Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher

While the concept of the game itself is an interesting one it is also hindered by the technical limitations. There are several arguments that could be made in the various debates but the game can only interpret your questions or objections in one specific way which leads to the game feeling very limited.

A good idea but a flawed delivery IMO, 3/5

Thank you for the wonderful review of our game! I would just like to point out a minor correction - Lock and Keychain is simply the name of my personal portfolio site where I used to host old versions of the game. We don't have a developer name and go simply by Connor Fallon and Valeria Reznitskaya.

As for Game Overs, I believe you get taken right back to the argument if you press Continue rather than selecting the chapter. Perhaps we should make this more clear.

If anyone has problems with the game or ideas for how we can improve it, feel free to contact us. We are always open to suggestions.

[Fixed! My apologies for the mixup. :) -Dora.]

I think this concept is great. My only real complaint so far is that I wish the protagonist was slightly more enthused about chatting with great philosophers. The idea of being able to hang out with important historical figures is so interesting that it's slightly distracting how little Socrates seems to care about the opportunity.

This game is very, VERY Ace Attorney. All it needs is a way to present a counterargument by shouting "NONSENSE!" into your computer's mic.

...I was hoping for a more diverse selection of debate topics, though. A lot of potential here is wasted. Maybe in the sequel...

I've gotten as far as the title, as must overcome the urge to yell it out while pointing at the screen. This is normal, right?

How do you get past Mills' second stage? I'm trying to find a way to question how we decide the governing laws of Rule Utilitarianism, but I can't find anything. Am I on completely the wrong track?

Oh wait, found it. Never mind.

Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher Walkthrough

Well, that was a pretty fun intro to philosophy game. I especially liked your Hobbes, although he was really more concerned with creating an efficient government than he was with morals. I think he even addressed your big flaw, but simply considered it an unavoidable consequence of his best option.

The others were also fun, although Kant made me crazy:

But in the end, I thought your final answer was insightful,

You should make a sequel where you fight Wittgenstein. Except he'd have to win, heh.

I thought it was really great overall! I was a little iffy around the second chapter, but the last chapter pulled way up. Bravo!

The Tutorial chapter gave me the impression that the game would be much more about debate than about philosophy. I was hoping that I'd be schooled on logical fallacies, so when it turned out to be a parade of classical philosophers my expectations were momentarily dashed. Picking out ad hominems and noting when a line employs circular logic would have been fun and educational. I wonder, even, if that had been the original intent of the game. The discarded mechanic of eliminating the argument by dismissing all the claims of the opponent gave me that impression.

I wish I could adjust the text speed to simply display all at once. There weren't enough situations where the timing of pauses in the text were meaningful. I found myself double clicking to speed up the text, and periodically skipping very short sequences.

I loved the music, though the exciting battle theme at the end of the earlier chapters didn't seem quite fitting because the hero really wasn't under the gun at any point except in the final chapter.

Once I accepted that the game was all about philosophers, it grew on me. As a person who isn't a student of philosophy, it was interesting to read snippets of presumably real-world philosophical arguments. The variety of the characters was excellent, with different personalities and some good running gags despite the short length of the game. While it'd take away from the concept of "debating real philosophers", original characters would have given more creative room.

The way the characters all made a reappearance in the last chapter and offered up their classical arguments was a brilliant touch. The finale was both inspiring and tied the whole thing together very neatly. The music was great, and the added flair to the protagonist's motions was noticed.

The Phoenix Wright reference was cute even though I saw it coming, and I liked the Batman vs. Joker argument as well. The jokes were consistently above average throughout, with good timing. The "Why does he ask for clarification of his own arguments?" joke at the end was especially thoughtful.

