it was Amateur Hour in every way e.g. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...the-tabletop-game.120722/page-10#post-6442420 and https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...the-tabletop-game.120722/page-11#post-6443852, not because it was a by-the-numbers RPG.

It was really shallow and overall shitty. Bugs everywhere you look, near zero interactivity or consequence to your actions... It just wasn't a good game and could only wish it was on par with a by-the-numbers RPG, since the few "original" mechanics they did put in usually turned out to be for the worse. "Amateur" is a pretty fitting description, though amateurs tend to at least have the passion in them to cover some of the most obvious flaws this game had. There was an occassional flash of potential, occassional good idea, but it was never implemented quite right and was plagued by bugs and shallowness of it all. Hope the IP gets picked up by a different, more skilled studio.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Hmmm... go figure.

 

[LESS T_T]

From a quest designer's website: https://rdbwork.wixsite.com/portfolio

Unfortunately a dispute between our publisher and the IP holder has resulted in the game no longer being available to purchase.

 

[newtmonkey]

I started playing this today, and am disappointed. It feels like baby's first RPG made for mobile devices, though some of the writing does get the feel of the original pen and paper RPG.

Some of the missions have good ideas, but the execution is horrible. The first mission has a somewhat clever joke (you are hunting a group of LARPers, because in the world of Paranoia they're considered a traitorous secret society) but plays like a linear dungeon crawl with the worst RTwP combat I've ever experienced. The second mission is a murder investigation that's completely on rails—there's even a part where the game has you split up and tells you exactly in which spots to place each of your team members.

It's apparently a very short game, anywhere from 7-12 hours, so I plan on finishing it. We'll see if it improves any, but I seriously doubt it.

 

[Salvo]

We used to have a thread if I recall correctly, not sure where it's gone
Anyway game's pure undiluted trash, don't bother

 

[Modron]

Hasn't gone anywhere besides to the bottom of the heap.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...metric-rpg-based-on-the-tabletop-game.120722/

 

[newtmonkey]

This game is absolute garbage, probably the worst game I've played that's not a complete buggy/broken mess. I got four missions in and couldn't stand it anymore.

- Text is slowly typed out on screen, and the game only displays a single sentence at a time. You have to therefore click two times for EVERY sentence. It becomes absolutely infuriating when you have to redo content.
- The story is completely linear, dialog choices basically just add "flavor." You can even choose dialog responses that seem treasonous (questioning superiors, etc.) but nothing happens.
- Every mission seems to be basically the same thing, run from room to room killing robots or people. There's hardly any variety, and the last thing I think of when I think of "Paranoia" is "linear dungeon crawl."
- It's only barely an RPG. No character building, no exploration, no choices & consequences. It feels like playing a broken real-time squad shooter with no depth at all.

If you die in a mission, your only choice is to restart from the last auto save, which is back in the hub prior to the mission briefing. You cannot save manually. If something goes wrong in a mission (and it will thanks to the pathfinding), you have to restart in the hub, go through the briefing again, select your team, go through the R&D briefing again, get your equipment loadout, walk to the tram to get to the mission, and then tediously split your consumables between each team member. Of course, you need to redo everything in the mission itself again, including going slowly through all the retarded dialog. The other option is to generate a clone (i.e. use up one of your extra lives). You can't rely on this too much, as your have only a limited supply of clones.

I can't stress enough how annoying this is. I'm fine with no manual saves during missions, but why doesn't the game autosave when you enter the mission area??? Why make you repeat the entire briefing process if you fail? It's a massive waste of time.

 

[Nutria]

If you die in a mission, your only choice is to restart from the last auto save

That's an interesting choice. In PnP Paranoia isn't it expected that you're going to get killed and replaced by your clones multiple times every time you play?

I was wondering how they would adapt the rules of Paranoia to a computer game but I guess they didn't even try.

 

[newtmonkey]

Nutria

You do have five clones, but those are your only clones for the entire game; if your sixth clone dies, it's game over. On top of that, the one time I chose to use a clone, it forced me to redo the entire character generation process and dropped me in the hub.

Generating a clone (rather than reloading) does reset your treason level, and is also the only way to actually improve your character.

I think they should have just gone full real-time squad combat with this one, where you don't even generate a character for yourself. Just select your team each mission, make the missions ultra-lethal but allow for instant cloning as the troubleshooters die, like in the PNP game.

 

[thesecret1]

This game is absolute garbage, probably the worst game I've played that's not a complete buggy/broken mess. I got four missions in and couldn't stand it anymore.

I did warn you...

 

[newtmonkey]

I did warn you...

I know, but I had to see for myself haha

 

[Ismaul]

Sounds like the worst possible version of Paranoia lol.

 

[Smerlus]

I still wonder what happened to this game.

As far as I know, Epic paid for exclusivity, the game tanked upon release and then disappeared from the store without much, if anything being said about what happened.

I would have thought Epic pulled it, told them to get their shit together and would have seen a re-release eventually but it's like they just said ,"fuck it" to the whole thing.

 

[thesecret1]

From what I remember, the game was building up fairly normally towards the release, with marketing building hype, etc. Then a deal with epic came through... and suddenly total radio silence. Marketing just flat out stopped and it kinda stealthily released without any fanfare. Then you started the game, and the impression I got was that the moment they got the epic money, they decided to simply cash out – cut the costs down to minimum (bye bye marketing), shit out some minimum viable product, and run away with the money. Given what happened after with the game disappearing from store etc. I assume Epic felt like they just got scammed by the devs.

