The Undeadables

Well, I just want to introduce you to a project that myself and a friend at school (who is also going to the AIE) thought up, called the Undeadables. It's a multiplayer small-squad RTS, in which the players control mafia bosses and their henchmen, as they fight against a zombie apocalypse and amongst themselves.

Anyway, I submitted this idea to the AIE GameFace Competition:http://www.aie.edu.au/gameface/index.php

And was lucky enough to take out first prize.

Also, speaking of the AIE, I start there on the 1st of Feb!

Anyway, here's a link to the video I submitted to the competition:

The video is 2:59 because there was a 3 minute limit. If there weren't it would have gone for a while longer so I could really get into the details - which I may do on this blog.

Feeback:

And, one of the judges (a Game Designer from Big Ant Studios) gave me some feedback:

" I like the idea of a Mafia vs Mafia game, with an environmental factor (the zombies) being unaligned and just nasty across the board.
My main suggestion would be that the zombies are NOT the main enemy. The idea for each mafia team would be to eliminate the other mafia teams to get their all-important territory, and defend themselves against zombies in the meantime, clearing their areas of zombies as they see fit.

Actually using the zombies in your fight could be a great mechanic. Trying to flood an enemy territory with zombies by filling it with zombie attractants could be a good strategy. Maybe some items attract and some repel zombies, and these resources would be hard to get, constantly in threat of being stolen by the other Mafioso, etc.

In shoot-outs, it will be inevitable that Mafioso will have to shoot zombies to defend themselves, which ultimately helps their enemy Mafioso – it’s a passing necessity, not an active act of working together. Again, the zombies would be a shared environmental threat, not the core focus.

I don’t think you should have the mechanic of ‘shoot zombies to earn money to buy upgrades’. It’s an artificial gameplay mechanic that doesn’t fit the theme. Mafioso (in the real world) gain money through killing, stealing, and so on. Work THIS mechanic into the game, if you need a system of money to buy/acquire resources.

What’s the single main objective? Defeat the zombies or defeat the mafia bosses? It’s always highly dangerous to have two goals. Find ONE win criteria, and work around that.

This game ranked first for me, as there’s a game in it. I think it needs reworking and refocussing, but there’s a game here."

There are some places where he hits the nail on the head of what I tried to get across with my video, but didn't quite get there due to the time limit, but, here's my response.

Response:

I agree that you do have to be extremely careful with having multiple goals - such as, defeating the zombies or defeating the mafia. You don't want to overwhelm players, confuse them, etc. For that reason I think I agree with the judge - that eliminating the enemy Mafias should likely be the higher priority goal - as this will have the most PvP-action, and will therefore be the most engaging.

I think, when drawing up the concepts of the game - the main objective was not actually to fight either of them off specifically, but to survive. This insinuates that you could just flee and hide for the duration of the game, so I created obstacles to draw them in - such as the necessity of killing zombies to get upgrades, and killing zombie spawn points to slow their growth.

As I've already mentioned - the zombies solve such a huge amount of issues that would be common in this sort of game, and so it's hard to make them a secondary objective.

Some reasons behind the zombies are:

• They force players into action (as already explained, so players do not just hide until the others die)
• They stop, or at least, postpone relentless deathmatching.
• They provide an eliminated player a second chance to redeem themselves - and make it so they don't just leave as soon as they are eliminated.
• They can be used as a weapon by players. (I like the Designer's idea of attractive items)
• Well, the game actually started as a zombie game - the PvP only came in after. Not really a design call as much of a personal call.

Though, I agree that we must sort out the focusing - such that the player is not overwhelmed.

Ways to do this, could be by making a zombie win condition that is easy to keep down for the most part, challenges players in the early game - especially when it comes to deciding whether to engage another player, while playing a small part in the late game.

As the players attain higher power in the late game, a counter can solve this - where, if the counter reaches (for example) 500 (there are 500 zombies on the map), the zombies automatically win. The growth rate of the zombie army can be adjusted so that players more or less need to spend their early game mostly killing zombies, and, as they grow and take out key zombie spawns, the zombies become far less an issue.

The idea is that at some point, the priority of killing zombies, shifts to being a lower priority than seeking out other players and attempting to injure them. Zombies remain in the game, and a threat - but by the end of the game, you're not being overwhelmed by both Mafias and Zombies.

I also agree that the money system feels a little tacked on. It could likely be largely replaced by a measure of experience (the player does need to attain power) and the foraging system referenced in the video. As experience is a particularly... disbelief suspending mechanic, for this game it could perhaps be replaced by money (merely a change of name) - which, through the leveling up process, attains new skills (which can be referenced as weapon upgrades).

When I think of a Mafia in a comedy game, I think their greed is a major character feature that should be highlighted. Hell, it's why they're all killing each other rather than bunkering up in peace!

Through the adoption of the experience mechanic, with some slight stylisation, we just eliminated the need for a shopping system - while keeping the mechanics needed, and the themes of the game.

Anyway, that's the end of my reflection - and the designer who reviewed my game definitely knows what he's talking about, and through his ideas - I could refine my own.

Being able to use constructive criticism is a valuable trait that designers use to refine their game ideas, and please more people. A lot of games could do with some more of this feedback - as glaring issues (such as multiple objectives) are easily found by others.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on The Undeadables, and any ideas I have with it.

Thanks