[LD 34] THE THINGENING

EvanGreenwood

This was the game we built for Ludum Dare 34. The game is online multiplayer only, and you need 3 - 5 players to play it.

The people involved were as follows:

Art: Jarred Lunt
Programming: Evan Greenwood
Original Sound Effects and Music: Ivo Sosslak
Additional Art: Filip Orekhov
Additional Art: Dorianne Dutrieux

A few things went really well. I think we got some great art and some great audio. And Jarred kicked as at integrating the art into Unity, and also set up the initial networked project. I'm super happy with the audio Ivo produced (and I think this is the first time he'll be hearing it in the game).

However there's (obviously) missing pieces of UI, art and sound, which certainly hurt the atmosphere the game was trying to build. The project's scope was a bit ambitious, and we didn't have time. We also didn't manage to implement the animations and get them networked in time either, so the characters walk around completely rigidly (for the moment).

Having only one programmer (who had never programmed networking before) definitely held the team back. The network code technically works (as far as we can tell), but getting that working came at a high time cost, and the networked interactions aren't very polished at that.

If you can look past the brokenness, we think with 5 players it might be fun, but we've never been able to test it ourselves (the office is closed now for Christmas). In the new year it might be fun to fix this up (and obviously polish and add the missing bits).

What we most want to do is create a game where players try to deceive each other. This was the original goal we set ourselves, and we've only really scratched the surface. There are some differences in objectives in the current game, but we'd like to incentivize deception a lot more, and have more possible types of deception.

Deception and partial information is the kind of thing that board games have explored really well, but as far as I know there hasn't been much of this in video games?

All in all though, it was a pretty rad experience. Learning new tricks is always enjoyable, and there was a lot we hadn't tried before (as individuals and as a team) in this project.

Here's a link to the latest build:

The game is online multiplayer only, and you need 3 - 5 players to play it. Also, definitely recommended that you play with friends and have a group Skype (or equivalent) call (or just be in the same room).

http://www.callofthevoid.com/Builds/The_Thingening_Post_Ludum_Dare.zip

[Edit: Windows only]

francoisvn

This feels like quite an ambitious project for Ludum Dare, so it's great that you got it mostly working. I do think it might be a bit ill-suited for LD, not in terms of scope, but in terms of the judging structure and getting people to play it. I suppose it depends on what you want from LD, so YMMV.

I love the idea of tackling bluffing in video games more. I recently watched a talk by Mike Rose on the topic ( http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/255886/Video_How_video_games_can_better_handle_feints_and_misdirection.php). It seems like quite an unexplored avenue of game design, and considering how inter-connected and digital the world is becoming, it could be something quite sought-after in the coming years.

For those of us not able to round up the required number of friends to play, would it be possible to give us a run-down of the mechanics and how you tried to incorporate deception into your game? I'm not sure how useful it would be to have a discussion without actually playing the game, but perhaps some ideas jump out.

MCA

Looks good - any chance of a video clip of game play, for those of us not using Windows? :-P

EvanGreenwood

@MCA , As we haven't been able to properly test it ourselves, it's a little tricky to make a video of it right now.

Though I'd like to play a match over the internet with the team that worked on it these holidays. When I know when that will be I'll post the time and if there are interested, but friendless, folks here, they can maybe hop in.

I'll try see if Unity Webplayer works for this as well.

@francoisvn Thanks for the link to that talk! I'm going to give it a watch!

This kind of game has been very very popular with Youtubers. There's a couple popular Youtubers (like Seananners https://www.youtube.com/user/SeaNanners ) that have built careers around just playing these sorts of games. But these bluffing games I think have only started scratching the surface. This game doesn't really add anything to the conversation, but it's an exciting space to try play in (and our first attempt).

Tuism

The only videogame I've heard of in this vein was Sunset... Cruise, or something like that (edit: I think it was The Ship @francoisvn's link mentions), I tried to play it on Steam, but the lack of players online meant that I often just sat in the lobby waiting for people and eventually gave up and never got a game going.

I'm completely surprised that you haven't described the game AT ALL besides "it's about deception" in any of your descriptions, is that because you guys can do that and still get people interested because you're broforce famous, or does that actually work when it's a social "mysterious" game? I'm curious!

