Neato Veto Full Walkthrough

Neato Veto Gameplay

Neato Veto: Special Interest Walkthrough
Check out a playthrough where Special Interest groups are our number one priority (sort of like modern politics)

Jack O'Neal Contributions

Roles - Sound Designer, Designer, Writer

Contributions:

• Sound Designer
• Created all audio for the game, music and SFX

• Desinger
• Assisted with design decisions such as UI layout and writing tone
• Writer
• Designed and wrote bills
• Iterated on writing with lead designer
• Ran Playtests
• Assisted in other playtesting

Jess Ammeen Contributions

Roles: Designer, Artist

Contributions:

• Lead Designer
• Created Original Pitch/Refinement
• Designed Overall Experience
• Wrote Intro/Endings
• Primary (Sole) Artist
• Created/Designed All Visual Assets
• UI Asset Design and Creation/Iteration
• Wrote Playtest Survey and Ran Sessions
• Managed Itch.io Page
• Video Editor

Video Playthrough

Check out the new playthrough video for Neato Veto!

Kevin Dravet Contributions

Roles - Programmer, Producer, Designer

Contributions:

• Wrote all code in game.
• Did all QA and bug fixes in Unity/code.
• Implemented all assets into Unity.
• Created original digital design layout and helped design later iterations.
• Helped create some of the bills.
• Created and implemented some animation effects.
• Maintained game schedule and contact with team members.
• Wrote weekly updates in blog.

List of pre-made assets used in final build

None! We're original!

Neato Veto Final Build

https://catsnake-games.itch.io/neato-veto

Week 10 Update

Final post during development.

We have about 2-3 things left to add in the game at this point. They aren't vital portions, just extra elements to add if we have the time. Right now it's just looking for any bugs (many of which I've already fixed) and doing any final edits we feel would help.

Either way, I'm not gonna get anything done writing this, (yesterday was hectic, apologies for the delay) so I'm ending this post here.

buhbye~

Final Playtest Report

After playtesting, a few new issues have been brought to light. Most of the players were liberal and had a general understanding of how vetoes worked, so there wasn’t much to be learned from playing our game. Most of the players felt an above-average level of control over faction ratings when deciding on what bills to pass and veto, though almost every playtester ended up with Public Approval being their highest score. Many of the playtesters did say they needed to compromise their own beliefs when passing and vetoing bills, which was supposed to be part of the game. The main issues rest mainly with the aesthetic of the game. When it comes to the game’s font, the average likability rating was 2.6/5. When asked to describe the look of the game, we got several responses relating to our vaporwave aesthetic, but among the comments were “unfocused” and “hectic.” The response to the music was deemed “average”, predictably because it’s just the same chords looping. For the next build, we will try to solidify our intended image, make the game understandable in terms of legibility, and add more flourish to the sounds of the game.

Week 9 Update

After a weekend of pretty much all of our team being unable to work, we have surprisingly the same amount of work as we did last week: polish, polish, polish. After going through some playtest sessions, we have new data available to look over, but just from watching over the shoulder, things don't seem as bad as we assumed in terms of balancing the game.

Other than that, there isn't much I can say about what we need to get done this week. Just a bunch of visual flourishes and other shit we can think of to add into the game. With most of what we need to get done already planned out, hopefully this shouldn't be too strenuous of a week.

Week 8 Update

Now that the groundwork is laid, time for polish and edits.

We have a lot to do this weekend, and very little time to do it with most of our members being out of town, busy, and away from internet.

Things are looking bright though. We haven't hit any major speed bumps yet.

Everything will be perfect and nothing can go wrong.

Autobots, roll out.

Week 7 Update

After a hard week of getting the Alpha build ready for playtesting, we were able to have it meticulously torn apart and criticized over problems that were fixed the very next day. Still, we did get a lot of useful feedback, some of which we already knew and some of which are good ideas for testing. We have clear goals for next week and already have accomplished fixing some of the big problems in our Alpha. Now it's just forcing teammates to keep their deadlines (and forcing them to set them up). Today we will be meeting so I can show everyone on the team how the code interacts with the game and teach them how to make changes if they wanna test things. Hopefully we'll have more time for work this week.

Alpha Video

Link to video of the Alpha build of Neato Veto. Unfortunately, there's no audio:
Neato Veto - Alpha ver.

Week 6 Update

Thus, after settling on a vaporwave aesthetic and setting our individual courses of action, our heroes busted their asses like Hell over getting the alpha ready for next week and juggling midterms.

The good news is that this week, every member knows exactly what they need to get done for next week. The bad news is that it's a lot. We of course have our priorities in terms of what is essential and what can be left out if time doesn't permit, but have a lot we want to implement for getting user feedback. Below is our current schedule at the time of this post:

This schedule will be altered as time goes on, but the main things we need to get done for next week are in there (though more will probably be added or changed in the coming days).

And with that I need to get back to studying and completing midterms so I can actually work on our game.

Week 5 Update

After adding more functions and details to the digital build as well as starting on art and sound assets, we also created more bills over the past week and began to really organize them into categories to help with balancing the game.

However, this next week is the time for us to really decide on the aesthetic of our game. The setting is inside a VR headset simulation of the presidency of a fictitious country Schrankzania, in a distant future. With that in mind, we came up with aesthetics ranging from vaporwave, neo-futuristic, Matrix-like design, etc. Now we need to settle on just one style to build not only art assets, but also shape our bills. The subjects and wording of our bills, as well as the cultural-political landscape of Schrankzania, will need to fall in line with our game's aesthetic. For instance, vaporwave's surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology, and advertising of previous decades. If we decide on vaporwave as our game's aesthetic, we will need to model our bills around its meanings.

Along with editing current bills to resolve the above problem, we'll also need to sort bills into proper categories. This will take a long time to work out, but I think we can handle it if we just hammer each part out in a single meeting.

Week 4 Update

Things are finally about to start coming together.

After getting a reasonably good prototype up and running, with concept art and sound assets getting fleshed out, we finally have something to work on improve. We still need to have discussions on the organization and categorization of bills, but we have the basic tools set up. All that's left now is to improve on what we've started making.

In the next week we plan on improving the current build mechanics and art assets, as well as edit and create more bills to put in the game. We all have clear objectives for this week, but later we'll need to discuss how to further improve upon the game.

Week 3 Update

We've definitively decided to continue on our idea for a game based around vetoes. Currently we have a physical prototype and are making the jump this week to digital.

Playtests were positive but we've gotten feedback to simplify the cards and make consequences for decisions more tangible. We'll start experimenting with how to do this this week as well. Also, we'll continue writing cards and trying to balance them so the player has interesting, diverse choices to make during gameplay.

We have also decided to lean more into the satirical nature of our game, while keeping at our core the goal to teach players about the power and use of the presidential veto.

Week 2 Update

Just remembered we have to do this every Thursday. This is in the period of consciousness of Thursday so it counts.

As for game progress, we are still figuring out whether or not the veto game is a viable idea. I've been wracking my brain and consulting others, but so far I can only think we would just end up re-skinning Reigns in some way. We need a prototype by Tuesday so hopefully we can make a decision soon.

That's all for now.

Testing Testing 123. Catsnake Games is go.

We repeat:
Catsnake is go.