Sillypolitik
- Lev Working
- Oct 22, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 10
Game Overview
Sillypolitik is a single-player card strategy game where each card represents an important institution in a society, such as a Treasury or News Agency. The player competes against a heuristic AI for control of these institutions by funding illegal activities and exposing their opponent's efforts. The art style features a mix of art deco, 90s graphics, and surrealism.
Sillypolitik is the Fractal "Fan Favorite" award winner for the year 2025. You can download the game here: Sillypolitik by Lint Trap Games
Above: The Official Trailer for the Game
The Story
Rufus Krieg is a laundromat owner and a Harvard political science graduate from the town of Bungleburg. One day, after taking some nondescript pills, he hallucinates a man who calls himself 'General Kapusta' who insists that Rufus must take over the world, starting with his homeowner's association.
My Role
On this project, I was both the team lead and gameplay designer. Initially, I wrote and presented the pitch and recruited students to the project.
Sillypolitik started out as an idea kicking around in my head in the summer of 2023: I wanted to develop a political simulation game that let you pit rival parts of government against each other. I whipped up a crude prototype in Unity, of which nothing remains except this peculiar, pixel-lacking screenshot:
In August of 2024, I took Game Dev practicum, a Purdue course that boils down to get a team and go make a video game. Prior to the class, I wrote up a GDD and pitched the idea to my friend Mack, and he signed on. Together, we shared the game concept with the class. The concept resonated with people, and we had so many peers interested in the project that we had to turn people away. Our producer and 2D artist, Anna Fulton, was the first to join the project. I trusted her skills in both of those departments and was happy to have her on board. Below is the final roster for the project:
The Team
Member | Role | Link to Their Work |
Lev Working (Me) | Team Lead / Designer | You're here! |
Anna Fulton | Producer, 2D Artist | |
Mack Moore | Lead Programmer, AI | |
Steven Ho | Programmer | |
Camden Gain | Artist | - |
George Abrahms | UI Designer | |
Samuel Clouse | Audio Designer | |
Owen Fischer | Composer |
Design Work & Philosophy
My initial priority was to set up the core gameplay loop in its smallest iteration; Since we were doing top-down design with having our concepts and themes first, we needed to create that base so we could start programming, and so that the team was in agreement on the concept. Starting with some vague inklings about card types, mechanics about corruption, I crammed for five hours to make a complete idea on paper, and made a few of the early levels. The team met, and regardless of role, playtested the design heavily so we could eliminate some of the biggest problems with the game.
Mechanics
Absence of Life Totals & Zones- One of the more unique choices we made with the game was to have player's winning and losing tied to having control on cards. This is both the most distinguishing features of the game and also the hardest to design around. It meant that imbalanced design could lead to an instant game loss, far in excess of games like Magic the Gathering or Yugioh.
The lack of hand, discard, and draw zones also firmly categorize this as a puzzle game rather than a deckbuilder, which made design and programming far easier, but also reduce replayability.
Economy & Loops - In order to be interesting to the player, this game requires a lot of looping values, flows of funding and corruption for the player to take advantage of.
The biggest example of this is the Tax ability, which collects a flat amount of income from corporate cards and redistributes it to government cards. This gives players a couple of strategic decisions that might not otherwise be there. If the player tries to win through corporate income, a card that Taxes is a huge obstacle. If the player is trying to win through government cards, they might privatize their opponents' cards.
Compromise with Practicality- One of our game's major goals was to create a heuristic AI that could competently play the game, and that requires limiting the scope of design. Some ideas that are fun and evocative were cut because of their difficulty to score.
Narrative
Contrast, Gradients - This game represents follows the descent into absurdity and madness of a protagonist that is devoured by his ambition, who loses his grip on reality as a result. Consequently, names, dialogue, places, and mechanics must grow stranger and more complex over time.
Architecture
Modularity- From the start, we used practices common in the software industry, especially inheritance, and overriding to ensure that. For example, all abilities in the game, activated or passive, card or player, inherit from the same component class, and then have its functions overrode as necessary.
All of the level and card designs are managed through spreadsheets, allowing easy balancing changes and creation of new levels.
Leadership
Communication- Many interpersonal conflicts, integration issues, and differences in vision, occur due to a breakdown in communication. When I perceived a difference in opinion or vision in the game, I created small, informal meetings between team members to bridge the gap. I also worked to be transparent about largescale design and scope decisions.
Autonomy - Due to the team being very talented and experienced, I sought to place only necessary requirements, and for aesthetic considerations especially only offered my opinion rather than demands. This resulted in most team relationships being frictionless, productive, and rewarding.
Below are some relevant documents:
User Research
For some other classes, I had the opportunity to conduct a research project on how effectively users were able to understand our game's tutorial and UI. This led to necessary and significant improvements to player onboarding.
Below is the PDF of the report I created.
Programming
My programming responsibilities on the project were rather flexible and ranging. In the early parts of the project, the most important system I created was Ability Activation - which needed to be both compatible with the User Interface, and easy for the project's AI to understand.
The system I settled on was one that was mostly controlled through an array of structs called TargetRequiredData, which would let either the UI or the AI know what information was needed, whether it be card references, a text choice, or an integer amount, was needed in order to activate a card ability. When activated, the ability steps through the array until all necessary information is gathered, and then calls ChildAbilityEffects.
Aesthetics & Shaders
Taking on a more tech art role, I learned how to make a basic cartoon and outline shader for the game levels. With what I know now, I could do a much better job (and have, on the Worlds Collide project), but this is where I learned those initial skills.
I also made the scrolling landscape for the Main Menu, and the dialogue visuals for when characters are talking to each other Metal Gear Style.
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