 

[Abu Antar]

Paid article. Copy/pasted what's available for no-payers.
https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/...iness-is-mandatory-en-justice-3050848175.html

Cyanide and Bigben Interactive take legal action against the creators of Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory

If you remember Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory , released at the end of 2019 and itself based on a successful paper role-playing game, you are undoubtedly among the overwhelming majority of players who have learned of its brief existence in the through killer tests, such as the one published here. Two months after the particularly harsh words of Gautoz, who felt that " Black Shamrock and Cyanide were clearly not ready for release so soon ", the title disappeared from the Epic Games Storewhere it was marketed, without any explanation from the developers or the publisher. Two years later, it is through a legal procedure started by a complaint that we learn what really happened.

In the United States as in France, the legal proceedings rendered in the name of the people are public, and it is therefore by consulting the register of the federal courts that one can have for the first time in two years news of Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory . On October 22, 2021, Bigben Interactive (the company including the video game publisher Nacon) and its development studio Cyanide, filed a complaint in the American courts against the creators of the paper game Paranoia, Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan, on the grounds that they had it removed from sale shortly after its release. If we have not read the details of the complaint, we have had access to the recent brief of the two defendants, which is particularly enlightening on the relations between the creators of the license and the French publisher.

On September 6, 2016, Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan, holders of the license rights, signed a contract to adapt their role-playing game into a video game with the French studio Cyanide. While it was supposed to be released within the year, Cyanide delegated development to the Irish studio Black Shamrock in the summer of 2017, before being bought out by Bigben Interactive, which took over the contract on its own. After being postponed to April 2017 for the first time, the release of the game is set for the end of 2019, December 10 at the latest. If the distribution was planned under the terms of the contract on all PC distribution platforms, Bigben requested in August 2019 the agreement of Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan for an exclusive distribution contract on the Epic Games Store, dated October 3, 2019. Problem : this is the first time that the two rights holders are aware of the release date of the game, while they have, according to their contract, a right of inspection on the title, which can only be published with their agreement . The two creators therefore refuse to approve the publication of a press release on the imminent release of the game, and according to them, Bigben breaches the contract for the first time by leaving this press release all the same...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Huh, that's interesting.
If I understand it right, the IP owners of Paranoia basically decided the game was junk and didn't want to tarnish their brand by letting it be released?
But they released it anyways without consent, so I'm guessing the reason it was pulled was the IP owners complaining to Epic?

I don't see how they're being sued when they seemingly acted entirely within contract. If anything, it should be the other way around. The publisher is the one who breached the contract.

Isn't this the same publisher who was doing shady shit to Frogwares?

 

[Roguey]

Everything Nacon touches turns to garbage.

 

[Infinitron]

Good find, Abu Antar. I'll send that link to PC Gamer, let's see if they ignore me again.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Good find, Abu Antar. I'll send that link to PC Gamer, let's see if they ignore me again.

Why would you do that instead of pretending you discovered it and writing a codex scoop article?
dummy

 

[ERYFKRAD]

er, let's see if they ignore me again

And what if they do?

 

[Ismaul]

Good find, Abu Antar. I'll send that link to PC Gamer, let's see if they ignore me again.

Why would you do that instead of pretending you discovered it and writing a codex scoop article?
dummy

Exactly. Write the news article, link it to them, and let them quote you.

How else are we going to assert our authority as a prestigious magazine?

 

[Belegarsson]

Good find, Abu Antar. I'll send that link to PC Gamer, let's see if they ignore me again.

It's up

https://www.pcgamer.com/court-docum...appearance-of-paranoia-happiness-is-mandatory

Court documents may explain the disappearance of Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory
By Jody Macgregor published about 1 hour ago

The delisted sci-fi parody may have been taken down at the request of the IP's owners.

Two years ago, Orwellian sci-fi RPG Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory was removed from sale within weeks of its release. The reason for its delisting has remained a mystery, but a set of court documents unearthed by Gamekult may shed light on the situation.

The court documents detail a complaint lodged by publisher Bigben Interactive, AKA Nacon, against Paranoia's rights-holders in October of 2021. Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg, two of the creators of the Paranoia tabletop RPG, are named in the complaint, which is apparently about a breach of a license agreement.

Gamekult has access to the defendants' brief, and the gist of their defense seems to be this: Costikyan and Goldberg were contractually allowed to inspect a pre-release version of the videogame based on their creation, in which they reported finding bugs both large and small (apparently listing 74 of them). They requested the game be delayed, rather than releasing in its current state and potentially damaging the Paranoia brand. Nacon, which had already delayed its release multiple times, went ahead and published it anyway.

Costikyan and Goldberg, unhappy having their brand associated with the videogame, asked Nacon to withdraw it from sale. When the publisher refused, they went directly to Epic with a DMCA request (Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory had a 12-month exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store), explaining they were still the owners of the intellectual property. As a result, the game was withdrawn from sale on January 24, 2020.

The court case is ongoing, with the most recent document, which is from Friday, granting an extension. I've reached out to both Eric Goldberg and Nacon, and will update if I receive a reply.

Nacon has also been involved in a contractual dispute with developer Frogwares over The Sinking City, with Frogwares using a DMCA takedown to get their own game removed from Steam after claiming that Nacon had uploaded a "cracked and pirated" version of it without permission.

 

[Optimist]

I think it's back.

The sneaky re-release fits perfectly with the Paranoia meta.

 

[Modron]

I think it's back.

The sneaky re-release fits perfectly with the Paranoia meta.

Meh, from what I understand it needed more time to cook but zero chance there was further development during the years it's been unavailable for purchase. Does the developer still even exist?

 

[Zombra]

A few cursory searches reveal nothing of why this suddenly dropped. I'm guessing something happened like the Epic exclusivity window expired or whatnot and nobody ever flipped the switch to stop it releasing on Steam. Looking at the (2) Steam reviews and comments on the Steam forum give no indication that it was patched or improved in any way since initial release.