Demo.Graph
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2018
- Messages
- 1,010
I've stumbled upon a small indie game called Spinnortality (from political spin + immortality). The game is presented as an evil corporation simulator in a near-future cyberpunk setting. Here’re the links.
https://spinnortality.com
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ality-a-cyberpunk-management-game/description
And here’re my thoughts about the game, in case you care.
Go, guys. Play eet. It’s a rough precursor gem that still has a potential to disappoint you greatly.
https://spinnortality.com
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ality-a-cyberpunk-management-game/description
And here’re my thoughts about the game, in case you care.
First of all, it’s not a corp simulator. While there’s an income-expense statement and you kinda play as a CEO, it’s only a visibility. Your corp has no assets-liabilities, no internal structure, there’re no financial markets, currencies and commodities, no monetary policy and other things that probably should exist in a real business sim.
It’s a kind of a tabletop worker placement game with periodic CYOA random events that sometimes trigger event chains through several turns. The game is about spending labor hours to make new products then selling them with a right marketing twist to several map areas (more of a points, actually, there’re no areas per se). Map areas have sliders representing consumer preferences (security vs liberty, tradition vs novelty, etc.) and your corporation’s income depends on you being able to target each area with a right kind of marketing twist. It’s basically “fill the hole with a right kind of cylinder” kind of game, but mixed with a satirical product descriptions that trigger my asperger tendencies in a right way. Then you throw money to media or politicians to alter those preferences in a way you need. Each area also has a set of laws that block selling more profitable products to them (dem americunts don’t want no new designer kidneys, it seems), but you can always change some of those laws by throwing even more money to politicians and waiting a little.
And that’s how you slog through the game: click to sell more and more useless shit, then rip their tinfoil hats off of them so that they would want to bring you even more money. Then you gather resources to get yourself a right mix of agendas (achievements with built-in game bonuses) to win. That’s it.
And it’s pretty addictive. I sunk about 5 hours into it last night.
The game has some arbitrary limitations (like not being able to hire more than 5 workers of the same type simultaneously). Its design is sometimes sloppy from mechanics’ (clickfest is atrocious) or fluff consistency perspective (you can make superhuman cyborgs and AIs, you can grow yourself a new body to become immortal, but you can’t upload your conscience into a superhuman body or server station... and the game world is randomly generated so Mid East in 2060 often turns out to be more democratic and prosperous than Europe).
The game is still in a demo stage (free download from a link above). Full game will be available in February, it should cost 20-30 bucks. It’s developed by a single Austrian guy.
It might be one of the handful of games I've bought over a past dozen years. We’ll see. I don’t like some game design decisions made during kickstarter stage of its development (Why change a menu-like agenda system to a more gamey progression-like one? And I’m still waiting for those designer superhuman-and-a-dickgirl-cyborg clones with corresponding random events and negative modifiers to public opinion... Dominions 5 has 3 thousands events and it’s a fucking wargame, not a text-based sim!). And there might be troubles with game pacing and balance. But I’m pretty hooked.
It’s a kind of a tabletop worker placement game with periodic CYOA random events that sometimes trigger event chains through several turns. The game is about spending labor hours to make new products then selling them with a right marketing twist to several map areas (more of a points, actually, there’re no areas per se). Map areas have sliders representing consumer preferences (security vs liberty, tradition vs novelty, etc.) and your corporation’s income depends on you being able to target each area with a right kind of marketing twist. It’s basically “fill the hole with a right kind of cylinder” kind of game, but mixed with a satirical product descriptions that trigger my asperger tendencies in a right way. Then you throw money to media or politicians to alter those preferences in a way you need. Each area also has a set of laws that block selling more profitable products to them (dem americunts don’t want no new designer kidneys, it seems), but you can always change some of those laws by throwing even more money to politicians and waiting a little.
And that’s how you slog through the game: click to sell more and more useless shit, then rip their tinfoil hats off of them so that they would want to bring you even more money. Then you gather resources to get yourself a right mix of agendas (achievements with built-in game bonuses) to win. That’s it.
And it’s pretty addictive. I sunk about 5 hours into it last night.
The game has some arbitrary limitations (like not being able to hire more than 5 workers of the same type simultaneously). Its design is sometimes sloppy from mechanics’ (clickfest is atrocious) or fluff consistency perspective (you can make superhuman cyborgs and AIs, you can grow yourself a new body to become immortal, but you can’t upload your conscience into a superhuman body or server station... and the game world is randomly generated so Mid East in 2060 often turns out to be more democratic and prosperous than Europe).
The game is still in a demo stage (free download from a link above). Full game will be available in February, it should cost 20-30 bucks. It’s developed by a single Austrian guy.
It might be one of the handful of games I've bought over a past dozen years. We’ll see. I don’t like some game design decisions made during kickstarter stage of its development (Why change a menu-like agenda system to a more gamey progression-like one? And I’m still waiting for those designer superhuman-and-a-dickgirl-cyborg clones with corresponding random events and negative modifiers to public opinion... Dominions 5 has 3 thousands events and it’s a fucking wargame, not a text-based sim!). And there might be troubles with game pacing and balance. But I’m pretty hooked.
I wanted to make a screenshot AAR, but in the end I just couldn't gather enough bile and patience to tell you a story about DJ Trump Junior who had built that wall after all. Here's some more thoughts instead.
