My new project is a local multiplayer game for PC. It’s in a very basic state at the moment, but after some playtesting of a quick prototype, I decided it’s something I want to put more time into.
I’m aiming for the game to be a couch multiplayer game in the style of Nidhogg, Towerfall or the Sportsfriends games, something that’s easy to pick up and play, but has some depth to it.
Up to four players controlling robots/tanks/something else (currently undecided what player model to choose) face off in an arena where they have to shoot each other with lasers. The controls are very simple. Move in four cardinal directions with the analog stick, and fire with the A button. The interesting part of the game is that whenever a player fires their laser, it makes everybody fire a laser. So for instance, if the blue player pressed their fire button, it would make every player fire a blue laser. Or if the red player fired their laser, everybody would fire a red laser. If a laser of your colour hits another player, you get a point, even if it didn’t come out of your own cannon. The player with the most points after 3 minutes is declared the winner.
So the aim of the game is to avoid being hit by all of the flying lasers, while paying attention to the positions of your enemies, so that you can get them to shoot each other on your behalf.
I’m going to start posting some progress updates on this blog, with screenshots and possibly video. So to begin, here are some screenshots of the (very rough) prototype: