Family friendly, cooperative gaming for everyone, with a positive life message.
"Adventures" is an unique multiplayer game about teamwork and being nice! Play with friends and family! Fight monsters! Find treasure! Compliment each other! Give emotional support! Succeed by being nice to each other! It has just been shown at the Norwich Gaming Festival where everyone who played it liked it. The youngest player was 4 and the oldest something like 74, and they could join in the fun with everyone else (school children, university students, parents) making Adventures a game you really can play together. Here are the pretty lofty goals we're looking to accomplish.
- Cooperative gaming - Ultimately, for me 'coop' means communication-based gameplay, talking about what people are doing and trying to do, calling on each other for help or giving instructions, and that's what I'm gunning for. I've played a lot of 'coop' games and generally they involve little more than hitting things at the same time. Adventures requires actual coop as each character has limited skills and abilities. In it's simplest form, not all weapons work with all creatures, so one player may be good at killing jellies but no good against skeletons, and if they're getting chased by a skeleton, they'll need to run to a team-mate for help.
- Morale system - I've seen plenty of kids at school who want to be smart or beautiful or athletic, yet no-one values being nice. I want a game where choosing to be nice (or a good cook, and maybe other options) is an option for players because they see the value in it. Adventures features a morale system where players get demoralised by in-game events, and they need encouragement and support from the other players to cheer up and even get moral bonuses. Players can specialise in being nice and encouraging.
- Family friendly - I want a game even young children can enjoy, so the interface is kept very simple and there's focus on specific fun interactions. eg. the parent can freeze a monster with a spell enabling their child to 'squash it' with a tap. Should have some exciteable moments shouting out which creatures to freeze/squash, etc.
- A game for everyone - this is a lofty goal, but Adventures is not just a 'kids game'. The gameplay needs to be satisfying for everyone and this is achieved by a very clever piece of design and procedural creation, allowing the gamer to choose the experience at the difficult level they want. A dungeon can be created for one or two adventurers, or ramped up for a single player to tackle with a complete party of four diverse characters. At it's most difficult, Adventures in solo play is a complex party-based real-time strategy needing fast decision making and team control. But then you could have a friend or family member jump in via network play to join in.
- Unique loot and skills ideas - One issue I take with the usual loot-and-level experience is most of the loot is pointless filler sold for crazy amounts of gold. In Adventures I have a Cunning Plan to ensure all loot has value and getting an item is always an event of interest. Every item will be collectible and usable in crafting unique items.
- Environmental gameplay - Another thing I want to avoid is 'button mashing'. I want there to be lots of options for environmental interactions and more gameplay to focus on using these to kill monsters than basic weapon attacks. For example, in the NGF demo there was a unicorn that could be charged up with compliments to fire a devastating rainbow ray. Combined with good teamwork, this was able to bring down a particularly difficult boss.
Help this game get developed
Development has been a solo endeavour for about 8 months, creating a very playable game. Much of the core engine is complete and the remaining work is mostly content creation and refinement. In order to finish the game, funding is going to be needed for an artist and sound designer at least. A crowd-funding campaign will launch soon, hopefully some time in May 2016. There will hopefully also be a Steam Early Access option.
For crowd-funding to be a success, lots of people need to get involved! Even just encouraging people to read about this game and sign up to Software Geezers Facebook/Twitter pages can help. Follow us and tell your friends, and soon you'll be able to have some awesome coop Adventures.
For crowd-funding to be a success, lots of people need to get involved! Even just encouraging people to read about this game and sign up to Software Geezers Facebook/Twitter pages can help. Follow us and tell your friends, and soon you'll be able to have some awesome coop Adventures.