My goal was to make a game where people have to cooperate and that scales well with different amounts of players. To ensure cooperation, the game would feature two radically asymmetric roles: the Shooter, which can attack but dies to a single hit, and the Defender, which has no offensive capabilities, but whose shield can absorb any amount of damage. In the center of the games are the Cores which the players have to defend. Enemies come in from all around the screen and try to destroy the players and the Cores, whatever is nearest. The enemies’ projectiles are heat-seeking – they will always hit something, so without the Defenders, the Core and the Shooters will be destroyed rather sooner than later; but without the Shooters, the defenders could not destroy a single enemy.

This was a jam game done in about 12 hours and everyone around me was busy, so I there was no way I could balance it properly. I solved that dilemma by assuming the role of the game master: I would sit at the keyboard and spawn enemies.

Apart from troublesome connection problems, the game worked rather well for a jam game and the crowd loved it. Here is a video of the presentation:

The video was filmed by Iwan Gabovitch and the sound effects are from the fabulous Universal Sound Effects which I can very much recommend.

Connection problems aside, I am very content with how the mechanics worked out and I think there is a lot of potential there. I will probably revisit this prototype some day and make a proper game out of it.

With 16 participants making 3 games in groups of 4, we had a lot of different approaches.

I remember:

• Communicating intent via naming the game.
• Instructing the players to move via rhythm.
• Demonstrating the game via theatrical improvisation with team members as game props.
• Singing a short song before the game begins which contains hints to how the game should be played.
• Trying to get across how the game is played by setting it up properly or having pieces whose usage should be clear.
• Leading the game by having team members interact with it, resetting the game if played improperly.
• Preparing an informative display out of props.

Some approaches were more successful, others… less. But all of them were pretty fun for both players and creators!

And now, here are the games I participated in:

Animal Jacks

Throw a stuffed hamster into the air, try to grab as many other animals as you can before it touches down. Then it’s the other player’s turn. We tried to communicate the instructions by alluding to the game Jacks.

Team: Owen Bell, Nicole Pacampara, Hope Erin Phillips and Tobias Wehrum

Blowing Spinners

Twirl your spinners, blow them into the goal area and try to knock other spinners out! We demonstrated the game via a theatrical improvisation using team members as game props.

Team: Grayson Earle, Dawn Hang Yue Wong and Amanda Tom and Tobias Wehrum

Human, Farm Animal, Dinosaur

Rock, Paper, Scissors in its most exciting variant! We tried to get that across by making a little display with props and arrows.

(Interestingly, players thought that the display was part of the game and manipulated the props. Thinking about it, that might make a fun game mechanic if used properly.)

Team: Jessica Blanchet, Peter van Haaften, Titouan Millet and Tobias Wehrum

I did make one game this week though: Chronic the Hedgehog, an Urban Game on escalators about persuading strangers, made in about 1 hour together with Jessica Blanchet, Grayson Earle and Titouan Millet.

(Video taken by Jessica Rose Marcotte)

The game is played with two teams, two escalators, two cups, a dice per team member and a lot of unsuspecting strangers.

One team starts at the upper position, the other one at the lower position. I will explain the game from the lower team perspective – the other team just does the same mirrored.

To prepare the game, the lower team places a cup in front of the downstream escalator. Then each team member takes a dice and they queue in front of the upstream escalator.

Once the game starts, the first team member steps on the upstream escalator. They cannot move their feet – they have to stand on it until they reach the top. In the meantime, they try to get a stranger on the parallel downstream escalator to take their dice and put it in the cup on the botton of the downstream escalator. If they succeed, this team member is done. If they don’t, they have to take the downstream escalator to go down again and queue for another try.

Once your team member reaches the top, the next queued team member can start.

The goal is to be the first team which has all their dice in their cup.

And yeah, that’s the game. It was a bit chaotic, but pretty fun.

If you want to read more about the first week, take a look at the recap post on the Critical Hit website!

PS: Here’s a picture to appease the preview thumbnail generation gods of Social Media.

You are flame bearers, braving the darkness,
carrying letters and escorting travellers
through the eternal darkness between
the mountains to the south and
the sea kingdom to the north.

Overcome obstacles. Carry the torch on. Work together.

Go north. Ignore sounds in the dark.

And most importantly: Don’t let the flame die.

Send the link to a friend, and play it in your browser with the Unity plugin!

Download it for Windows, Linux or Mac!

