Making of game system

Game world
Inspired by Plague. Inc and the Angst style of story, Tama Tama Paradise is a reversed metaphor of social media. Meta-game wise, players' role represents influencers and operators of a social media platform. The player's employer and the true superpower behind the plot, P.I. Tech, represents the law of capitalism, which turn the operators into the personification of capital by rewarding the player with research funds (a form of capital). Players are encouraged to ignore the Tamas' subjective feelings, just like how social media operators view the data flow, instead of users' wellbeing as the most important KPI.

Tamas living in a petri dish is the abstract depiction of individuals using a social media product. Users produce valuable contents (Light Manna) to support others with the same side. Also, they send toxic contents (Dark Manna) to people they disagree with, wanting to eliminate those users. The surplus Manna, not taken in by a Tama, becomes the player's assets. A new user is open to information from both sides, just like a newborn neutral Tama can eat Light Manna from both subtypes. But as they keep receiving influences from both sides, they will turn into a member of the side who feeds it with relatively more contents (Light Manna).

Gameplay
To explore a better way of abstracting the schematics, different genres of games were created and tested. In these early prototypes, players' actions can represent the flow and coverage of a piece of information, group engagement, the distribution of attention resource, the behaviour of a collective.