In a nutshell
CopQuest is a game about police brutality in America. The game narrative is based on real incidents that have been reported in current events but is rewritten to be a part of fictional plot line in a fictional town. We call our game a text-based adventure game with modern twist, the twist being that players interact with the game via a language understanding model rather than a simpler text parsing engine that looks for a very strict set of key words.
The game has been featured as a museum exhibit in Seattle called 8 bit history. At this exhibit, our game was the centerpeice and received a lot of positive feedback (8bithistory.org). We are excited to get this game into more hands of people that truly care about this issue. As of today you can play the game for free at www.vergeofbrilliance.com/copquest game, but we feel the game is too short. That is why we are currently running a kickstarter campaign and seeking investors so we can give this game the attention it deserves. We want to make a bigger, better, and more polished version and release on many platforms.
You can check out our video introduction to the game here:
Here is a link to our kickstarter campaign
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...lity-simulator
And of course a direct link to the game can be found here
http://www.vergeofbrilliance.com/copquestgame
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About CopQuest
"The shooting of Walter Scott became available on YouTube the day before our scheduled game jam... We pulled up the video and watched it and, of course, there were many emotions that erupted in the office that day. We were ranting: outraged and baffled. We laughed. You know, laughing that incredulous laughter that really doesn't indicate humor as much as it indicates confusion and despair. We laughed at how overwhelming evidence had to be on the side of law enforcement before any kind of justice or accountability could be seen. We were then given the theme of our game jam event: social change." -Evie
This is CopQuest. Its lighthearted where you wish it wasnt. Conflict resolution is almost always heavy handed. Its unendingly apologetic, sympathetic, and lenient to a system that is desperately in need of reform. No matter how many mishaps, things never change for the better.
That is the position of law enforcement in America and this game.
CopQuest is heavily influenced by old school game play of text-based adventures like King's Quest (or my personal favorite, Peasants Quest) but our text parsing engine takes it a few steps further with our own natural language intent-model. This allows the game to understand many of the various natural forms of written communication people use while playing. As long as you type your commands in the form of instructions for Officer Bob, we are going to do all we can to make sure that Officer Bob understands you. We employ data analytics that run in the background of our game that track the many ways people try to communicate in-game so the more people play the better our model gets!
Here are some images from the game!
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We hope you enjoy the game and share it with anyone you think would support our efforts. Thanks for reading!