B: MiniHorde

edited in Online Competitions & Jams
I’v cut a lot of the fat away from this design, so I hope it fits the bill of the competition.

I created this prototype to explore some cooperative design. I thought it would be interesting to see how players cooperate in a bomberman type world when one player can only fire vertically and the other can only fire horizontally.

Play: [updated: 10/12/2012]
Low res web build for laptops and smaller screens
High res web build for larger monitors
PC build with xbox gamepad support

Watch:

[hint: enlarge it]

The objective of the game is simple: At least one player must be alive at any given point over the course of 90 seconds

This is made increasingly difficult by the enemies that swarm around the map.
These enemies spawn from Hell Gates which can only be destroyed by grenades (basically sinkholes from Gears of War).

Ammo is super scarce so you can't go firing off your gun’s like a bunch of Bro’s ;)
Luckily ammo boxes spawn around the level and you can pick up ammo for your teammate.
There is also the timeless mechanic of teammate revival. If one player dies then a heart will spawn somewhere in the level, if the other player can collect that heart then their partner will be revived.

That's basically it.
Collect ammo.
Blow up Hell Gates.
Revive each other.
Survive for 90 seconds.

Every time you survive a round, a new difficulty level is unlocked.

There are 2 types of enemies
Regular enemies that that can fire
Slower enemies that explode when they get close to the player

Controls:
Player 1 (Can only fire horizontally)
Move:............................................................ Wasd
Fire:............................................................... V
Grenade: ...................................................... B
Detonate thrown grenade:......................... B (again)

Player 2 (can only fire vertically)
Move:............................................................ Arrows
Fire:............................................................... period
Grenade: ...................................................... Forward Slash
Detonate thrown grenade:......................... Right Shift

Xbox Gamepad:
Move:............................................................ Left Stick
Fire:............................................................... X
Grenade: ...................................................... A
Detonate thrown grenade:......................... A

I would appreciate thoughts and criticisms on any aspect of the game. I’m particularly keen for advice on how I could create a compelling game loop and meta-game.
What do you think of the current win condition of simply surviving 90 seconds? I'm not particularly convinced by it...
Would it be cool if the environment was destructible? (essentially splicing it with breakout)
Thanks :)

Comments

  • edited
    I'm going to write some proper feedback at a later stage. But just to let you know for now, Bevis and I played it until the third last difficulty level. And can honestly say I had fun and MiniHorde fostered that great bro-op feeling.

    I think you are right about it MiniHorde wanting a more compelling game loop. Though what is there currently does work and having increasingly insane difficulties does give someone something to look forward to even as it stands. (I mean, we played through many many defeats to get as far as we did).

    Please bring this to the meetup and get more feedback there!
  • Some feedback I have remembered from the meetup:

    Nandrew: Mutate enemies that successfully kill a play to become more effective/agressive.
    BlackShips: Exploding enemies should maybe be an evil version of the player bombs.
    Some dude (who's name I don't know): Enemies that get together could become something more dangerous. He suggested mega combo enemies.
    BlackShips: Look at ForgetMeNot. Centepede enemies. Enemies that reflect bullets or grow stronger because of them and must be killed by bombs. Enemies that fight other enemies. Enemies that lay eggs. Enemies that sometimes avoid walls. etc etc.
    Nandrew: The time limit style is not a problem. But later levels could get more complicated (like new enemy behaviours) to make them more and more difficult.
    BlackShips: To really describe the more complicated enemies they shouldn't stack up as much... players need to see what does what to learn the patterns... BlackShips suggested making the enemies move on a tile based grid and avoid overlapping... though it was pointed out to BlackShips that it is too early to get bogged down with pathfinding right now.
    Bevis: We totally beat that game, we're god-kings and basically better than other people. BlackShips: High-fives all round!

    I hope I'm not misrepresenting anyone too badly.

    btw. It could also be interesting if there was a little bit more of a stealth element. Like enemies don't see you if they are looking the other way, or some enemies can smell you if you have recently moved past... and maybe enemies can call their friends. Don't know if it fits the theme... but adding more complexity there could make the system more interesting for longer.

  • @BlackShipsFilltheSky I was the guy whose name you don't know :)

    One other thing I just thought about is: in the final 10 seconds, you could make the enemies move towards the players. If done well, this would break the exploit that was spoken about, and it would potentially make the final 10s way more tense.
  • @francoisvn Nice to meet you! (In a round about virtual way!)
  • edited
    Thanks @BlackShipsFilltheSky, you have a pretty epic memory. I’v updated the links. There now should be xbox support.
    One other thing I just thought about is: in the final 10 seconds, you could make the enemies move towards the players. If done well, this would break the exploit that was spoken about, and it would potentially make the final 10s way more tense.
    That's an interesting idea. In my experience I’v found that the last 10 seconds are usually already really tense already, if the enemies then actively came for you it might become almost impossible to survive. On the other hand, if the enemies are quite far away then its sort of boring. Possibly including AI that constantly tries to ferret out the players will ensure a more consistently tense final 10 seconds.


