• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS


"You won't live to see your thirteenth sun."

"Let's talk about it, hm?"

Your minions are defeated, your plans thwarted. The hero has come, and all you have left is words.

The thing is, you are good with words. Words are pretty much what you do best.

Can you talk your way out, or break that pesky hero and send her crying to her teammates?

Be careful, for this could be your final monologue.


Exeunt Omnes is a rhetorical strategy game, where dialogue is the battleground and you fight for your life armed with Logos, Ethos and Pathos.

Trigger warnings:
- evil teenage girls with a taste for dialectics;
- wacky takes on ethics and narrative theory;
- dissing Kant and Nietzsche for street cred;
- needlessly difficult to reach fifth ending and slightly esoteric UI because of the folly of youth.



Notice: Exeunt Omnes was developed in a month for the 2014 Indie Game Making Contest. It somehow got the Humble Bundle choice.

It is complete but short and was meant as a proof of concept for my homemade engine (based on Pygame, a Python SDL environment) which has been in development for a year or so. More games extending this gameplay concept, and hopefully making it more human-readable, are currently in the works.


CREDITS

Adam Hasvers (adam.hasvers@free.fr) - Programming, Graphics, Design

Doedelzak (benjamin.bouvrot@gmail.com) - Music, Playtesting

Latest Blog

Looking back, moving on

Over the past two months, I have demo'ed Exeunt Omnes at three events around New York, received a ton of feedback and learned quite a lot about what was wrong in the UI (from repeating roughly the same six sentences over and over again everytime someone got stuck :P). To celebrate this, I have just uploaded EO v1.03 with slightly streamlined controls, some rewritten text and most importantly, help popups if you select the "with tutorial" version.

Very few changes apart from that, so this is probably not reason enough to replay the game if you've finished it already, but I invite you to grab the new version you had only downloaded the previous one, or quit a few minutes in, cursing my lack of UI flair.

Tonight I will demo EO once more in Hoboken NJ, at a nice event organized by The Sheep's Meow. This should be the last public outing of this little game, and perhaps the last blog post on this page (?), since I am moving on to better and greater things.

Indeed, my next game is in progress, building upon the same engine. I have said very little about it on the interwebs so far, but from now on you will find regular updates here:

http://lilavati.org


Thanks to everyone who has ever shown interest in this game!
You really helped me find the motivation to pursue those things a bit more seriously.

If I ever become the next Peter Molyneux or Phil Fish, you should know deep inside that it is your entire responsibility. That should feel warm and fuzzy.

Posts

Pages: first 123 next last
This game crashes on me once I turn fullscreen. Other than that, rather interesting.
Thanks!

Would you mind sharing a few details about your system so I can try to figure out the causes of the crash? (which version of Windows and which resolution, mostly)
Windows 7, 1920x1080.
And the game is absolutely amazing. There are many rhetoric-based games, but they are all as shallow as possible. Really intriguing. Review will be coming soon.
Best game I've played here for quite a while.
Thank you so much!

Ever since I read Das Glasperlenspiel ten years ago, I've wanted to make something that you could both play as a strategy game or read as a conversation, and that would make sense in either case.
There's still a lot of work to get there, but Exeunt Omnes was a fun proof-of-concept for the system. There's a "real" game in the works, I hope you will like it as well (but don't hold your breath until it's done!)

As for the bug, I think I've found where it comes from. If I get it, I'll release a patch within 24 hours. Thanks again for reporting it.
I think for what it's supposed to do, it does it almost perfectly. Wouldn't know what to improve in this context.
Certainly looking forward to that one!
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
I like the art and the premise of this game. I'll give this a shot sometime.
Alright, gearing up to check this one out! You humbly didn't mention it in your review of Last Word, but you can't hide these things. XD
author=Ratty524
I like the art and the premise of this game. I'll give this a shot sometime.

Please do, I'll be glad to hear your thoughts.

author=Merlandese
Alright, gearing up to check this one out! You humbly didn't mention it in your review of Last Word, but you can't hide these things. XD

Hahah yes I was only half-subtle about it, but it would have felt mildly knavish to openly advertise my own game while writing about someone else's. Even if we have very little conflict of interest as we're doing quite different things with our common interests ;)(I will have to be more tongue-in-cheek and quirky in the next game though, it just didn't fit so well with my angsty philosophical teenagers).
I hope you enjoy it as well!
Your interest/knowledge of other "rhetoric" games clued me in that you weren't just casually playing games and happened to fancy bow ties and top hats. But also, I don't think I would have started downloading if you had overtly advertised your own creation.

Although, being that we have similar interests (seemingly) in this aspect of gaming I bet it was a bit hard not to have a completely non-egotistical "... What I did in my game was..." bit of commentary. XD I know I would have struggled a little to refrain from speaking about design experiences.

In any case, it just downloaded and I'm ready to shatter the dreams of young teen heroines!
I do happen to fancy bow ties and top hats quite a lot nevertheless!

author=Merlandese
I know I would have struggled a little to refrain from speaking about design experiences.

Even if that doesn't fit in a review, I'd still like that sort of commentary. A lot of things can be explained away by the rush of the contest, but there are many more I could have done better still. Who knows, we might find a way to combine our ideas and lay the ground for a new genre of perfect rhetorical games...
I just played this and it was lovely. Definitely the most inventive and thematically-appropriate rhetorical game I've seen recently. Some of the mechanics are a bit confusing and obtuse, especially since you're dumped into it with little explanation, but it was fun when I got the hang of it. I'm still not entirely certain how belief influence works, and what it means if you argue something you don't believe in? Being able to see numerical values for stats and belief values would be helpful. There were a few typos too.

