Loose Ties
Loose Ties is a turn-based tactical game about deducing out who is at the party. Move through the house, chat to the guests, and dance to get a little extra attention. Deduce the personality of each guest by observing how they behave before the vibes turn sour! Can your social battery hold out for 4 wild nights?
Loose Ties was originally developed for the 2026 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. Thank you to the organisers!
Notice for 7DRL!
I've made some post-jam changes to Loose Ties, so it is no longer the version that was created in 7 days for the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. The original version can be accessed here using the password "7drl".
Controls
This is a pico-8 game so the controls will say to press O and X. These map to Z and X on the keyboard, respectively.
Leaderboard
Completing 4 evenings in Loose Ties may award you with a score. If you post a screenshot in the comments I can shower you in eternal glory by including it in this list.
(the original leaderboard can be found on the 7DRL version)
- Ferrum Krot: 187
- Jack Turps: 111
Credits
The character sprites are adapted from Loren Schmidt's phospher art pack. There's so much character in here, check it out!
Shout Outs
I wanted to include some shoutouts for projects that I drew inspiration from while making Loose Ties!
First up is Cinco Paus by Michael Brough. I think Cinco Paus is just brilliant and Loose Ties is largely inspired by the way that it uses hidden information to play in the negative space of a design.
Next up is (maybe obviously) Party House by Jon Perry and the UFO 50 team. Although I am complete butt at the game, I love how it expresses the knotted, entangled nature of parties.
Then there's Molly House by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle! Molly House combines hidden roles with parties to create really evocative narratives that can represent all kinds of relationships. That was a big influence here.
Walkthrough
I've recorded a really quick walkthrough of the first two parties, just to give a feel for how the game works and how you might approach some of the deductions. It is by no means required reading (:
The Fine Print
Because this is a deduction game, it can be useful to have a forensic understanding of the rules, so here are some clarifications of certain terms and behaviours in the game.
- a guest is any character at the party, including you.
- an NPC (non-player character) is any character at the party except for you.
- a guest is adjacent to something if they are one block away from it, orthogonally. That's north, south, east, and west, with no diagonals.
- a guest is alone when they have no guests adjacent to them.
- guest A is alone with guest B if guest A is adjacent to guest B, and neither guest A nor guest B are adjacent to any other guests.
- The same persona will never be assigned to two guests at the same party.
- Unless stated otherwise in their persona, chatting to an NPC will give them good vibes.
- All NPCs will move towards you when you dance, regardless of their persona.
If anything in the game feels ambiguous to you, please let me know and I can clarify it here!
Development log
- Small Numbers and Big Personalities18 days ago
- No Space No Energy35 days ago
- Boogie Juice37 days ago
- Foresight and Flirting38 days ago
- Party Pooping Parity39 days ago
- Scores and Wagers41 days ago
Comments
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MY 56 HEART RUN!!!! NOOOOOOO
btw, just watched everyone walk away all at once when the first guys timer ran out ;-;
Oh shoot, I am so sorry!! updates have been a little fast and loose lately, I’ll look at patching this first thing tomorrow.
Will put a commemorative entry on the leaderboard for the run that could have been 😔
(genuinely very sorry!!)
dude, it's fine, literally the run right after got me to 100+ xd
also, while you're fixing stuff, do you think you could check the energy bar? when base energy gets decreased, I think the extra energy bars stop displaying correctly
Both of those problems should be fixed now! That first bug was gnarly, only happens when a guest leaves while they're standing on the exit. Was a fun goose chase trying to reproduce it lol.
100+ is insane btw, nice work!
Hm.. Something wrong. I like the direction, but in the current state if you came to the vibekillers floor you are almost doomed with 10 hp at best and with every move it's going down. Ex now being buffed won't help either. I'll try a little more, but can't say at what possible max score we can hope now.
That’s very helpful, thank you!
In most of my recent runs the bad vibe rooms have felt doable because you can usually guess a bad vibe guest quickly to gain energy and then leave as soon as possible. The persona spawn rates are weighted now too, so if you get a very bad room it becomes more likely to get a very good room shortly after. I do think it’s too punishing at the moment though, trying to tune it to be more friendly now. The ex buff maybe have been a misstep lol.
If you do end up playing some more I’d love to hear what your rough win/loss rate is, that’ll help with tuning :))
(Just a side note on the weighted spawn rates - they shouldn’t affect deduction at all because only the possible personas are weighted, the actual personas are still chosen uniformly.)
Yeah. I can deduce someone like a loner quickly, but it gives 1-2 energy... and it still gives me bad mood every turn, so it can quickly nullify my energy gain while I'm trying to see who other guests are
That's fair! I have a couple of feelings about the leaderboard stuff.
I didn't want to get too specific with the scores while the game is being tuned. Even over the last few days, small changes to the game make big changes to the scores you're able to get.
