2 Games a Month — Game Sprint 1

We have recently finished our very first game sprint for the 2 Games a Month Incubator — our 24-week-program, where participants are getting coached in the art of fast game prototyping all while getting to know the game industry during weekly inspiration and expert sessions.

Four teams of four participants had two weeks’ time to come up with a working prototype based on the following two themes: Covid-19 and Multiplayer.

The idea behind the sprint was that in ten years’ time we should be able to explain to people through a video game how the pandemic left its impact on our society while also keeping it fun for the players!

Now, each team has finished and written their report on the game and the Game Sprint itself.

Past Curfew

Dylan Millian, Jens De Wachter, Jérémy Jägers, Milan Vanalderwerelt

Summary of the game and theme(s).

Your friend is feeling down because of the pandemic. You must sneak past the Police Patrols enforcing lockdown in order to hang out with them. They can help you out by surveilling the area with a small drone to find the optimal route to get there as fast and as safely as possible without getting caught red-handed.

How did you settle on this idea/game?

After presenting a few ideas we discussed which would be the most fun and most achievable in the amount of time available to us, and we settled on the idea of an asymmetrical game where one player sneaks past police during curfew and one player guides them with a drone.

Lessons learned. What went well? What didn’t?

Asymmetrical games are hard to bugfix and balance. Immersive audio is crucial in this type of game.

Is the concept viable? Do you see a future in it?

We have full confidence in the concept. It can be greatly expanded upon and grow into an extremely entertaining experience.

Minute Market

Thijs Snoeck, Jorik Weymans, Christian Fedrau, Simon Buyck

Summary of the game and theme(s).

Fast-paced FFA party game where 2–4 people compete to be the first to gather as much on their grocery list as possible. The store is a vertical shelf that players must navigate by floating in a bubble, avoiding sharp saw blades. Once the items are gathered, they can be delivered to the cash register. Players can also dash into each other to make others drop their items. If a player’s bubble is popped due to the sawblades, they must wash their hands to regain the ability to create a bubble.

The general theme was corona, visualized by the bubble mechanic, players having to wash their hands, mouth masks, and disinfectants being part of the shop items.

How did you settle on this idea/game?

Before we were divided into groups we brainstormed together, then we were divided into our respective groups. Each member of our group brainstormed an idea and presented it to the team members. We picked one of the ideas that we all liked, it was a horizontal supermarket game. The problem we had with this idea is that it looked way too similar to another team’s idea. We brainstormed further and we came up with the idea to have a vertical store wall where you had to use a bubble to get higher. This is how we settled on the main game idea.

Lessons learned. What went well? What didn’t?

Brainstorming went smooth, networking was a bit harder to get right. No problems on the 3D side, apart from a bit of a slow start due to lack of experience with the engine.

Is the concept viable? Do you see a future in it?

We see potential in the project as being a little party game in a bigger bundle of party games, but for it to be a standalone game it would need a lot of expansion on all fronts.

Overworked

Robin Decock, Briek Keters, Julien Lommaert, Arnaud Sougnez

Summary of the game and theme(s).

Overworked is a house defense game where you have to defend the scientists; aka yourself; by barricading all the entrances you extend your own survival to cure the rioters outside before they break in and destroy the last means to synthesize a cure.

How did you settle on this idea/game?

We made up different ideas by using the templates we set up on Monday.
These ideas were evolved into finished concepts. As a team, we voted on the different concepts that we made and this was the game that came out of the pile.

Lessons learned. What went well? What didn’t?

The teamwork between members went well. In our game, we went a bit too overboard with mechanics. This resulted in a very confusing game for people that never played it, this made the game less fun than it should have been. We now understand that context is very important to convey the right story and to teach the mechanics to the player, this can either happen by using an intro, a guide, or a level-to-level approach (Overcooked). We also learned from the other teams that a game doesn’t need to be big and filled up to the brim with mechanics to be fun to play, a game can surround one simple mechanic and can still excel in other games that are bigger and more advanced.

Is the concept viable? Do you see a future in it?

If we would further work on it, we would definitely implement multiplayer online, the game also needs a lot more player feedback and maybe a buildup of all the mechanics to make the player understand it. We also think that a funny aspect could be added to the game to make it a bit more lively. The game needs a lot more balancing to make it more of a challenge for the players.

Speed Market

Tinca Antohi, Viktor Colpaert, Jeroen Janssens, Lucas Van Baeveghem

Summary of the game and theme(s).

Speed Market is a 2 versus 2 team-based multiplayer game. The theme of our game is going grocery shopping in corona times. The goal of the game is to collect all your shopping list items and return them to the checkout before the other team or the global timer. Be aware of the limited supplies of some items. Both teams need one item that’s the same, but there is only one available. A team consists of a map player and a runner. The map player knows where all the items are and where everybody is. He must guide the runner through the maze-like store to collect all the items. The runner can only move with the shopping cart, but he is also the only one that knows what they need to collect. Meaning that communication is key in our game.

How did you settle on this idea/game?

The idea game idea was mostly created while doing the general brainstorm. We were given two restrictions in order to make our game. The first restriction was that it had to be a multiplayer game and the second restriction was that the theme needed to be around Covid-19. Most people on our team when they heard about corona thought instantly about a shopping game. For the multiplayer part, we all agreed that we wanted to create something where communication is key to win. After this, we realized that this would become more fun if we had two teams competing against each other. After a few hours of brainstorming, we all agreed on the game we created.

Lessons learned. What went well? What didn’t?

Most of our team had never made a multiplayer game. This was especially hard for our programmers. Making a multiplayer game doesn’t change much from the artist’s perspective. They can still just create a scene and decorate them how they like without thinking about the networking aspect. For the programmers, however, this was a big issue. First, they had to figure out how to make a basic setup on how people could connect to each other. The next step was figuring out how the syncing for each player works. Thanks to Photon network (unity plugin) we could do most of this stuff without a lot of code.

We also learned a lot about fast and productive planning. We had only 2 weeks to create this game, so prioritizing was key to success. We learned to communicate more with each other to get some tasks done faster than others.

In the beginning, everything seemed to go well until third-party players played our game. They gave a lot of valuable feedback on how they see the game and what they would change. This was a big help. After this game testing session, we saw that we didn’t prioritize the correct things and we all got together to redo our planning.

Is the concept viable? Do you see a future in it?

We think that there could be a future for our game. The gameplay was fun on its own, the communication mechanic was fun, and the competitiveness to win from the other team gave some fun interactions.

In short, the participants learned quite a few things during their first Game Sprint.

• Play-testing remains a very important focus on delivering a good game. Use the feedback early on for the development.
• Focus on the fun aspect of a game — why do people want to play it?
• It is important to take breaks during work.
• The various developers working together closely speeds up production.
• Being able to deliver a polished prototype by the end is important.
• Humor to break up the monotony can work well.

That’s it for the wrap-up of Game Sprint 1! See you in two weeks for the next.