As a team we knew that to ignore the idea of a co-operative play game with the theme of community would be a missed opportunity, but none of us have experience in designing such a thing.
In the original brainstorm we created, we had mentioned looking at the exchange of information as a core mechanic, as well as each player being endowed with abilities that the others need.
Game Research
We looked into co-op games to better inform our design, focusing on various games like Fireboy and Watergirl which involves the titular characters having to solve puzzles together. This one is particularly relevant in that the completion of the level requires doing things in all parts of the map, but each character can only access certain areas. They are forced to not only work together but help each other to be able to succeed.
This mechanic shows itself in another form in games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, in which the players become bomb disposal experts, tasked with defusing a live bomb. The bomb has multiple identifying sections which must be solved in a certain way, such as the amount or colour of wires, batteries, etc. One player can interact with the bomb, whilst the other, unable to see the bomb, has a manual for defusing it. The players have to communicate the information that they have to each other in order to defuse the bomb - the manual holder has to be told information about the bomb, and must in turn exchange what the manual tells them about the bomb to the person defusing. This forced teamwork under stress makes the game gripping, and at times, enraging. Like Fireboy and Watergirl, the necessity of the other player makes the game interesting.
A different category of play revolves around there being multiple jobs and players that can fill roles at will.
This is most obvious to me in Overcooked, in which multiple roles need to be filled during the course of the level, such as gathering ingredients, chopping, cooking, plating up and washing dishes. The stress and fun of the game comes from juggling all of these tasks as a group, as each role is not equal - chopping vegetables takes less time than cooking things, and cooking things can be more important for the immediate success of the game than washing dishes. As time goes on the game adds more jobs to do than there are possible players, meaning they have to assign multiple roles to themselves or rotate. Communication is key to the success of the game, asking for help and being ready to help others lets the gameplay run smoothly.
The thing all of these games have in common over other types of co-op games is that they require teamwork to be playable. Considering our theme, this was much more relevant to us than games that simply encourage playing side-by-side, or games that force players to compete.
Design
With all this in mind we started to think about how we might want to tackle our game. I was first most intrigued by the idea of sharing information, something that seemed topically relevant due to increased awareness as to the relevant pros and cons of social media's all encompassing existence.
As a group we discussed visualising this more in the style of Fireboy and Watergirl, or even The Company of Myself, a single player game in which at one point you must control two characters simultaneously to complete a goal, ultimately to one of the character's peril. Having this simple platformer style might help us to focus simply on the player relationship. However, I struggled to find a compelling story here, as the co-operative play felt more like a direct interpretation of the message, rather than something that needed to be spelt out through narrative. Our major struggle was finding a premise to base this mutual need on.
We decided to lean into the underwater theme, and inspired by games like Minecraft multiplayer that encourages building something as a group thought that a nice premise would be to have players have to build up a coral reef city. The co-operation would come in the form of each player having different skills or materials to help this be built up.
We outlined a possible prototype for this that helped us get to grips with potential mechanics that would be present in the game:
Co-op coral reef building game
Two player game where players have to work together to build a community, but there are rules that inhibit how they can do this
Coloured block game:
- Each person is given a pile of blocks of one colour, there is an extra pile of blocks of a third colour
- They have to build a tower together but cannot place two of their own blocks on top of each other
- One of every five blocks has to be of the third colour, either player can place this block
- Another iteration: they have to get rid of their blocks as fast as possible but still adhere to the world rules
We intended to make this prototype using Jenga blocks, but left the idea for a while whilst we explored our other ideas. When we returned, we found that none of us had any passion for this idea, which would mean that we'd have to reshape it.
Redesign
We scrapped this first idea, our key criticism being that it wasn't fun. I had recently seen a play through of the newly released Heave Ho, which looked like incredible fun. It involves having to communicate and work together with minimal mechanics to reach a shared goal. The game is silly, stressful, and constantly makes you laugh.
The sheer fun of this game inspired us to make something better, but we needed to reevaluate what we thought was fun and would therefore want to design.
I threw out comparative buzzwords to get an immediate knee-jerk reaction from Sid and Kerris without them thinking too hard. For example, I gave them a choice between "high-adrenaline" and "casual play", and they unanimously chose "high-adrenaline". When they had to choose between "running platformer" and "puzzle game", they chose running platformer. I agree with both of these choices too, and from here we thought about the sort of game we could make in this form that would excite us.
We looked at Runbow, a multiplayer-focused platformer in which players race each other over an obstacle-riddled course. This, combined with the main mechanic from Thomas Was Alone, a single-player platformer which tasks the player with controlling multiple characters each with a different skill, we mulled over the idea of a high-speed running platformer in which all players have a specific skill that can help them navigate the terrain as a team.
For inspiration on successful settings and premises, we examined I Am Fish, Learn to Fly and Fish Out of Water, all games that involve trying to successfully journey towards a goal using the skills given to them. Stripped-back mechanics seem to frequently add to the relative difficulty and flow of the game, which is something we wanted to include.
In terms of setting, we were still thinking of keeping it underwater. Sid suggested that perhaps the players could be a group of sea-creatures on land, trying to make their way towards the ocean. Whilst this would definitely be a funny and stressful idea, it would limit the mechanics we would be able to use, and we had already thought generally about making aspects of the ocean into mechanics, such as sea-currents.
As a team we settled on having this game be a four-player. We attempted to make the characters first, but I thought it was difficult to give them relevant skills when we didn't know what obstacles they had to tackle. Scribbling ideas on a whiteboard, we managed to come up with three obstacles: jagged rocks that would kill the player on contact and block parts of the swimmable path, currents that could be utilised but were difficult to control, and seaweed that the players would get tangled up in.
The general idea was that each player had a special skill that could save both themselves and their fellow players as long as they kept together. For example, the seaweed could be cut through by a swordfish, and when it came to the currents, a turtle could be the only one who could navigate them, and the rest of the players would have to hold onto them.
For a while we experimented with the idea of a clam character who could open itself and create bubbles that could carry the players upwards, but the difficulty with that character is that 1. they can't swim and 2. the wouldn't be lifted up with their own bubble. Also, the upward movement was covered by the currents that the turtle could swim through, making the character redundant.
Kerris suggested having dark tunnels to have to navigate, and for that the obvious sea-life choice was the angler-fish. Our final character was born before the obstacle that it needed to overcome, and was the octopus, who in previous iterations of other prototypes had been a key character due to its ability to camouflage. Having a proximity-based enemy like the Chain Chomps in the Mario franchise seemed like a good way to utilise this skill.
To give the game an element of stress, we thought being chased would be an incentive for forward movement, even if the game fundamentally is always pushing the characters forwards to an extent. A placeholder chaser is a giant shark, threatening to eat the players.
I wrote up a similar outline for the game that underlines the key mechanics and concept:
Obstacles:
- sharp rocks/corals
- seaweeds (tangle)
- dark tunnels
- currents
Skills:
Turtle: can swim in the currents
Octopus: camouflage
Angler fish: light source
Swordfish: can cut things
Players are constantly moving, being chased by a shark, but with reduced downward gravity that constantly pulls on them. They can slow themselves down by pulling backwards, or speed up a little by pushing forwards. Each player has a particular skill that is needed to overcome an obstacle, and they must work together to survive.