Sloane

[RELEASED] Cheatin' Hitman

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title.jpg

 

https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101949

 

This was fun!

 

Uploaded v2: Fixed a couple of bugs.

 

 

 

***

 

Hey everyone,

 

not a very active member of the community but a Thumbs' reader since 2004 or 2005 and would like to give this a shot!

 

Rough idea: Veteran hitman Nick Breckon (maybe) has had a bad year. On a lonely night, he realizes he's done enough killing for a lifetime and needs to make up for his past sins by saving lives and sending his clients to jail. Will try to include another diversifier, Dishonored Holidays might be fitting. Gameplay loop should probably look something like this:

 

1. Take on a contract with a growing number of requirements -- a specific cause of death, a specific murder site, etc.

2. Approach the target and convince him / her that you just want to help! Dialogue tree, maybe a small RPG-like minigame.

3. Pose the target (Ragdoll-style?) and apply fake blood, fake bullet holes etc. to take and send a picture as proof.

4. If the client is convinced it's real, meet him / her, take the money, and have the client arrested, I guess?

5. Buy new tools to take on more complex / difficult contracts from more wary clients.

 

Maybe it needs another twist, not sure yet. Kinda feel right now it would be funnier / better fitting if the hitman had just become too lazy to go through the hassle of actually planning and doing the killing. Hmm...

 

Anyway, I will probably work mostly with my wife (Thumbs' listener, too) on it, although we both don't have much of an idea what we're doing to be honest. I've been teaching myself some Unity for a couple of months and she's currently trying to figure out Blender and has some experience with Photoshop, but that's about it. Seems doable in two weeks though? We'll see!

 

 

 

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Haha, this idea is great. I find it especially fitting that the Nick Breckon hitman wants to still go through with faking the assassination, getting the money and then turn them in to the police.

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Thanks! :)

 

I thinks we've found a small twist we needed to make things a bit more interesting. Turns out our hitman never really wanted to kill people but originally had planned to become a director or photographer or something. So, now, he kinda comes back to that and takes his targets to his photo studio to set up the fake scene. Thus, the player can buy props, backdrops, make-up, and lights, the studio could potentially even be expanded.

 

Also, Nick obviously takes pride in his work, so the scene does not only have to look believable for the client but also aesthetically pleasing for the artist himself -- meaning there will be a bit of a trade-off between those two aspects when setting everything up. Our "hero" might even get approached by the CAA (the Cheatin' Assassins Association, of course!) and work his way up the ranks there with his photography...

 

We got quite a bit (very) basic stuff done this weekend, I think. Computer screen with contracts, a simple shop, and messages is working:

 

shop.jpg

 

Placing the target and props works fine (switches to top-down view during placement):

 

stage-topdown.jpg

 

Close-up camera for posing the model:

 

target.jpg

 

And at the end, you take a picture and hit send:

 

photo.jpg

 

All art is either free stuff from Unity's asset store or clipart, we will replace everything later on. Not quite sure what style we are going for to honest, either a low-poly papier-mâché look or... I don't know what's it called... similar to flat plywod stand-ups you might see on a real stage?

 

Anyway, next up is stuff like fake bullet holes etc. which can be applied to the target's body. The posing system also still needs a lot of work, that's pretty rough so far. Same for the ratings systems, right now it just adds up each props believabilty / aesthetics value and gives a penalty for picking the wrong backdrop, thematically mismatching props, and for using the same prop too often. This probably needs a lot of work in regards to the requirements posed in the contracts, even though we're trying to keep things simple.

 

Once that's done and if there's still time left, we will probably focus on adding some dialogue to give the targets some personality, arguing with our hitman and complaining about their situation, his stage directions and so on... got a few maybe kinda funny ideas for that part, hope we'll get to that!

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Whoa this game is really well done and creative. The start menu is especially nice. Very cool.

 

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25 minutes ago, kevin888 said:

Whoa this game is really well done and creative. The start menu is especially nice. Very cool.

 

All this. Super cool idea

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This is a great idea and really fun to play - the UI is nice and intuitive. I'd love to see a more fleshed out version of this where buying the right props is an important tactical decision, and you get more precise feedback on your photos (I sometimes could not quite figure out why I was only getting yellow rather than green), an ongoing branching plot etc. Really cool!

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Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

 

Yeah, the conditions aren't very well explained, we noticed that on the final day or so and tried to solve it by having the target comment on it if you're doing something wrong but the system might not work entirely -- a simple tool-tip or something would probably be a better solution anyway. It's usually yellow if you have too few props on stage (you need at least 6 or so for the setting condition to go green) or if you're having an inconsistent setting / cause of death, so a dumpster in the forest, for example, would always cause it to stay red or yellow.

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There are multiple "stage galleries/photos and get rated on them" games this jam and it is awesome. I am really impressed with how robust all your systems are! UI is a little fiddly but I'm mostly amazed it all works as well as it does!

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Hey, I wanted to say thanks to everyone, too -- both for playing and the kind comments! Participating in this was an amazing experience; I just wish I had had more time to post on the forums and try out more games, but I'm already pretty stressed with holiday preparations and whatnot. I'll definitely try to check out most games over the holidays though!

 

As for Cheatin' Hitman, we will probably try to fix a few issues (add a better explanation for the conditions, for example) over the course of a weekend or so after the holidays, if that's okay. A few YouTubers apparently stumbled upon the game and, well, let's just say watching other people play it has been pretty enlightening in some ways... :getmecoat

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The concept is great and creating fake murder scenes is super fun!

 

Like Ben X, I had some problems figuring out the conditions at first (e.g. I had yellow in bloodiness, despite splashing blood on the body. The email I got after finishing the mission revealed that I would simply have needed more blood), but that is not a big issue. Some kind of prop progression would be nice as well (i.e. less money to begin with, unlocking more props, etc.).

 

As I was looking for Wizard Jam videos on Youtube, I found several playthroughs of this game. The game is also very high in the itch.io popular games list. That is awesome! :tup:

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1 hour ago, Sloane said:

I'll just leave this here. Think the guy might like Thumbs. ;)

 

Just came here to post that! I hope he plays a load more of our stuff!

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