The tremendous number of "no consequence" choices was a negative to me. The game encouraged you to examine every statement by clicking all three examination buttons (Clarify, back up, relevance) to unlock all the possible counterarguments and clarified statements to use on them. The "Relevance" button also never worked like it did in the tutorial, though I can see why it'd be that way. Clicking it has no consequence, so you'd solve any elimination segments automatically. Usually it was easy to spot the statement that needed to be countered because it'd be the last one to appear by clarification, or would elicit a "That's interesting" from Socrates. Adding some red-herring clarifications to the later chapters would have helped. It was fun, but in the end I never felt like I was made to think very hard, since the answers were either obvious or vaguely connected.

On the same point, I'd love to play a sequel with lengthier levels, more focus on picking out clear contradictions or fallacies in arguments and more mundane seeming situations. A little more weight of consequence for bad answers (such as making a question of relevance risk damaging the player's health/credibility) would only work if the player has some more clear errors to seek out.

All in all a great game! The production values were reasonably high, and the choice of theme was strong enough to make it notably different from the Phoenix Wright games that inspired it. Hopefully the developers will make a sequel that uses the same protagonist but tries to improve the quality of the puzzles and present a new story!

I'm enjoying this, though not as much as if I had a leisurely afternoon to go through it and really nosh on it. Great for school break or home schooling ... IF those typos are fixed. Oh, every single time the possessive of 'it' is spelled with an apostrophe -- it's a travesty. Nails. Chalkboard.

I thoroughly enjoy the Arbiter's ^_^ face.

Now have an urge to watch some Fullmetal Alchemist or even some late-stage Escaflowne.

That was really really fun!

I love the Phoenix Wright template, the smart dialogue, and the whole concept. I would love to see a sequel.

In the spirit of the material, I feel the need to debate some of the ideas presented in the comments! ;-)

@ffivfan To a degree this in fact part of the *point* of his character, as well as that of Ari. At least at the outset, he has neither knowledge of who these people were nor the desire to learn. This is in direct contrast to Ari, to the point of her fangirling over Mills. His growing respect and interest in them and their views over the course of the game is handled well.

@Urian This was also a technical limitation of the Ace Attorney seties that inspired it (though as some have pointed out, more potential decisions could have been added, but to be honest, I'm not going to expect something like this to be as developed, either--given another year or two of development and embelishment, perhaps). Then again, this is also a technical limatation of pretty much *any* game--notably, those of us who are into RPGs are quite aware of the limitations of something running on scripting compared to a human-GMed version of same, where ideas that go completely off the rails can be answered.To a degree, an AI that could play the debater in such a game is the idea of AI programmers--of course the more paranoid in the world worry that one of the first questions it would ask is 'Why am I listening to you people again?' (Given we can't always answer that *ourselves*...)

I think it would be really cool if something like this were used as the basis for a full-blown ARG, where players can actually debate with human-controlled characters. That way you could have more freedom to address the player's points. But I imagine that would be very difficult to pull off well.

I feel like Micheal Gibson tried to make a Phoenix Wright game with anime graphics and this was born.

Press for backing on Mill's third statement in the "Rules that Promote Happiness" argument. DO IT. It made me laugh out loud.

Also I kind of love Ari. Can the sequel be about her? Please?

Oh no, dude. Oh no no no, dude. It's Auf Wiedersehen. Please don't make up German-sounding gibberish instead of actual German words. Particularly in an educational game. You can look this stuff up, just no. No.

@Shudog. Yeaaah. Believe it or not, somehow that one was never caught, we were not intending to make up gibberish. It's been fixed elsewhere, not sure how JayIsGames goes about updating their content.

Considering this game is about philosophy it's surprisingly fun!
I honestly think I learned more than what I've been taught at school.

And I love the humorous responses everywhere. I was disappointed that I can't say that Arbiter is ugly though...

Oh nevermind, the ugly option appeared now. :D

As long as we know that the author reads these comments... is there anywhere the soundtrack can be downloaded? I've grown fond of it.

Hi therevisionary. :) All you have to do is let us know when there's a new version if we don't spot it ourselves and we update, simple as pie. The newest version has now been uploaded.

