Twitter Panic is an Atari Lynx  game made in a few days for the AtariGamer LynxJam 2022.

It is playable on a real console, or via an emulator.

Warning

This is still indev betaversion of the game .

Especially, there is no sound, and high levels and end of game may evolve before cart release.

/Warning

Theme wise, it is inspired by the story of a rather unknown social media called Twitter that used to get some influence in the late 10s and beginning of the 20's.

Gameplay wise, the idea came from the old Sega arcade game Bank Panic, where you have to protect a bank from thiefs. But as the Lynx do not have 3 buttons to mimic the arcade game, the gameplay started to evolve in another direction.

Of course, Papers, please has been a source of inspiration, even if the games have nothing in common.

The Donald Trump sprite is coming from Trump Clicker, I did not have time to replace it before the deadline.

Other ugly assets are made by me, and somme common meme have also bbe used for cut-scenes (in fact, there is only one cut-scene right now).

The story

You play as a fresh Twitter employee, in charge of moderation.

Level 1, aka the discovery

In the early days of Twitter, trolls were quite obvious, traffic was a bit low, so you only have to manage 3 screens. Denying a troll gives you money, of course, denying a non-troll will lead to salary cut.

Level 2, aka the rising

Then came the start of the success, you have 6 screens, but trolls are getting more smart, they start to act a real person, and troll only after a while.

Level 3, aka the Fake News era

Twitter is now getting more and more attention, and if there are still trolls, some people start to propagate fake news, they are not real trolls but tend to rewrite the reality. So take care to refute fake news... 

Level 4, aka the takeover

Twitter was bought by Elon Musk, one of the main poster of the platform. In addition to your moderator job, you must print your work from the previous month if you don't want to get fired.

Also, as he is the new owner, Elon Musk has the right to say whatever he wants, even trolling (of course, you will be blamed for letting a troll go public, but you would be more blamed to censor your boss).

Level 5, 

For people still on board, it was a brief moment of back to normality before...

Level 6, aka the microservices fiasco

In a big announcement, Elon Musk said that in order to optimise Twitter server, all unknown microservice will be dismissed after a while. Most people say it was the main reason for Twitter blackout. We just call it the end of the game.

How to play

Main menu: insert credits with B, and start with A button, the more credits you put, the higher score you will start in the game

Ingame: move your crusor with DPad and press A button to activate action on a screen (deny a tweet or read a mail) or printer (print a sheet).

Thanks you for playing this little game, I hope it gave you some minutes of fun.

Usually all games from the LynxJam are packaged and sell without benefice on a real cartridge during spring. Check K-Retro and Yastuna Games for previous years cartridges.