Made for the Micro Jam 

Compromised Oracle was made for the Micro Jam #45, with two constraints:

• Theme: Miniature
• Prerequisite: Gambling Addiction
• Time limit: 48h

That combination gave me the concept: a miniature city on a table, you play as the Oracle, trapped in debt and forced to gamble to survive.

Brief lore dump

From the beginning I was sure that I'd make the game to be in the same universe as Adjudicator of Compromise. In fact, the concept of a compromised oracle, that became the name of the game, existed well before the game jam in universe. Oracles are something that exists in the world of the Compromise as tools of the Archbishop to predict disasters so that they can be prevented. But the other major player of the Day, the Mayor, uses various means to gain this information as well.

I won't go any more into this. If you're curious, play Adjudicator of Compromise which is basically just a lore dump disguising as a game.

The Map

This is the main set piece of the game and the thing that a lot of the praise for the game was caused by. 

This was obviously made before the game jam. I made no secret of it and preexisting assets were explicitly allowed. I have made many loose maps of Windermere before but this map took a few days to draw. Don't ask me why I bothered to draw it in two separate perspectives...

Locations

There are way too many locations...

1. Witch's hut      2. Vampire Court      3. Nightmare Woods (Werewolves)         4. Fields.         5. Morwen's Crypt (Undead).         6. Cathedral (Archbishop)         7. Townhall (Mayor)         8. Slums         9. Docks         10. Housing         11. Housing         12. Central Park (Dryads)         13. Housing         14. Casino (Mayor)         15. Housing         16. Housing         17. Botanical Gardens (Gnomes)         18. Market         19. Citadel (Holy Knights)         20. Beach         21. Power Plant         22. Containment Center         23. Housing         24. Travellers Lodge         25. Fisherman's Cabin         26. Outer Woods 

The readings appear in specified locations based on the reading. This allows the player to learn whether he should send the reading to the left or the right even before they open it.

There are a few curveballs but these can be figured out by keeping track of that level you're at on which chain. Some locations are especially important to Mayor or Archbishop and thus give bonuses. 

The Readings

Player earns their money and maintains their reputation by handling readings. The readings appear within their defined locations and give different amount of reputation/money from the Mayor and Archbishop. Sending the reading to the "optimal" faction levels the reading up along the chain, allowing the second reading along the chain to appear. 

Once the chain reaches max level the progress is reset on that chain and a massive bonus is granted at the end of the month.
Example of a chain from the CSV:

id,text,locs,mayor,archbishop
vampire_1,"Sharp fangs seen testing the curfew.",Housing_X|Fields|Slums|Docks|Casino,1,2
vampire_2,"A thrall skulks in the morning light.",Housing_X|Fields|Slums|Docks|Market,2,3
vampire_3,"A vampire noble walks the Day.",Woods_1|Housing_2|Crypt|Vampires|Fields|Park|Docks|Slums,3,4
vampire_4,"A savage feeding in broad daylight.",Housing_X|Slums|Fields,3,4
vampire_5,"A vampire looms among piles of bodies.",Containment|Townhall|Cathedral|Citadel,2,5

Debt and Reputation loss

The enemy of the game is the debt. You start with a huge amount of it, and the only way to realistically pay it off is through gambling. The income from the map stage is minimal and only serves as seed money for the slot machine.

Debt is also tied directly into the reputation decay system. The more debt you have, the faster the reputations of the Mayor and the Archbishop drop. This creates a soft time limit. Let the monthly interest spiral out of control and the decay becomes impossible to keep up.

So even though you’re playing the map stage to balance reputations to survive, that will never save you.

For salvation you have to turn to gambling.

Gambling

The slot machine is the core of the game. It is the only real way to clear your debt.

Your ability to see the future is what makes this interesting. You can actually see what the spinners will land on. This lets you make clever decisions about which spinners to hold before spinning. 

But there’s a catch. Once the slot machine appears, you cannot leave. Even if you see a guaranteed loss, you are forced to spin. And you can only bet everything you have.

The winnings are multiplicative, so to really cut down the debt you need to hit multiple big wins in a row. A single victory is never enough. Also most of the time you just get a multiplier of 1 so you'll just keep the money you bet. This sets up the game loop of the whole game: survive long enough on the map stage to reach the slots, then gamble that your foresight gives you just enough pairs to keep your money until you win big.

This instruction screen is dynamically populated from the code that contains the slot machine logic saving me loads of time.

Initial Feedback

Overall the feedback was incredibly positive and I was really happy to hear it. The art style received most of the positivity which made the little pixel artist in me incredibly happy.

The main negative feedback was about pacing. There was too much text in the map stage and too little time to read it. The map phase ended up being basically quicktime events with lots of text attached, which wasn’t probably the best idea I ever had.

I probably should've just made it that instead of text opening from the popup, it would've been just a faction icon, and the Mayor and the Archbishop would've been better at dealing with different factions. 

I'll think on it...

Closing thoughts

All in all, I think the game turned out great.

I wanted to make sure that the gambling was at least in some way skill based, and I think it ended up being so.

Instead of being pure luck, the slot machine is basically a puzzle.

What proves that it isn't a luck based game, is that I can win every single game with relative ease, but then again I do know all the answers. Also, I more or less know every text on every popup before even opening them since I know at which stage I'm at in any of the chains and I can see the spawn location.

This however made it impossible to try and balance the difficulty of the game and I believe it ended up being a brutally difficult game for everyone else.

So. I had immense fun participating in my first game jam and I learned a lot! Thank you to everyone involved! <3