I don't even know if it's local multiplayer, whether you need multiple machines, or works across internet, IP address, or what... I'm clueless, so I'm hesitant to download 134mb to have it do nothing on me :/

Edit: I LOVE bluffing games. On the tabletop side I play a bunch of them. Every game Mike Rose mentioned, I play. Netrunner, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Resistance, etc. I also play Assassin's Creed almost exclusively for multiplayer bluffing experience. Secret Hitler is the new social deduction that's on the scene, it's okay, not revolutionary.

So I really love that space (despite being a terrible, terrible liar) of play, but videogames are harder to do this with, purely because you need to read social cues around people for lying and bluffing to be interesting at all. Yes Subterfuge - I hear it's a huge bluffing game, I tried it and I didn't like it at all, which is a strange dichotomy. I loved Frozen Synapse for a little while, but didn't really carry on with it because it was super stupidly complex (also something I didn't like about Subterfuge I guess).

I've also tried to create a single-tablet pass-and-play social deduction game, I haven't really worked out the mechanics well enough yet as what I feel is super important is giving players a lot of interaction beyond the binary inputs into a digital game machine. So social interaction. So the game has to give players enough reason to interact with each other on all sorts of different things, and not allow for (or strongly discourage) players who just sit back and choose options/click buttons.

Edit edit: Aaaaand I downloaded it. And of course it's windows only, I'm not running any windows anymore, lol :/

EvanGreenwood

That Mike Rose talk kind of collected a lot of things that we'd already thought about. We were most interested in what he calls "hidden roles", though given more time we wanted to implement blending mechanics, and the kind of game lent itself naturally to some misdirection. Though I'm not saying this game's current form furthers the video game bluffing conversation.

@Tuism Sorry, I should have said the download was only for PC. Though I don't see how you missed the part of it being online multiplayer only and requiring 3 - 5 players? (I put that text in bold even)

I'm not sure whether the game is fun yet, so I wasn't trying to make a strong pitch for people picking up and playing the game. I'd make a stronger pitch if/when the game is a bit more fulfilled. This kind of game really isn't a good fit for Ludum Dare, but it's something Jarred had been burning to make for a while (and like Mike Rose says, there's very few games exploring this space).

Tuism

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear, I mean like, what's the means of getting into a game, do you have an open lobby? Do you have an IP system where you have to know someone already playing to sync up a game? And why Windows only if you built it on Unity? :P

I'm keen on exploring the social deduction space in videogames too :) that rudimentry prototype I have I also don't think is fun yet, but maybe I'll post it up in the next while :)

konman

So, I fired up this multiplayer/deathmatch prototype - SOLO. Me myself and I.

I am a huge fan of The Thing BTW... both movies. I prefer the original? But then remakes are always inferior. No?

Huh? This is a LD game? ... Woah!

I did not play The Thing game (2002) for reasons unknown, although it was very much on my radar at the time and the distrust mechanic is a huge pulling factor as it is under-explored in games. I just might go check that game out as well...

I made it to the helicopter lift-off in this prototype and I hope I participate in testing this properly in 2016 with some Free Lives peeps when they get back early next year perhaps.

Off-the-bat: the sound FX is very immersive. Actually, it's amazing. Whoever did that, kudos dude/dudette? Edit: Ivo Sosslak, presuming gender. As is the overall ambiance. The freezing mechanic is also very interesting and I'd love to see it strategically applied in larger maps...

I am also currently playing around with UNET for local multi-play / LAN. The abysmal social mechanics in games like Destiny has prompted me to explore social/network mechanics a bit more as I believe it is a niche not yet fully achieved.

Minor flaw: I would like to see a non-default, custom UNET HUD implemented soon as it is fairly straightforward to implement.
Forgiven: This is Ludem, right? Not that I know too much about jams.

Also LAN/Wifi is so local! :) But then, how DOES one implement an effective lobby system that is discover-able over the internet? Unity online service just feels so restrictive...

Guess I'll have to check out Broforce to see how Free Lives have implemented multi-play... maybe that's local LAN only too? Not sure. Anyways...

Overall this is a very interesting prototype that hopefully gets taken further. After-all, flaming a buddy and watching them do charcoal snow angels should never get old...

Thanks for sharing this.