Here is a video with clips of lots of people playing it on dvcolgan’s stream:

Used Assets:

• Fonts: Candela Bold by La Tipomatika, You Murderer BB by Nate Piekos
• Sound effects taken from Universal Sound FX
• Music made with Abundant Music, atmospheric sounds by Kevin MacLeod

Screamy Bird

Yell to make the bird fly up,
be silent to make it fly down.

Fun for the whole family AND the neighbors,
even if they aren’t in the same room!

Play in your browser!

Download for Windows!

I don’t know where people could possibly play this game without bothering anybody, but it was a big success fun-wise and was well received in the presentations. My favourite part is that it’s easily playable with crowds!

(And it would probably be perfect on smartphones, haha.)

Credits:

• Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Font: GemFonts

Thanks to:

• The stars of the video! If you want to be named and/or want to have a link here, please tell me!
• Huel Fuchsberger for helping me with the video editing!

Apologies to:

• Anybody who was sharing a room with me while I was developing this. I’m so very, very sorry.

And now, because social media websites love pictures when linking, here’s a picture. You’re welcome, social media websites.

Since my previous tries to remake my beloved Hammertennis as a Unity game failed, I used the ChainJam as an excuse to experiment some more. After a day of coding (and a little revision later to make it able to work as a stand-alone), I got this:

Hammertennis: ChainJam 4 Players Edition

Try to keep balls in your territory to score points!

Playable with gamepads or multiple keyboards.

Play it online here!

So – am I content with it? Gameplay-wise, I am not – it keeps the uncontrollability that was fun in the original Hammertennis, but because it’s so cramped and you now have 4 players instead of two, the interaction feels more meaningless. I learned to use RageSpline and Farseer though, and I am quite happy with the visual look I achieved. I think it’s a huge step forward from my usual programmer art. So – no, the game isn’t that great, but I think it’ll help me a lot when I try to make the next revision in the Hammertennis prototype series!

Credits:

• Design, Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Sound: Moritz Ufer
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• Font: The Northern Block

Massive Defense

An asteroid storm threatens your mission,
but your trusty spaceships stand ready.

Defend your home base!
Defend your friends!

Try to survive as long as possible in this
cooperative asteroid defense game for 4 players.

Exclusively for 27″ touchscreens!
(Or alternatively for 4 XBox360 gamepads.)

Download:

Windows (Gamepad Version)
Windows (Touchscreen Version)
Android

Video

While it’s certainly possible to play on a tinier touchscreen, playing it on 27″ was a lot of fun! Here’s a video of us playing it at the jam:

Credits

Programming:

• Tobias Wehrum
• Heiko Weible
• Richard Wepner

Art:

• Kelsey Bass
• S. Astrid Bin

Sound Design:

• Petard Haughie

Music:

• Kevin MacLeod

Fonts:

• S. Astrid Bin
• Brian Kent

Blood Trial (Alpha Release)

You are participating in an
ancient ritual to appease the blood god.

Rip out other warriors hearts and sacrifice them
at the top of the temple while they’re still beating!

Keep the favor of the thirsty god and he’ll reward you generously!

Super Smash Bros. meets Mortal Kombat in
this fighting game for up to 4 players.

Download the current version for Windows

Global Game Jam entry

I’ll make a proper post about the jam and the game later (with video and all that), but I thought that it couldn’t hurt to have a link on my blog in the meantime.

Credits

Programming:

• Tobias Wehrum
• Benjamin Schug
• Dario Seyb

Art:

• Michael Kessler
• Tobias Breitenbach
• Kirill Krysov

Game Design, Producing and being all around awesome:

• Norbert Haacks

Arena fights are dangerous.

But at least you can trust your partner, right? Right?

To be on the safe side though, you took
some Vampiric Throwing Knives with you.
The arena rules prohibit the use
of weapons against your opponents,
but there is no mention that you
can’t use any if your partner acts up…

Collect power orbs to boost your antigravity!
Shove your opponents off the platform!

Win as a team or alone.

After all, if YOU kill your friend,
at least their power is safe with you, isn’t it?

Play it in the web player!

Download it for Windows/Mac/Linux!

Credits:

• Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• Sound: Moritz Ufer, Vegemyte
• Fonts: Nate Piekos and GemFonts 98

Monster Pit

In the current economy, teamwork is all!

The mad scientist’s way to find the best monster for the
job is (obviously) to chain two of them together and throw
them in a pit with fireballs and other monsters.

Each of you is one of these monsters.
Work together and win as a team!

The winner will be used for further experiments.
Good… luck, I guess?

Play it in the web player!

Download it for Windows/Mac/Linux!

Credits:

• Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• Fonts: Nate Piekos and GemFonts 98