Consider it a Christmas present of sorts. That's a bit presumptious of me, maybe. But I had to do something special today.
ShowBiz is the work-in-progress title of a project more than a year old by now. The idea is simple - assemble a crew of animators, story-boarders, etc., and produce Saturday morning cartoons for mainstream consumption.
The gameplay of ShowBiz is modular. Several different systems play together to determine if you are successful or not.
Producing an episode of a show takes several different sorts of work, each represented by its own bar and colour. Your staff then spend time to fill these bars up by sending small process-orbs to the episode. Once the episode is done, you can release it (or work extra on it!), then see how it is rated by critics and the public.
The central challenge is about handling money. Your staff takes home a weekly wage neatly balanced close to the money you get for producing the apisode. You might also get a viewership incentive on top, once the episode airs. This can be invested into more staff, and perhaps, training.
This almost seems simple, doesn't it? Well, the rabbit hole goes further. As it says above - there is more stuff:
Money is just one half of the game - the other is quality. The higher level of proficiency your personnel has in a certain skill, the better quality the episodes produced become. For instance, the above episode is pretty bad. Quality 5 is the average for unskilled workers. The rating takes into account the quality together with how much work has been done on the episode, and compares this to what the publisher expected from your contract.
Skill can be gained by sending staff on courses, hiring more skilled staff, or allowing your staff to practice on company time. All thse things are expensive, of course. Quality does also depend on other factors than skill, such as what kinds of artistic techniques are researched and used when planning the season, how exciting the story is, how compelling the characters are, and if you actually manage to spend the right amount of time on each part of the episode process.
ShowBiz is the work-in-progress title of a project more than a year old by now. The idea is simple - assemble a crew of animators, story-boarders, etc., and produce Saturday morning cartoons for mainstream consumption.
The gameplay of ShowBiz is modular. Several different systems play together to determine if you are successful or not.
Producing an episode of a show takes several different sorts of work, each represented by its own bar and colour. Your staff then spend time to fill these bars up by sending small process-orbs to the episode. Once the episode is done, you can release it (or work extra on it!), then see how it is rated by critics and the public.
The central challenge is about handling money. Your staff takes home a weekly wage neatly balanced close to the money you get for producing the apisode. You might also get a viewership incentive on top, once the episode airs. This can be invested into more staff, and perhaps, training.
This almost seems simple, doesn't it? Well, the rabbit hole goes further. As it says above - there is more stuff:
Money is just one half of the game - the other is quality. The higher level of proficiency your personnel has in a certain skill, the better quality the episodes produced become. For instance, the above episode is pretty bad. Quality 5 is the average for unskilled workers. The rating takes into account the quality together with how much work has been done on the episode, and compares this to what the publisher expected from your contract.
Skill can be gained by sending staff on courses, hiring more skilled staff, or allowing your staff to practice on company time. All thse things are expensive, of course. Quality does also depend on other factors than skill, such as what kinds of artistic techniques are researched and used when planning the season, how exciting the story is, how compelling the characters are, and if you actually manage to spend the right amount of time on each part of the episode process.
Quite a lot of stuff is randomly generated, though most systems are quite simple and straightforward. The faces are perhaps the most sophisticated procgen system. The rest is pretty simple. A name generation algorithm, episode titles, probably some other stuff I am forgetting.
There are other, more complex systems designed by hand. Really, complexity is not something this game needs.
What this game needs
The game, as it is, does not really have any missing features. Sure, there could be some more emails, especially interactive ones. I also have a long-term goal to make each episode produced unique in some way, but that's still a ways off. The game could do well with some extra options of character development - or redevelopment, if the original character design failed. But those are peanuts.
One can, and I have, spent hours upon hours playing the game moreso than testing it. There is always something more one needs to do - just an episode more, and then this staff needs a course, and some more research - it is quite engaging, honestly. The time limits and the cash balance that breathes down your neck whenever you become overconfident. It really seems like a complete game.
The long-term balance is off. There are a couple of very finicky numbers, that describe the difficulty curve as the game goes past the first couple of years, and I honestly have no idea what they are like right now. If it becomes unbearably difficult, or rather, too easy, once the staff roster is figured out.
But that's at least a couple of hours in, so I feel confident sharing the current game. Though beware, it only works on Windows and has a native resolution of 1920x1080.
Some important keys that are not described in-game:
Ctrl-L to load a save file
Ctrl-S to save the game (though it also does autosave)
Ctrl-F to go from windowed to fullscreen and back
On that note, there is very little tutorial in-game. I guess that's why there's so much text in this blog. But click around, you just might figure it out.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqbyjsU9LS-JhbsjAsVj-nTTGrASfw
Have fun! Let me hear of your adventures!
What this game needs
The game, as it is, does not really have any missing features. Sure, there could be some more emails, especially interactive ones. I also have a long-term goal to make each episode produced unique in some way, but that's still a ways off. The game could do well with some extra options of character development - or redevelopment, if the original character design failed. But those are peanuts.
One can, and I have, spent hours upon hours playing the game moreso than testing it. There is always something more one needs to do - just an episode more, and then this staff needs a course, and some more research - it is quite engaging, honestly. The time limits and the cash balance that breathes down your neck whenever you become overconfident. It really seems like a complete game.
The long-term balance is off. There are a couple of very finicky numbers, that describe the difficulty curve as the game goes past the first couple of years, and I honestly have no idea what they are like right now. If it becomes unbearably difficult, or rather, too easy, once the staff roster is figured out.
But that's at least a couple of hours in, so I feel confident sharing the current game. Though beware, it only works on Windows and has a native resolution of 1920x1080.
Some important keys that are not described in-game:
Ctrl-L to load a save file
Ctrl-S to save the game (though it also does autosave)
Ctrl-F to go from windowed to fullscreen and back
On that note, there is very little tutorial in-game. I guess that's why there's so much text in this blog. But click around, you just might figure it out.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqbyjsU9LS-JhbsjAsVj-nTTGrASfw
Have fun! Let me hear of your adventures!
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