What went right

Since this is our first multiplayer game, we successfully made an experimental asymmetrical game with both real-time strategy and action elements. We implemented most of the mechanics that we designed to have in the planning stage, and we spent some time to balance and polish them to make them stand out in our game.  We figured out how to make mechanics like soldiers following the player and shooting arrows, and made characters with unique abilities that are fun to play. We had 2 people work on the coding aspect which took a lot of trial and error and another person working on the art. Because of this, it was easy to work on both the actual game aspect while also working on the aesthetics aspect within 2 weeks. 

The scale and progression of the game I felt was very successful for a 2 week project. We did not overcommit, and were able to develop the concept outward very quickly and efficiently. The systems we created built on top of each other very well in my opinion, and having 2 people working on coding allowed for quick creation and implementation of systems that were able to layer on top of each other with relative ease. The aesthetics came about as quickly as the mechanics were built, so the overall game progression was easy to see day by day. We were very good at setting realistic goals as well as dividing labour between the three of us directed toward our strong suits.

What went wrong

We spend most of the time implementing mechanics into the games, but the game still has a lot of space for polishing. Lacking enough sound effects are the largest weakness in this game. As a local multiplayer game, we are not sure about the appropriate amount of sound effects in this game, so we spend most of the time doing other things like polishing the codes. Another flow is that trees and rocks currently don’t have colliders because we put them all in a tilemap. We definitely want to fix that for the next step in the future. Balancing is another thing that may need to improve. This is a local multiplayer with 4 players and it’s hard to test the numbers, so characters may not be very balanced and need more improvement. Maybe with more time, there are slight changes we can make to the game. For the art portion, we chose a pixel aesthetic because the animation would be easier on our part, but if we were given more time, we definitely would have liked to try out a different art style (more detailed?). 

Many of the overlapping mechanics created issues with each other, most of which we were able to resolve, however these took away from the time we had available to work on the game. Having one more person working on art would also likely benefit us greatly. The scenery’s lack of colliders can also be quite confusing for players. 

What we learned

In this project, we learned how to make an asymmetrical multiplayer game. Specifically, we learned how to write codes and implement different cameras and input for local multiplayer games, and how to design and balance different characters. We also learned how to make a 2.5D game in general, like making tilemap and animations for 2.5D games. We experienced some difficulties during the project like colliders and orders of sprite layers, but we learned how to do it better for the next time. Another difficulty we encountered was github not working the way we wanted. We had a lot of problems with one person not being “an admin” therefore not being able to pull changes.

As systems stack on top of each other, more work creates itself, more tasks as a result of complication  and overlapping frameworks. The Health Manager was a very prevalent example of this, as we continually received new errors while testing the destruction of houses, individual soldiers as well as kings, which all use the same health manager. Cases create themselves out of idealized systems, requiring fixes as progress builds.

For next steps

For next steps, we want to do more polishing for this project. For example, we can add bodies and blood effects after characters take damage. We can also add more sound effects into the game to improve the game feel. For further steps, we can put more effort into map design. Adding walls and castles to block and defend the boss will make the game more interesting. We may also want to turn it into an online multiplayer game. Currently the screen is too small for four players, and it’s strange and difficult to connect 4 controllers on a single computer. An online version of the game will make the experience better.

Now that the base game is mostly finished, the next steps have mostly become polish issues. Character indicators should be removed when a player dies, adding more game feel and sounds would be interesting, as well as creating a more dynamic map. More simple polish fixes include adding death sprites, adding destroyed villages, basically just more permanence on the map.