Game by Erin McCarty, with some code from LibSDL.org: here.
I just want to make a game with sound. Give a little puzzle that is not as straight forward as most games, where it's easy to just plain get it wrong-- and guess what no do-overs unless you restart. You can honestly just miss parts of the puzzle, and if you do you could hear misleading information.
My concept for this game was torn between this idea and another. The other idea was to have other characters react to the player. The only interaction would be where the player stood would define the interactions the other characters had with the player. The goal of the game would be to find a happy medium with others reactions to you (I personally was going to have the main character be female and have the reactions range from "slut" to "virgin" all in a negative light. That's more media reaction that social reaction though.) . It would be the hope that the character would attempt to find a happy medium naturally without any game designer direction, though I don't believe the game would have an end. Unfortunately, I had a specific vision for how this game would look, and I do not believe I could execute it in less than a week. So I decided on this current concept.
Once I decided on my concept, I first added sound form SDLlib.org. I then added a mechanism for starting and stopping the audio. I then added more channels and had to rewrite the mechanism for switching between audio. I also move the audio ahead by a certain amount, but I only send one .wav file to the speakers. I made the buttons and added text. I created end states of winning and losing. Finally I wrote and recorded the audio. After plugging it in I had to rewrite the mechanism again because I realized I wrote it wrong. Finally I played through it and re-recorded some of the tracks to try to get the timing of switching between channels correct.
By itself it has the novelty of it's length: 2 minutes. With voice actors and a more in depth storyline, even a better method for conveying information than "thoughts" that come out like radio would be nice. Though initially I was inspired by Grand Theft Auto's radio as it was a very well developed and thematic aspect of the game, radio might not be the best tone. It would be interesting if GTA did decide to hide some gameplay radio elements instead of just a passive listening experience. I'm also surprised there aren't more mind reading games. The closest I can think of (certainly not a definitive source) is Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed, which just displays the type of character an opponent/non-opponent is. Or possibly the whole worlds of Psychonauts, but that's not really reading someone's thoughts either.
It is way too short to not feel frantic. The "clues" I leave are very simple: They always talk about the next person you're supposed to listen to. So in all 4 files in the the first 15 seconds they talk about Jo-- she's supposed to be the first one you listen to. Then they talk about another theme or a clue if it's the person you're supposed to listen to. The clues are not made as evident as they should be. I could've talked about the clues more clearly. Overall it's a tough game to figure out.
On a technical note-- the sound files are not all the same length but they all cut off at the same time. This causes clipping to longer files. Due to time issues I was not able to sort out this problem. Also, more than one voice actor would've cleared up some of the confusion issues.
I do think I reached my goal of you could just miss it. I attempted at least to give the player several chances to get on the right track-- everyone talks about Jo at first, everyone talks about the next character 30 seconds later, etc. But really, you could just miss it. With games like GTA there is no missing it. It will either re-spawn or if it's a mission you can come back later. Whether or not it's "fun" to miss it (probably not), and I'm sure it's difficult for the developers to make something people might miss, it is more realistic. It is extra incentive to be vigilant and get it right. It's a new challenge for gamers who might think they can just come back later. Though ultimately they can if they really want to...