Game Concept

Intro

It’s another election year, and the national debate between the two major political parties, Zombie and Pirate, is upon us! The candidates from each party must use demagoguery and loud shouting to win the hearts of the voters before the debate is over!

The player chooses to be either the pirate or the zombie. The computer player controls the other character. (I might add multiplayer-at-one-computer.)

Each player has a “Demagogue-o-meter” at the top of the screen, which shows your audience rating – how excited the audience is to vote for you. Whichever player has the highest audience rating at the end of the debate wins the game!

Format of the Debate

Each debate has 4 regular rounds, followed by 2 lightning rounds, and then 1 free-for-all. The regular round has a question phase, followed by a rebuttal phase, and sometimes a shouting match phase (depending on the rebuttal). The lightning rounds skip the rebuttal phase, and proceed directly from the question phase to the shouting match phase. By the time they get to the free-for-all round, all pretense of logic has been discarded, so that round consists only of an extra-long shouting match phase.

Question Phase

Each round, the ninja moderator poses a question or topic to either the zombie or pirate, alternating. The player who is given the question chooses from one of three answers, from a dialogue. The answer he chooses will either raise or lower his audience rating, based on how the audience reacts to it. (But, neither player sees the reaction until just prior to the shouting match phase.)

The reaction is classified as “woot!” (positive), “meh.” (neutral), or “boo!” (negative). The reaction is determined by the audience’s “bias”, decided by random at the start of the game but hidden from the players. The players have to watch the audience’s reaction and use that knowledge to predict the answer that the audience will like most. Players are therefore rewarded for pandering to the audience.

Rebuttal Phase

After the answering player chooses his answer, the other player is given a chance to offer a rebuttal. The rebuttal affects the audience ratings of one or both players (depending on strategy). The effectiveness of the rebuttal depends on how effective your opponent’s answer was during the previous phase (but, since the audience reaction hasn’t been revealed yet, you have to guess how the audience will react).

You can choose from three rebuttal strategies:

1. Mudslinging: ad hominem attacks against his opponent. Reduces your opponent’s rating proportionally to how successful his last answer was, but also reduces your own rating. But, if you’re ahead of your opponent by a lot, the audience thinks you’re being needlessly harsh, so your opponent’s rating actually goes up! Triggers a shouting match if effective.
2. Pandering: telling the audience what they want to hear. Ineffective if your opponent’s last answer was well-received (because then you’re agreeing, which is bad). Never triggers a shouting match.
3. Polarizing: disagreeing with your opponent for the sake of differentiating yourself. Very effective if your opponent’s last answer was ineffective, but ineffective if your opponent’s answer was very effective. Triggers a shouting match if very effective.

Audience Reaction

After both the answer and rebuttal phases (or just the answer phase if there is no rebuttal), the audience’s reaction is gauged, as described in the “Answer Phase” section.

Shouting Match Phase

After the audience’s reaction has been gauged, the round devolves into a shouting match. In this phase, the players must press repeatedly press the space bar to shout louder and louder to be heard over the other player, who is also shouting louder and louder. Each player gains demagoguery based on their volume level (high volume = more demagoguery). Whichever player is loudest gets a bonus multiplier on top of this.

After 20 seconds, the ninja moderator interrupts the shouting match, and the next round starts.

Winning

Whichever player has the highest demagoguery level at the end of the game wins the debate (and thus the game)!