SocialHack
It is year 2012. The game industry is in trouble: more and more people decide to not buy any video games, as they prefer to play free RPGs instead! These community-developed RPGs, called roguelikes, are extremely immersive, and have so much content that they can be played basically forever. While roguelikes exist for over 30 years, they have recently started to care about graphics and user experience, and attracting more and more people.
However, there is still hope for the game industry. Confuse the gamers. Embrace the roguelike word, but force it to change its meaning. Create games that are randomized death loops. Call them roguelike, under the premise that in roguelikes you have to restart when you die, so that these free immersive RPGs are drowned in the deluge of new "roguelikes".
The game takes place on a board, which represents the social network of gamers. Each circle on this board represents a gamer, and lines represent friendships. Most gamers are friends with just a few other gamers, but popular gamers (youtubers, journalists, developers, etc.) can influence lots of other people. Your goal is to forge new friendships in order influence the gamers to forget these Rogue clones, and embrace the new meaning of roguelike. Good luck!
This strategy game based on non-Euclidean models of social networks is a submission to Roguetemple's Fortnight. It is not supposed to be a roguelike (as in, feel like Rogue), just fit the Fortnight rules. It is just the fourth day of 14, maybe I will add something later. It is not very optimized (the map is re-rendered whenever you hover over another gamer) but hopefully it is fast enough. Post your scores and ideas in comments!
| Published | 6 days ago |
| Status | Released |
| Platforms | HTML5 |
| Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 total ratings) |
| Author | Zeno Rogue |
| Genre | Strategy |
| Tags | non-eucledian, Procedural Generation |
| Content | No generative AI was used |

Comments
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Game seemes to be broken, for me at least. Can't make a single turn, clicking on any player on the field does nothing.
If it works well enough to draw the map but you cannot make a turn, that is surprising... it should start as follows:
(1) show a help screen in which you can click "start game"
(2) show the initial map -- hovering over that map should move the green "+" sign and change the description below (if you are over something known)
(3) clicking on a friend of the blue gamer should move the "@" to there
Clicking on a small gray circle (initially, almost all gamers) does nothing (since you do not know how to reach there yet), I guess there should be some comment for clarity. If it is indeed broken, the browser console might contain some hints to help fix the issue.
The problem is with the (3) step. I clicked like hell on initial gamer (@), his friends, nearby (unknown) dots etc.
It may be connected to another browser window running in background - some games have problems with that, but usually on loading stage, not on clicking.
I also didn't check if my adblocker blocks interactions with your game, but I had no issues with it in relation to other games, so it may not be the case.
UPD: Nope, adblocker is innocent.
Browser console shows 3 following errors:
lib.min.js?1788777660:2 Unrecognized feature: 'monetization'.
xe @ lib.min.js?1788777660:2
lib.min.js?1788777660:2 Unrecognized feature: 'xr'.
xe @ lib.min.js?1788777660:2
lib.min.js?1788777660:2 Allow attribute will take precedence over 'allowfullscreen'.
xe @ lib.min.js?1788777660:2
That's actual gameplay dump, the moment when I can't interact with things.
My result on large hub seed 1, large hub is easier because it slow propagation.
I got a score of 898:4 on default seed 1, I don't think it can be improved.
Cool game.
My result on default seed 1, the short term strat is to always create link in 4 step between normal gamer and Roguelike fan, the long term strat is to fight contested big hubs just enough so that they stay neutral and to target the hubs that could allow Rogue clones to spread to untargeted gamers .
A very interesting game! Would be very cool to have a replay feature to see how the game has developed after the entire network is revealed, as before the end you don't see the entirety of what is happening. Also it seems to start lagging after I uncover a bit of the network, might be that displaying that many lines is taxing for my system
My best result at seed 1 large hubs, almost double the zero score. Seems like the giant hubs are not that worth it to forge extra connections towards. While getting one is definitely beneficial, due to how big they are your additional connections won't meaningfully change how it is developing, so it seems it is better to focus at medium-sized hubs, not the biggest ones but still big to be worthwhile
