Domina

Domina is a gladiator management game. The graphics are definitely stylish (a very popular type of pixel art at the time) and the music mixes modern rhythms with ancient sounds in an unusual way. The game system is based on limited time and resources. Each day passes quite quickly and the player can only play a few activities. Training your fighters is important, as is winning in the arena and collecting prizes and resources with which we can better equip our gladiators and gain favor with the authorities. The battles are always risky, as no result is completely guaranteed and losing your best fighters is a tragedy from which it is difficult to recover, especially if you are defeated in battles between gladiator teams. Over time, your ludus will become more and more famous (in case of success) and we can compete with increasingly complex challenges, including participating in tournaments in different parts of Italy with increasing difficulty against other opponents. Last but not least, there's the touch of class as gladiators get drunk in the arena (if you insist on rewarding them with wine during training), weapons fired by the audience to help a fighter, severed limbs and the ability to post replays of duels on Facebook and Twitter. But Domina also impresses with an aspect other than pure gameplay or production values. Domina is indeed a title designed to be played in a stream and offers several moments of meaningful interaction with viewers. First of all, once the Twitch mode is activated, the game collects the names of the stream viewers and uses them for the different gladiators that the streamer controls during the game; both the first group of fighters and all subsequent newcomers will be identifiable as stream viewers. This alone takes Domina to a new level of audience interaction and entertainment. Viewers follow their character's story, request training, new equipment and call for action in the arena. Just as it has already happened in an unstructured way in games like X-Com (the streamer created the characters according to the viewers' ideas and wishes), it also happens in a structured and automatic way in Domina. But that's not all. In Domina, viewers vote on the various multi-choice events that the game proposes, using a similar mechanism to other "stream-based" games. And then you enter the arena and the fun is multiplied, because not only can spectators get involved by shouting cheers and insults (and thus determining other game stats), but if a gladiator gives up without being killed, they can also vote for death or life with the classic thumbs up/down.