Introduction

Hi, we are the people behind Godly Gambit. We are a team of five people (Ben, Jelle, Lucas, Ralf, and Thomas), Studying Digital Arts and Entertainment.

We are Creating a Couch arena fighter in a time-constrained manner. Our goal is to create a vertical slice of a full-fletched game.

Godly Gambit is a chaotic top-down couch co-op PvP, an arena-based survival game for PC where two players compete against each other on the same screen. One player takes on the role of a powerful god, while the other plays a mortal human. The twist is that the god and human can swap places whenever the human's health bar runs out. The god player can spawn enemies to hinder the human player's progress, while the human player must survive for as long as possible.

Meet the Team

       Ben Buyle                       Jelle Moes

      Lucas Kinoo          Ralf Van Nieuwenhuyse

                 Thomas Vansteelandt

Tech

Unreal Local Multiplayer

In Unreal Engine 5, I attempted to implement local multiplayer using various techniques. However, I eventually discovered that there was a bug in the engine preventing successful implementation at this time. To begin with, I experimented with a pawn actor that could accept movement from two controllers, using an if statement in the movement update to differentiate between the two. I also explored the use of unique player and controller tags to distinguish between the two players. While researching potential solutions, I consulted various sources such as the Unreal Engine documentation on player-controlled cameras and player input. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, I was ultimately unable to successfully implement local multiplayer due to the engine bug. I also discovered that other developers were encountering similar issues with local multiplayer, as evidenced by a thread on the Unreal Engine forums.

Unity Local Multiplayer

Our team found that adding a Local Multiplayer system in Unity was a smooth process. With just the creation of a player controller and a 'Player Input Manager' component in our scene, we were able to easily set the join behavior of our player. This was one of the reasons why we opted for Unity, as it caused us the least amount of problems during the prototype phase.

Art

Style

The artists and developers both agreed on a simple but beautiful artstyle. We all decided to go for 3D low poly but with simple hand painted textures. We know that the timeframe we have is not the greatest so we won’t focus on putting lots of detail in our textures. Going with the low poly style is simple, effective, and it will be beautiful by the hands of our artists.

To not let your imagination run wild you get a reference picture of what the goal of our artstyle should look like.

Arena

We do not have an exact idea of how our arena will look like.
How our game exactly works is also being prototyped. Currently the game is going in the direction of 2 players, but we are discussing the option for 3-4 players. More on that topic will come next week.
For the setting of our game we are thinking about a heaven themed environment. God has made his own little arena up in heaven and put a human in his Divine thunder dome.
You can see here some ideas for the layout of the arena.

Our Artists Hard at Work

Next Week’s Endeavors

Playable early prototype

Next week we are planning to make a playable prototype. There will be a test between a 2-player game and a 4-player game to test which one is more fun.

Define art style and create our material

Now that we have our references we need to start being creative and define our style. Making a shader/material so we know the base of our game. The artists can then continue with that base as a reference. Eventually making our art bible bigger and bigger.

Stripping Down to the Essentials

Our goal for next week is to create a playable prototype of our game. This stripped-down version will only include the essential mechanics required for gameplay.

We plan to implement the god and player switching mechanic, allowing the god to spawn enemies while the player defends against them. This will serve as the core gameplay loop that we can use to gauge the fun factor of our game.

By focusing on these key features, we hope to get a sense of how well our game mechanics work together and identify any areas that require improvement. Ultimately, this prototype will be a critical step toward creating an engaging and enjoyable final product.

Will our game be fun?

This is a question we will need to think hard about in the upcoming week. Currently, we have two players but what makes our game fun for both players and not just one person being a prick to the other? The more the merrier. We want to try and make 4 players work.

How can we make sure no one gets ganged up on?

Would it be fair for everyone?

Trying to find a good balance between having 1-3 fighters in the arena and 1 God.

A fast-paced game is one solution we agree to take. Trying to have lots of chaos, short live timers, and fast switching.