    Thanks to everyone at the meetup who checked out the demo and gave feedback! There were some really great insights.

    Other feedback I recorded:
    @dislekcia: The luminosityof the green colour is too high, relative to the blue.
    @Nandrew: Grenades should stick to/fall into the spawners
    @dislekcia: Some sort of collectible around the map, Possibly keys that open a door
    @BlackShipsFilltheSky: Each successive level coloud go down to a deeper dungeon.
    @Bevis: Boss’s!
    @Bevis: Centipede creatures that block paths
    @raithza: Investigate focusing the players fire velocity

    Comments that I cant place a name to:
    Players should not collide with each other or enemies
    Ghosting, allow dead players to contribute something


    I know a lot of great suggestions have slipped through, so if I’v missed any can you please post them!

    Future plans:
    The prototype appears to be pretty fun so I would like to explore it further. Its pretty easy to bite off more than I can chew so I'm just going to focus on improving enemy AI for the next iteration, which seems like the best way to increase depth and create a more compelling experience.

    Plan:
    Exploding enemies kill other enemies
    Can sneak behind enemies
    Enemies actively path find to players (less random movement)
    Add Bosses of some sort!
    Add centipede
    Add enemy that "lays" spawners
    Bevis: We totally beat that game, we're god-kings and basically better than other people. BlackShips: High-fives all round!
    Well played. It will never happen again.

  • I'm not sure if it was said already but if ghosting was included it would be fun if the player re-spawned according to where their ghost is. That could make re-spawning even more strategic/deadly. :)
    Thanked by 1Merrik
  • Actually, my suggestion was closer to mutating enemies who fire at a player and miss or otherwise don't yet murder them. This lack of successful murder makes them embittered and angry. They project this resentment by attempting to murder the player harder.

    I can't remember much other feedback aside from that listed here, though I could make an honorary note of Blackships' unintelligible screams.
  • About the countdown()
    {
    I think everyone kind of said: Yeah a timer sounds like a bad idea, except here it works so well;

    The progressively hard levels make sense with a timer. The levels get increasingly tense. The last part of a level feels very survival-like;

    I think there were suggestions like beat-a-number-of-enemy-waves. Which could work;

    Though maybe the greatest achievement of MiniHorde is that it has managed to make a countdown mechanic fun;
    }

    Another suggestion!!

    To solve the defending-one-corner-of-the-level strategy, which myself and Bevis employed, on harder difficulty levels you could start the players with less ammo (even no ammo) but spawn a comparable amount of ammo around the map at the start. This means, at the start, players HAVE to explore and if they do find a way to defend an area then they've earned.

    Yet another suggestion!!

    At the end of a level, once the timer has run out, there could be a reward other than just "SUCCESS, YOU WIN"... maybe. What if players had a few seconds to kill lots of enemies, and they were immune to enemies, who would be panicking anyway, like in pacman after devouring a big pill, and the player's bullets bounced really really far, like right across the map... or something... Basically I'm wondering if there could be a competitive co-operative bit at the end (kind of like Broforce does or Infinite Swat does)... although I am concerned about level flow... so whatever it is it may have to be brief... ... Maybe the god-mode could be limited to the last 10 seconds... but you still have to survive
  • 10 seconds of insta-kill revenge time sounds like a sweet payoff.
  • Nandrew said:
    my suggestion was closer to mutating enemies who fire at a player and miss or otherwise don't yet murder them. This lack of successful murder makes them embittered and angry. They project this resentment by attempting to murder the player harder.
    That sounds pretty awesome. Alternatively, enemies could mutate over time, so that there are consequences to ignoring enemies, similar to the Super Crate Box fire system.
    BlackShipsFilltheSky said:
    This means, at the start, players HAVE to explore and if they do find a way to defend an area then they've earned.
    Good idea. Though I really need to rework the HUD so that it easier to monitor you ammo, especially since taking your eyes of the game for a moment often means certain death.
    BlackShipsFilltheSky said:
    What if players had a few seconds to kill lots of enemies, and they were immune to enemies
    Rad, they could also potentially collect ammo for the next round.
  • Hey, the standalone download is 404ing for me :(
  • Whoops. Fixed
  • Hey all,
    I'v just uploaded the second iteration of of Mini Horde, now with added juice!
    I focused on polishing what was already there, making it more or less playable by the general public.



    ---------- Some of the most note worthy changes/features ----------
    1) Centipede enemies added to later difficulties
    - Kills anything in its path (including other enemies)
    - Only vulnerable to bullet fire at their head
    - The segments of the body can be destroyed with grenades
    - This will cause it split into 2 centipedes

    2) Grenades now only explode when detonated (by pressing the grenade button again)

    3) The exploding enemies now also kill other enemies/hell gates.

    4) Lots more polish and juice

    5) Reworked the HUD a bit (though its still terrible)



    ------------------- Feedback requests --------------------------
    1) Thoughts on the difficulty curve?
    2) Should I allow both players to fire in any direction?
    3) Ideas of where I could go with the design.
    4) Absolutely anything else....


    Thanks :)



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