[Released] Idiots Laughing

[RubixsQube]

Oof. I have really enjoyed making games for the Wizard Jam in the past, and I hope that I can find time in the next few weeks to make something for this one. I think that this time, I'm going to stick with Unity, but try for a 2D game.

 

Last year, while making Batman Loves Him a Parallelogram, I realized how much I like local multiplayer games that rely on two users at the same keyboard. Most of our multiplayer experiences are far apart, both with online multiplayer, and even local multiplayer with separate controllers. But I like the physical proximity of two players having to be right next to each other. ALSO, I have spent a lot of time thinking about both QWOP and GIRP, two games which require a bit of finger calisthenics to play.

 

What if I made an endless runner, or even a 2D timed platformer, or something, where the controls were randomly mapped at the beginning of each play-through? What if it could be played competitively? What if the controls were re-mapped at certain points, causing you to have to do finger Twister with the second player to continue moving? What if you wanted the perfect game to break the ice with that special someone? What if you had to hear more of my weird nasal voice?

 

I'll call it Idiots Laughing.

 

For a start, I need to do a little bit of research on making 2D Unity games.

 

EDIT (12/30/17):

HEY IT'S FINISHED, AND I'M HAPPY WITH THE FINAL RESULTS. 

 

https://rubixsqube.itch.io/idiots-laughing

 

Post your high scores! (I kind of want to tweak the spawn rates for the single-player mode.) Let me know if you have fun with another person! 

[phill]

This is a sweet idea! I will definitely stream me and my partner being Idiots Laughing.

[fabian]

Really enjoyed your WJ5 game, so I'm up for more of that voice!

[RubixsQube]

After a pretty hectic Christmas week, I finally have spent the last three days creating Idiots Laughing. 

 

And it's both profoundly stupid and pretty silly and fun. I played around with some platforming, and maze possibilities, but I ended up realizing that something more akin to Snake was what I wanted, since I really needed something with a mechanic that required you to press four buttons repeatedly. Snake wasn't really the right thing either, since it was a game that lead to a single failstate. Eventually I settled on a type of simple game type, wherein you and your partner scramble for collectibles on a play field, and where I've disabled the ability to press and hold a button, but instead, you have to hammer away at the button to get any momentum going. 

 

Once I was happy with the way that felt with one player, I wrote up the script that randomized the buttons on the keyboard for the player. This was an interesting experiment, because it taught me that my brain can do a pretty good job of remapping buttons to whatever keys I have, providing they're somewhat oriented up/down/left/right on the keyboard. So, I had to make sure that when randomizing, the up button is one of the keys near the top of the keyboard, left is to the left, etc etc. This made the game a lot more playable, even if it's still a little cumbersome (that's the point!).

 

Next, I added a second player, and oh boy, things got super silly there, because it's just tough to navigate a keyboard with two people, and also because I don't check to see if a key has been mapped to the other player when I assign a random key, meaning that both players can have the same key control a given direction on their ship.

 

This is actually delightful. I think that "Idiots Laughing" is still a very apt name for this stupid little game. 

 

So, I spent much of this afternoon prettying up the game, and when I added music and sound effects (and a re-randomizer every 30 seconds), things really started to cook. With every one of these Wizard Jam games, there's always a moment where I can't help but smile, happy that something that was in my head has become a weird reality. I love Wizard Jam. I really, really do hope that people here can find someone to play this game with, since it's not nearly as fun single player. 

 

[Travis]

I like the aesthetic you have going on. This definitely sounds pretty wild!

[deathmtn]

Very nice…framing!

[RubixsQube]

I put this in the original post, but I finished the game! And I like it quite a bit. It's way more simple than some of my other games, but I think it's pretty goofy and fun. 

 

https://rubixsqube.itch.io/idiots-laughing

 

E N J O Y 

 

(please try to play with someone else there sitting next to you, especially if you stream it)

[Nappi]

I didn't have a chance to play this with someone else, but I watched you play it and it looked super fun. The aesthetic produced by the art gallery setting, the space photograph, and the low detail ships is really interesting.