@SonicLover Our musician is planning to upload the songs to an online album once he gets back from his trip. We will provide a link when it's available.

Nice! Thanks in advance; I'm a soundtrack aficionado.

OMG that was brilliant. Well produced (except for a few typos) and well written, and managed to keep both the philosophy and the narrative engaging. The logic was very satisfying, and didn't appear to be nerfed, and the credibility index gamified the arguments very nicely.

All educational games should be this good.

I was kinda dissapointed. as stated previously the 'relevance' button made me think i could 'disuade' comments from the arguements, but never once was an arguement thrown out.

Asidefrom that it was well made and i didn't find anything bad with it. Except kant. my head hurt from him :D

Actually, I found one time at the very end where you can question the relevancy of a statement and get it removed. It does nothing to help you win though, but it's satisfying to defend the dignity of accountants everywhere.

I enjoyed this game, and I'm glad that it avoided my fear that the game would unavoidably choose Mill's philosophy as correct from Ari's fangirling.

But man, Kant's is still hard to wrap my mind around.

NEINSENSE!

But seriously, awesome game. Philosophy has always interested me, and I love how this game picks apart these different views without bias. Excellently done :) I loved it.

Defining morality from within the frame of reference to which it is applied is like trying to measure something faster than light. Because our best time measurement devices operate no faster than the speed of light, it is impossible to tell apart things that are faster than light from things that move backwards through time.

Also, the game avoids addressing mono-theistically determined definitions of morality... probably because they are philosophically digital. God either exists or not.

@jwo7777777:

Well, a typical monotheistic argument is going to essentially be an appeal to authority, with the twist in that the appeal is legitimate in the view of the monotheist, generally due to God having made the universe. And once you start arguing about 'which God', then you are in theology rather than philosophy.

Another might first draw the distinction between Ethics (from the Greek ethos, regarding absolute right and wrong) and Morality (from the Latin mores, regarding what a society thinks is right and wrong). Then showing Unfortunate Implications of Ethics not existing. (If there's only Morality that is determined by society, what determines the society? The entire world? A nation? Something smaller? Why not an individual?) So then Ethics should exist. Add in the premise that Anything Mankind Can Create, Mankind Can Also Change, and then the source of Ethics must be outside Mankind.

Now before you go shouting NONSENSE!!! at me, I am not claiming that this is a watertight argument. It would have been interesting to see a monotheistic argument in the game, but I understand why it was not done.

I must say, I love this game. Although trying to find out where/when to point out the circular logic in the first chapter was a bit of a drag.

The worst part about this game: It keeps freezing, causing me to refresh, and sending me back to the beginning of the first salesman argument phase, even though it supposedly saves at the end of every argument. I think I have that sort of solved by refreshing my browser at the end of every major point. But that requires going back through the ad. It's a bit annoying. Not only did it freeze, but the whole square went gray and a little exclamation mark appears. Evil!

But other than having to repeat that stuff, I'm through chapter 1, and I'm mostly pleased with this game. 4/5. 3/5 if it deletes my data again.

~Dartania T.

*sigh*
Crashed again at the very end of Chapter 2, put me back at the prologue. Five minutes of clicking the right arrow key like one of those mad defensive shooter games. And it's not even the game's fault. The ads are doing the same thing.
However, you could fix this by having the game actually save at the end of every important argument rather than when you leave the page in a recognized fashion. Right now it simply allows players to go back to any previous argument if they fail the level, or want to revisit the amusing endings.
Seriously, though. Passwords would have been a better saving system than what it wound up as. At least it doesn't delete the previous refresh's data.

Anywho, I finished the game, long after I started writing this, which was about three hours ago. Yes, I've spent about four solid hours on this. And it doesn't even feel like time wasted. I like the final answer. And now I'm going to go look up archetypes via the word arbiter.
It would be time wasted if I were to go back through and fail each argument. It appears that every single piece has a different response, and most are quite entertaining.