Even once the game has settled though, I think it'd be good for the very top scores to feel a little bit impossible. For one, there's a chance that this pushes someone to break the game, which I would find entertaining. More importantly, the game is trying to create a feeling of chasing an escalating pleasure. I'm still working it out, but I think that players repeatedly failing in pursuit of a score that could be impossible might be a part of the intended thematic experience.
With that said though, once the tuning settles down I will adjust most of the scores so they're achievable!
Juust a little more
My best post-gossip score so far. The hearts are flying now 😎
On the other side the thing with moving pals while you are gray not wasting an energy now is a BIG saver for mobility. Also this one new Flirt party member did a huge thing, basically a jolly cooperator farming hearts for you. Especially when Empath and Peacock on the floor. Now those parties don't look like a meeting of moodbreakers with constant bad vibes from Hotheads, Gossips and Exes. So I like it.
Now you don't really have to worry about farm. You just guess the guest roles and move to the next floor while hearts adding by themselves. And don't forget to stay in better floors for a little longer.
Previous update was much harder. On this one I can feel most of the people can try hit for higher numbers.
Hell yeah, nice score 😎
That's some really great feedback, thank you! Afaik not being able to reach guests that are diagonal to you is one of the "spices" of traditional roguelikes (I think its usually called parity or polarity?). Its been really interesting figuring out how much of that spice to include.
Had also realised that making every party a huge bummer was pretty pessimistic, so I'm glad the vibes are better now!
Another small update today makes boogie a renewable resource. This should help out with the parity issues a little bit.
Yeah. Juice mechanic is nice. It doesn't really helps to break the game but gives that feeling of control.
You did a great job overall with all those updates.
Tysm! Have really enjoyed chatting about each of them with you :))
I pressed quit instead of continue :(
Oh no! Might need to add a confirmation. Still not a bad score!!
It could have been for the best anyway, if you fail a room the score gets discarded.
I know. But I had 60 energy which is quite enough for at least 1 more room.
For now scoring system is much more hardcore. For good. Before it was like a chore when you could allow to farm hearts on early stages and you knew you'll get full energy for the next stage. But now you need at least lvl 3 to start farming hearts or you'll quickly run out of battery, but higher stage means higher chance to meet vibe killer, even a whole floor of them, so you are constantly on the move.
Ah nice, I'm glad the new scoring is making things feel more intense! Thanks for letting me know.
I've just uploaded a new version which should (hopefully) be the last of the big system changes. The moment-to-moment tactics for getting hearts should be more interesting now.
first attempt at the new scoring system! chickened out under absolutely zero pressure
Don't stop me nooooow
Don't stop me
Cause I'm having a good time, having a good time
I'm a shooting star leaping through the skyyy like a tiger
Defying the laws of gravityyy
I'm a racing car, passing byyy like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go, go, go, there's no stopping meeeeeee
oh my god look at em go!!! im pretty sure thats the first ever 14100+, congrats!!
Just a little heads up, I made an update today that changed scoring and a few other systems. It should hopefully make it a little more open ended and engaging. If you do end up picking it up again I'd love to hear what you think :)
(I'll also keep a link to the original version on this page so it's not lost)
Oh my... Give me a break!
no rest for the GOAT 😔
Got new PB! There is nothing left to do except grind for hearts. So I'll probably won't.
Nope, still going
Number 2 on the leaderboard, nice one!!
I have some plans for a post-jam version that should make the score chasing a bit more engaging.
Nice concept. Good realization
tysm!! congrats on getting through it ((:
This really encapsulates the weird social games of figuring out one another at a party -- after a few rounds I was very much feeling the pressure of "oh don't pester this person too much or else everything's going to feel bad but also what is their deal???"
It's a good touch (and a challenge), too, that I'd often forget about keeping track of the party's vibes - by the time I would realize we were on the verge of a Bad Time the door was often too far away for me to leave in time. Reminded me a lot of trying and failing to extricate myself from a house party on its dying legs in my 20s.
Hahaha I know exactly what you mean, I really love being in spots where you have to decide whether you can intervene and fix the vibe or whether you’ve just gotta leave the situation alone.
I’m glad that you enjoyed the bad vibe meter thing! To be honest with you I feel that its one of the weaker parts of the design at the minute. The numbers get big and move slowly so it lacks an immediacy that I suspect would make the game and theme resound a bit more. It’s something I’d like to revisit after the jam!
Ty for playing! I hope the memories of your 20s were welcome ones (its about 50/50 on fun/embarrassing for me lol)
Mixing turned based movement and deduction is really interesting! I like how the movement mechanics and small map, very fittingly, makes you feel a bit “trapped” in this party. Also the “bad vibes” mechanic work really well at tying up the guests moods and the difficulty of the movement puzzle together. Really nice!
Thank you!! I’m hoping that moving through the party starts out awkward and claustrophobic and becomes a little bit more natural as you play. Something like a memoir to my gangly teenage self lol.
welcome to the leaderboard btw 😎
and the first leaderboard entry from my gf! (Lauren HS)
Here's where we're at 😎