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OF MEN AND MASKS
Solo Dev

Push back against the Anti-Mask movement as along as you can in this parodic management game. Handle your population Anti-Mask sentiment and anger through news and police actions.

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DESCRIPTION AND RESPONSABILITIES

Made during my Bachelor 2 years, Of Men And Masks is the result of an unhealthy obsession with Procedural Rhetoric and everything that derives from it. While I was discovering Passage, September 12th and still gushing endlessly about Journey, we were tasked to create a small Top-Down game with the Covid crisis as the theme. And so I built this absurd management game where players have to keep a balance between the population's Anger and Anti-Mask behavior by influencing them through Media & Police means.

DEVELOPPED SKILLS

  • Understanding the importance of contextualized testing

  • AI Behavior & Pathfinding

  • State Machine pattern

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Unity

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1

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2 Weeks

YEAR

2021

GENRE

Management

Single Player

PLATFORM

PC / itch.io

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PROCEDURAL RHETORIC

Zoom on - Debates

SOCIAL BEHAVIORS THROUGH MECHANICS

IDENTIFYING CORE AESTHETICS

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In the case of using gameplay as a vector for a theme, I find the MDA framework to be quite handy. It helped me to start from a high level of abstraction before going down towards very precise rules that would support those aesthetics.

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But even though my pillar and goal were clear, transmitting complex social interactions through gameplay was tough.

  • "Damage control" => Players can only delay the Lose Condition (everyone going Anti-Mask)

  • System is the theme => Observing NPCs behavior and responses to player actions is the narrative
     

I had to streamline things without oversimplifying them, while retaining some depth to give players some margin for reasoning.

Considering the general mood at the time, I simply went for a vicious circle kind of Aesthetics, where everything the player does ultimately makes things worse.

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CREATING MECHANICS

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Ultimately, these five mechanics were at the center of my Vicious Circle kind of aesthetic.

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Anti-Mask Meter => The Lose condition (more than 80% of the population is Anti-Mask)

  • Constantly rise in relation to Anger Meter

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Anger Meter => The Lose condition catalyst

  • Constantly rise in relation to Anti-Mask Meter

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Thinking => NPC decides what action to make

  • The higher the Anger, the higher the chance of Arguing

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Moving => NPCs are getting closer to each others

 

Arguing => NPCs are debating with other NPCs around them

  • Interrupts all NPCs within Arguing reach

  • Debate result depends on majority of Pro-Mask / Anti-Mask

  • Anti-Mask Meter cannot go down for Anti-Mask NPCs involved, even if Pro-Mask win

  • Rises Anger Meter for all NPCs

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UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS

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That vicious circle aeshetic is what drove me towards Debate Clusters. NPCs would just wander around, and naturally gravitate towards each others. Each NPC can randomly argue with NPCs around them, and as such, the closer NPCs are with each others, the more likely they are to start a Debate.

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This was both fitting my need for a snowballing system, as well as representing both the sanitary and social aspects of my aesthetics.

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