Chaotic Cosmos
Summary
8 player team party game, teams compete to control gold resources by carrying them into their territory. Only one player wins; individuals get points based on how many resources they control in their individual territory, but all members of the team with more resources get a multiplier to their score.
A 4 person game jam project that lasted 4 days. I was responsible for designing and coding the character controller, resource characteristics and spawning patterns, art, misc.
Design
For this project, my team wanted to create an environment that fostered
“Co-opetition” between players on the same team. The goal of our design was to create interesting social interactions between players whenever they intentionally (or unintentionally) sabotaged their team-mates.
Despite the game being played between two teams, there is ultimately only 1 winner. Players are scored based on how many yellow pellets they hold within their rectangular territory at the end of the match, however, there’s a catch: all members of whichever team has the most pellets anywhere on their half of the screen receive a multiplier to their score at the end of the game. This means players have a dual incentive to help their team as well as to behave selfishly.
The layout of the map makes it so that every player’s territory is closer to their teammates territories than it is to the opponents, meaning it is easier to steal pellets from a teammate than an opponent. Additionally, the bombs that spawn throughout the match and the physics properties of the pellets make it easy for the player in the lead to be usurped by either friends or foe.
The result of these design decisions is a hectic game full of mischief.