Have you ever mentioned to a friend that you had a dream about an island, and then ten seconds later you see an ad for a trip to the Bahamas? You wouldn’t be alone, a ton of people have reportedly felt like the smart devices in their lives knew too much, almost like they were listening in on their conversations. What if someone turned that experience into a game?  

So let me start by saying Adpocalypse is not my “dream” game. It’s also not a nightmare, although the theme of the game is meant to reflect my feelings on the nightmarish world of digital privacy, targeted advertisements, the internet of things, and those totally not creepy digital “assistants”. The irony is that I’m fascinated with AI, so I had a strong desire to make a game with AI controlled NPC’s that were the focus of the players actions. Adpocalypse was born from the merger of those ideas. I imagined a game where the player took on the role of a digital assistant and spied on a family in order to show them targeted advertisements on behalf of some giant white wall company. The family members would go about their lives and comment on things, have conversations, etc. and you would listen in and develop a commercial block for them to watch. If you’re spot on, you earn money for the company, but the consumers become creeped out. If you’re way off, the consumers get bored and you don’t earn money. There are also different consumer types, so different people will want to see different things, and balancing that is a major part of the game. It plays like a strategy/memory game with a bit of a time crunch to keep things moving.  

Most of the devlogs I’ve read or watched seem to be started before any serious work on the game has begun. The developer is excited because the idea is fresh and fun, and commitments to a full release, weekly logs, DLC, etc. are flying around before the major design hurdle has been hit. That won’t happen here. I do have plans, which I will outline in a moment, but first and foremost Adpocalypse is a personal project I’m using to further my skills, and so I’m reluctant to declare anything specific about its future.  

Plans/Goals  

As said above, nothing here is concrete.  

• Release an alpha/demo level on Itch
• Using alpha feedback build a complete set of story levels (5 planned ATM) 

Ok so that’s not really a plan at all, but those are the goal posts I’m aiming for. I will release the demo no matter what, as that was always the point of this project. The “full” release will only happen if people are interested. And by people, I mean if literally any one person shows interest I’ll probably continue in the background until I have some MVP.  

Where the game is at  

There is a playable game level that has a win and lose condition. Everything is first pass stand-in art, the models, the UI, the animations, the music, everything. It’s all been done by me which has been a major roadblock, but again, I’m here to learn. The AI still needs work, as in tweaks to timing and variable values, not major overhauls or new systems. The flow of the game is…fine? This is hard to comment on because I’ve really only had one play tester. So let’s call that a work in progress. I’m reticent to place a percentage on the main system’s completeness, because that implies a time frame for the release of the demo. But the most pressing features that don’t exist are level transitions (fairly easy), story delivery (slightly less easy), and saving (please kill me).    

What’s next  

90% of my time is dedicated to art, so getting the look of the game nailed down is my next/current thing. After that I want to get the flow from main menu to game over screen complete, and next I’ll most likely work on some story delivery. Hopefully the next Devlog (uh oh, I made a loose promise) will be able to focus on my thoughts on a specific feature I’ve worked on. Until then, thanks for reading!