Obfuscape Overview

Obfuscape is a modern-day implementation of the browser games of old. Taking design ques from games such as The Impossible Quiz, WarioWare Inc. and the obscure japanese flash game Math Brain Training to become ⑨ Cirno , the player is presented with a series of prompts, in which they need to either complete a pattern, play a game of rock paper scissors, or answer a basic arithmetic question. The twist being is, at alternating times, the user needs to either win or lose the game, and they have a very limited amount of time to do so before the game changes and they’re forced into the next one. Players will aim for endurance and try to get a max score before they run out of lives.

The games story is set in a fictional near-future where AI assistants mediate almost all human-computer interaction. Within this system AIs make phone calls, compose messages and answer queries, automating most of the social tasks that users primarily use computing devices for. The player’s goal is to compromise the machines that known misinformation agents use to spread lies, and re-train their AIs to become too dysfunctional to be effective, and undermine their campaigns.

The game loop consists of the player given a single prompt with two potential answers to a question, and the prompt box is colored either green or red. Depending on the color of the prompt box the player must answer the given question correctly or incorrectly within the given, limited timeframe.

Outside of the narrative elements the gameplay also stands on it’s own in two varieties of play, either through a single player endless mode, where players try to answer questions in rapid succession without failing, or in pass play mode, where users (particularly mobile, though this can be played through remote desktop software) pass devices around when prompted, given a bop-it or hot-potato style game play loop of fast pace brain-teasing puzzles.

You can read about the making of the game, as well as asset credits, here

play it at https://inanefool.itch.io/obfuscape