(And bravo on dissing Kant, he's nuts.)

How many endings are there? I've gotten four (failure and the three exit topics). Is there one for turning "you will let me go" totally white?
You know, compared to other ethics, Kant's is fairly solid. Don't know why everyone hates him that much.
But it's a general fault that one takes a single thought and tries to make it his only guideline.
Haha well I guess everyone hates Kant because we always need to kill the father. Kant is such a perfect epitome of everything that came between Aquinas and Wittgenstein in philosophy that it makes him a great scapegoat.


argh> All my thanks! Claiming a statement that is mostly red for you simply translates to saying the opposite - it should become a bit more evolved than that, especially for the case when you're undecided, but the logical part of the system is a bit underexploited yet (it especially lacks clear indications of belief changes, right now it's as unsatisfying as RPG battles where you hit the enemy and you don't have that "-50HP" popup to tell you you were good!)

I wanted to try having an interface without numbers at all - even the numbers for emotional effects were meant to go - but I agree it can be frustrating, so I guess I'll make it an option.

And yes the final ending is for turning "You will let me go" at least 2/3 white, which requires a bit of the three branches. But it is perhaps a bit underwhelming, I rushed that ending to get it made before the contest end, so don't worry if you haven't got it. Or I can put up a short walkthrough of how to get it quickly, if you wish.
I'm not that good at reviews, unfortunately...

But I have to say, I really enjoyed this game! Quite the unique approach to game play. Also, starting the game's story where most stories end made this all the more interesting.
Thanks a lot! Don't worry about not making a review, your feedback is much appreciated in any case ;)
And yes the final ending is for turning "You will let me go" at least 2/3 white, which requires a bit of the three branches.


Ah, yes, I saw your tutorial post and tried doing that, but for the life of me I just couldn't do it. I could get it about halfway white, but no more. Ironically, despite being the most logical, "The world needs me" seems like a route to avoid entirely, since Hero totally disbelieves it, putting you at a disadvantage from the start. Walkthrough would be good, belief changes are still kinda confusing due to the lack of feedback, as you said.

Claiming a statement that is mostly red for you simply translates to saying the opposite


But does that have any mechanical impact, or is it just for flavor?

Anyway, some thoughts on the gameplay after watching my sister play: I feel like the topical radius mechanic is too limiting. I think I know why you did it - realism? Like, conversations have to logically flow from one point to the next. (And also probably because it would be too easy otherwise.) But because you can only use arguments once, it's very easy to move yourself away from an ending node by mistake and be unable to get back, especially if you reach the logical end of a route (like "what comes after this?" for Valley of Tears) but don't quite meet the stat requirements for whatever reason. I think it should be possible to freely move the topic zone as an independent action, maybe costing time, but it should be possible. It even has grounding in realism - it's entirely possible to say "Okay, let's go back to , I want to say something more." Awkward, but possible.

Furthermore, I'm not entirely clear on the meaningful difference between stats, and territory seems worthless if you aren't going for the final ending. They all increase "persuasiveness", as in belief change strength, yes? But empathy and face have other advantages (topical zone, time) whereas territory does not.

And, though you're probably aware of this, I think the argumentation mechanic would work better if I knew the characters better. At the start of the game, Villain supposedly knows Hero well, but she's a blank slate to me. I have no way of intuiting which arguments will convince her and which ones she'll reject. Case in point - I went for "The world needs me" as my opening argument on my first run, because the other two were personal and, since I didn't know Hero at all, those could backfire. But of course "The world needs me" is the worst argument to make because she totally disbelieves it, as opposed to the others where she can be mostly convinced.

This was very enjoyable, though, and I'm looking forward to larger game using this mechanic.
I'll update the walkthrough tonight (I need to make a couple screenshots inside the game for clarity)

Thanks a lot for your comments, those are clearly points I should improve upon!

But does that have any mechanical impact, or is it just for flavor?

For now it's just for flavor in the sense that you cannot be convinced by the opponent (it is a monologue after all ;)). In the larger game, both sides of any statement will be arguable and your own beliefs will be able to change.

I think it should be possible to freely move the topic zone as an independent action, maybe costing time, but it should be possible.
I agree that I should have done that, the reset to the center was a bit of a copout. There will be another solution in the future, actually: creating links yourself (that can be disputed) to move around the battlefield like Spiderman. There are a little bit more details in the commentaries of Kylaila's review.

They all increase "persuasiveness", as in belief change strength, yes? But empathy and face have other advantages (topical zone, time) whereas territory does not.
Yes actually they will have much more differentiated effects in the following. Among other things, you will be able to invest territory into certain nodes, to represent emotional attachment: if the node is believed to be true, then you gain a bonus proportional to your investment. This is the basis for Pathos: you will be able to push your opponent to invest affects in a node, so that they will want the node to be true even if logic says it is false.

I just played the game and it was really great! I got three of the endings( the bad one, the high empathy one, and the high face one) and I just now find out about the Logician ending, so now, I have another reason to keep playing it!

Altough, when I tried to get the low territory ending, once I selected the exit node, the game shutdown itself. Do you know why this might be happening?
Thank you so much :)
I just realize I forgot to put up the walkthrough I promised argh for the Logician ending! I'll do it right now. (It is really a bit trick to get)

author=Ilan14
Altough, when I tried to get the low territory ending, once I selected the exit node, the game shutdown itself. Do you know why this might be happening?

Darn, that's the first time I've heard of that bug... Deeply sorry about that.

Nah, it doesn't matter! I still enjoyed the game despite that.

Altough, I didn't found the Kant reference... I don't even know what Kant is... :(
Pages: first 123 next last