After the tutorial, most of the hints the supporting characters provide aren't very useful, even though they make sense after you find the correct argument.

Also:
Some pieces don't make much sense. For example:

There should be a bit to each argument where you can challenge the item as a whole, instead of challenging one item which leads to challenging the whole.
For example:

Ironically, the one that was supposedly "The most challenging philosopher" (Kant) was the one I did without the walkthrough.
On side notes:
Whatever you do, don't skip Hobbes' epilogue. It's hilarious. And it's interesting how Ariadne's eyes turn red at one point. The graphics are really well done for a choose-the-dialogue game.
And Hilarious:

I really Just finished the game.
...
The credits list people for voices. All I heard was NONSENSE!!! and music.

In real debating, you can bring up larger points that debunk things in general, or you can debunk a paraphrased version. You can ask a leading question, "So you say 'blah'" and then debunk that. In this game, you have to find the specific piece you have issues with.
In real debates, one would lose credibility for asking for clarification on clarified statements three times in a row. I would just be afraid of embarrassment and getting off track.

It would be cool if the statement points during the argument phase were presented on notecards, so that it would make sense that you could go back and forth among them.

Unfortunately, with most of the people I have the misfortune of debating, either they accept a circular argument as an axiom and don't care that it's a fallacy, or they don't believe it's necessary to back up a statement, or I can't bring myself to bring final crushing blows to their faith in their specific religion. My ex-boyfriend once or twice got really upset about me not agreeing that his religion was the only true path to happiness. That's why he's my ex.

Ok, look. I'm really REALLY sorry for triple posting. But I forgot something(s).

1:
SEQUEL! SEQUEL! SEQUEL!
But not a completely linear sequel with Socrates Jones...
...
It would be extremely awkward to follow up his incredible feat by losing debates in the living world. Plus, I'd like to see the Arbiter again.

In the sequel, you can tweak the mechanics to have ...
... something like a string of notecards or a mental checklist with the statements on it.
... every correct counterpoint being determined by the apparent logical value, rather than brute force - clicking every possible answer. Like Sir Niko pointed out.
... more than one dead-end clarification, or questioning relevance, or requesting verification having some weight, but not nearly as heavy as the challenges.
... the conclusion marked out, perhaps only after requesting relevance.

Plots for the sequel could be someone else sent to this place, Ari debating in class, etc. But I really want to revisit the Arbiter. Totally epic.

On a side note, another type of game could be made with Ariadne and something to do with mazes, going with the whole namesake relations thing.

I hope I'm not forgetting anything, but I'm not going to comment anymore tonight.

This game almost made me able to stand philosophy, though it ran kind of slow so I didn't want to do a lot of trial and error cause it took so long to play. Half of my time was really waiting for it to load really. But it was certainly cute and seemed to know its philosophers.

The author has noted that the Socrates Jones OST is now available:

https://soundcloud.com/bleakprospects/sets/socrates-jones-ost

That's fantastic! I'm going to enjoy having this soundtrack in my...

...it's not downloadable. Nuts.

So I just finished Chapter 2, and I'm a little dismayed...the "winning argument" doesn't demonstrate any inconsistency within Protagoras's view of morality.

Overall though, I really like the concept of the game. Great job.

So sad that "Your face is ugly" didn't make a valid argument :(

I basically signed up after playing this game, just to say how much I love Kant in this game. This is a really, really cute game and I love all the character's personalities portrayed. Not to mention all of the references (and the fact that this is really reminding me that I should play Phoenix Wright again).

Now, if someone remembered trying to clarify Kant's second argument...

Overall, I do hope the developers of this game do continue on... Hopefully with a sequel with Ari? :D

Why is the Arbiter so adorable? ^-^

Really fun game. Makes me wanna play Phoenix Wright. If only I had money with which to purchase such things... Sigh.

I really liked this game. I loved PW:AA and this was very reminiscent. It had its own merits, though