The Morality Meter

One of the many reasons we wanted to develop party animals was the lack of nuanced political criticism in the Philippines.  While we can be vocal critics of our government, we understand that running a democratic government is hard work.  And yet the majority of internet critics seem to think that politics is easy.  Politicians should simply "do the right thing" and follow the "will of the people".

We don't think it's that easy, and we want to show people just how murky things can become on the way to the Kapitolyo.  Party Animals is set during the campaign season in a fictitious animal world.  You play the role of an idealistic mouse that wants to change the way her province is run.  The ultimate goal of the game is to become elected mayor. To do that the player must run a campaign around the province, holding campaign sorties against their opponent.  As they travel across the province they will come into contact with different groups seeking the player's support for their different advocacies and businesses.  As in the real world, you cannot say yes to everyone, so the player will be forced to make decisions that will affect their campaign for better or worse.

Like Julius, I am a self hating hipster that designs on paper

A political game like that would be interesting enough in itself, but we've added a new wrinkle to challenge players even more.  Remember what I said earlier about people's expectation that their politicians simply "do the right thing"?  We question how simple that really is, so I added a mechanic called the morality meter to the game as another measure of success.  So for example, in some districts a smear campaign will work better than positive propaganda in gaining votes.  But running a smear campaign is certainly not "doing the right thing" so the player will be penalized with a loss of morality points if they choose to do it anyway.  The player can ultimately win a pure political victory, a pure moral victory, or something in between, but very rarely (if at all) both.  In this way I hope that every decision the player makes causes them to question themselves and what they are willing to do in order to win.  By the end of the game they will ideally have a better understanding of the perils of entering politics, but more importantly a better understanding of themselves.

The morality meter may be difficult to implement properly in the game, but since the game is not just about winning, but questioning what it takes to win, it is central to the game's design.  We may have to change how it works exactly in order to get a better balance or fun factor in the game, but I'm sure we'll figure it out down the road.