Justice Pageant - Merciful God [ Done ]

[ham and brie]

I've modeled the whole of human history, starting from shortly after Adam and Eve got evicted from the Garden of Eden. It may not go entirely as you remember, but in broad strokes the important parts are there: people move, love, die, violently murder each other and pursue vengeance.

You are their god. It's thanks to you that good can exist.

Your divine power allows you to smite a mortal with a mouse click. So that others might live.

Try it out! :)

I hope that, while it has extremely simple, abstract graphics and rules, there's a bit of comedy in watching what happens and your efforts to help.

I think it's pretty much in a finished state, but I might want to make some tweaks yet, and I'd be glad to make changes in response to feedback. It's first time I've done anything in Flash so I ought to expect something to need fixing.

[Darien]

The first game I played, literally the third person was a murderer and killed both of the others like right after he was born. :-o

[Radiatoryang]

Love it, though in my first playthrough the first 2 never caught each other so it was really boring.

[Abel Toy]

I FEEL SO FRUSTRATED! Why are my creatures sinners? :'(

[Ian Snyder]

This is pretty neat. Would be cool if it output a graph of population over time at the end. I tend to deal with sinners by smiting all but a special chosen few, flood style.

However, my people mate like pandas.

I just had a game which reached a peak population of 9. I was down to the last two, who had journeyed from opposite sides of the map to meet each other. "Finally," I thought, "They can build the Utopia I know they deserve!" Nope. Murder.


I really want to see some iteration of this where the people actually go through a process of natural selection. Maybe a certain pattern of movement would lead them to others faster and so they'd pass on their genes. Maybe if you allowed a murderer to live, they'd pass on their murdering to their children. If your murderer mated with a person who was really great at mating, would you end up with black widow spider-people?

Really enjoyed this!

[elegwa]

I managed to get my population to 81, but people where murdering each other left and right so I cut the population down to three people. Two of the go at each other, and the one kills the other so I smite him. Then there was only one O_o. I left the game unattended. The population got to 4, then death. Ouch.

Edit: I got to 100 :O, It stayed there for like a second because it was getting harder to keep track of murder.
Also, I agree with Ian, natural selection would be cool, or maybe fear? Fear that god is going to smite me into the ground if I kill someone?

[Ian Snyder]

Hats off to anyone who can beat 133.

[Ed K]

24. Until my new mouse arrives tomorrow, I have the excuse of a trackpad ;)

Really nice thing. I think you succeeded in the goal of maximum emergent comedy (and tragedy?) for minimum pixels

[ham and brie]

Cool. Seems like the idea's basically worked out.

I'm really pleased by the response, so thank you guys for playing it!

The first game I played, literally the third person was a murderer and killed both of the others like right after he was born. :-o

Love it, though in my first playthrough the first 2 never caught each other so it was really boring.

I don't want to make those kinds of odd variations impossible (the firstborn of the original 2 people being the first murderer in particular seems rather appropriate), but on the other hand, it is bad for first impressions and understanding what's supposed to happen if the initial game played doesn't give the player a chance or is too boring, so I've updated with changes that I hope reduce that.

I FEEL SO FRUSTRATED! Why are my creatures sinners? :'(

You gave them free will, but were they grateful? No, not nearly grateful enough! They won't stop forcing you to punish them for what they do with it!

This is pretty neat. Would be cool if it output a graph of population over time at the end.

I've added a crude population graph.

Having characteristics passed on from the parents does make sense. I will try it out next.

[jbgh2]

Good fun! When the population gets large I had trouble finding the murderer and I end up smushing large parts of my population pretty much at random, which I imagine is how deity would feel!

My only confusion was the crosses: the text implied that a sinner had died but I was confused since they hadn't killed anybody. Then I realized it was ironic.

[moonmagic]

I really like this. Perhaps that betrays my fascination with setting up independent systems with simple rules, but I find the whole concept very satisfying. Nice risk / reward: I found myself holding back on killing sinners sometimes because I wasn't sure and didn't want to decrease my population.

[elegwa]

Awesome, I like the new population graph. It's almost amusing to see the dips of when I cull some people because I'm not sure who the murder is, and I take out a small group for the greater good of the population. (They breed like rabbits anyways :P)

[Diacritic]

Got to 140, but then there was a huge surge in murderers and it went back to 40. Then I got bored and caused "the flood" (aka kill everyone)

I really like this game. It's so satisfying picking out the murderer correctly when the population gets 100+. I like how the murderers often ran away from their sins, made picking them out more fun.

If a person attempts revenge (rushing towards a recent murderer) do they become a murderer themself? Or is it only once they do the killing? I once killed a person who I knew was going to have some revenge, before I killed the actual murderer.

[ham and brie]

If a person attempts revenge (rushing towards a recent murderer) do they become a murderer themself? Or is it only once they do the killing? I once killed a person who I knew was going to have some revenge, before I killed the actual murderer.

If they kill their target they'll count as a sinner and possibly be quite a dangerous serial killer. On the other hand, if you smite their target, they can calm down, become more likely to breed and keep any speed boost from when they started chasing the murderer. (the balance is rather ad hoc and there are a number of random rolls involved though)

[Stephen L (inactive)]

Tried this out. Found it quite good.

Dynamically, there seems to be a steady-state population of around 30? (i.e. when I do nothing the population seems to even out there)