Herman Pettersson

Hackermans

2 Player Co-op Infiltration Game

Player 1 is a spy infiltrating a location.Player 2 is a hacker, helping the spy from another location by giving vital information and getting rid of obstacles.

For some time now I've played around with the idea of asymmetrical multiplayer and different ways of doing that without the need to make 2 completely different games and mashing them together, which is often the case.A classic example of this would be "Dead by Daylight", where 1 player is hunting the other 4 players.The gameplay is vastly different between the two, from their main objective, their second-to-second gameplay and even their perspective.This is of course doable, but to cut down on costs, time & polish, I wanted to come up with an idea where the gameplay is asymmetrical, but the players still follow the same rules & use the same character controller, meaning they have the same movement & perspective.

Inspiration

That's when I stumbled upon a game called "Voices of the Void".The game reminds me of basic mechanics found in the Half-life & games like Skyrim where most items are physical objects that the player can pick up and throw around which I think is very neat.But what really got to me was the way they do their in-game menus. The main mechanics of the game requires the player to interact with a computer with physical buttons in the in-game world and navigate menus that are shown on the in-game monitor. This makes it a very immersive experience, one that I want to use in another setting."What if I make a game with similar mechanics to this, but the player needs these mechanics to help their friend?"Using the same character controller, but giving the players different environments & objectives, I can make an assymetrical game while cutting down on costs. The two players could switch places at any time during the game and they could still keep playing, because they both have access to all the tools that the other does. But what they can interact with and what they must do is vastly different depending on their role.

Progress

I started the project during our Level Design course with mediocre results, as I realized how hard it is to whitebox an environment that looks to be in-scale with reality. Creating an office environment is really hard.When we were doing our Gameplay Design course I continued, making a new level & adding A.I that patrols areas. A programmer friend of mine named Rasmus helped me to add computer functionality so it was possible to switch between different Cameras using command inputs on a in-game monitor.Since then, Rasmus has successfully added multiplayer functionality to the project.I've been using it as a testing ground for another side-project of mine that is related to Cosmic Repair Duo, making a plugin for my Widget System.I've realized that level design is not my strongsuit, nor is it something I enjoy doing. This makes it especially hard to continue a project that is, in essence, a game in the immersive-sim genre with added co-op elements.Once I have more time I still wish to go back to it one day and do a final push to make something playable. Hopefully that future is not too far gone.

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