Author archives

I am a game designer, working for the Rat King.

Really Good Buttons, But Not Really Good Presentation

RGB - Richtig Gute Buttons / Really Good Buttons - was an experiment. Last year at the same time, for the Annual Exhibition at the Designhaus Halle (the start-up incubator where our office is), we made a game that was pretty much a single-button-game with a fun premise (you control the game with high fives). So for the event this year we thought we should do another “easy to grasp and play” project.

So while the game idea wasn’t very clear yet - just that you have to push a button at the right time, because that’s fun in itself - we knew we wanted to have a custom built controller that would be simple and (figuratively) scream “use me”, so people would be even less reluctant to come forward and try it out. Big buttons with a diameter of 100mm or 60mm can be found at various shops selling electronic stuff; those were the first things we ordered. It turned out that the 60mm buttons are big enough, especially as the light distribution is not ideal, more so with the bigger version.

I began to extend my sparse knowledge of electronics (mostly: RGB LEDs) and Arduino related stuff, and also my tools and materials. Overall it was a somewhat expensive, but fruitful venture. (Of course there is still so much to learn...)

A plastic box for the controller - we wanted to build casings out of wood at the beginning, but didn't have time for that.

Using RGB LEDs make the buttons more versatile - so instead of a red button, there would be one that could have any colour, meaning it can even be re-used for different game ideas. But now there were a lot of things to be taken care of while building the controller, because the white LEDs of each button had to be replaced with an RGB LED - which meant instead of two pins there would be four, which made removing some metal from the LED holder necessary, and soldering a lot of wires to pins.

I built two controllers, because the final idea was inspired by Space Team. In our game, every player would see a different screen (easily done thanks to Unity’s ability to put each camera view on a different display) with different rules/instructions - either commanding a player to push a certain colour (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta), or forbidding to push a certain position (left, center, right). Each instruction would only be applicable for player A or B, and not necessarily displayed to this user - but the other one! This is why the players need to communicate: “Push the yellow button! But not the one on the left!”, and so on.

The game was created very hastily, and unfortunately could not be tested during the development. It was made with Unity; I used Uduino for communication with the Arduinos, although I'm not sure if it was necessary to get that plugin. In any case, Jana was not available during that time, and creating a local multi-player game all alone proved to be not the brightest idea. Yet, I wanted to finish this as it started so strong - and expensive.

It wasn’t helping that one of the two controllers just didn’t work well enough. In over 50% of the time, 2 of the LEDs would not be turning on, and finding the error wasn’t possible; in the end I made a complete new set of LEDs and wirings the day before the exhibition.

The Annual Exhibition became a series of unfortunate events. Just to continue the difficulties during development now the other controller had severe problems; it just didn’t work at all. ~~And even though it became clear the next day that its Arduino (acquired years ago as reward for an~~ ~~IndieGoGo~~ - it’s a micro controller board by Borderless Electronics) somehow had become defect, replacing the board with another one didn’t make the situation much better as there also seemed to be some loose connections. Update: It seems that not the board was at fault, but there are some bugs with the Arduino IDE, which prevent uploading the sketch. The loose connections were a real problem too though.

Moreover, as the game just wasn’t polished at all, it is full of bugs, and - worst of all - not quick enough to grasp by itself. In the current state the game needs a person to explain it to players, and I didn’t have time (or motivation) for that.

Instead I placed a short explanatory text next to each controller, but this is of course a hopeless effort. And if there’s something every developer loves to tell you (even if you already know it but don’t have another solution right now) then that “players don’t read”. In any case, it turns out that even with only three buttons, there are so many questions and confused looks.

Of course, this is not a problem in itself. As long as the learning process for the users is fun already they will forgive shortcomings; all they have to do is spend some more time, which can’t be expected from this specific audience (people interested in art and design visiting a university-wide exhibition).

Even though the project had so many pitfalls and a less than satisfying result, we definitely want to tackle it again when there is some more time. The controllers are built (which was quite an achievement for me) and the possibilities are endless - maybe making a simple instrument instead of an elaborate game would be a saner idea. In any case I tasted blood and would really like to do more light hardware experiments and custom input methods in the near future.

As always - if you want to talk with us (and other enthusiasts) about our games and/or game development in general, visit us at our Discord!

bpb game jam 2018: Hugs & Kisses

Just like in 2016, we were invited to a local game jam in Remscheid, Germany, hosted by the bpb (the German Federal Center for Political Education) to make a political statements through game concepts and prototypes. As such, the theme was a bit different than the usual jams: "Discimination, ostracism, radicalization".

Our own entry is a bit more game-y then we would have wanted; but after not being able to find a more meaningful idea (and message) for nearly half a day, we went with one of the earliest concepts we had. So we created a 2-player co-op game about cats and dogs, and about working together to keep all the citizens happy. We called it Hugs & Kisses.

The world map is divided in three zones. The dogs' zone (blue), the cats' zone (red) and the neutral zone between them. In the dog country are mostly dogs and only a few cats, and vice-versa. The neutral zone has both species equally. The gameplay is simple (and inspired by Overcooked): you have to feed the cats and dogs in your country, otherwise they get unhappy. So if there's a cat in cat land craving for fish, the cat player goes to the fish spawning point and carries the fish to the hungry cat.

Only when there is a cat in dog land asking for fish it gets interesting, because a player cannot enter the other player's zone, so they have to work together and trade the fishes and bones with each other by throwing them around.

bpb game jam 2018 - Hugs & Kisses

(YouTube videos try to set cookies and contact Third Party servers!)

And sometimes, a community member gets sad and needs to be hugged. <3

In any case, should the needs of a citizen get ignored for too long, they become mad - i.e. they explode and take parts of the level geometry with them. Discrimination has a fatal impact in this case indeed.

You can try our little jam game on itch.io (Windows only). It's best played with two gamepads, but keyboard is fine too. Be aware that it really is a prototype, so there is no real lose or win condition. But see if you can beat the game without anybody blowing up!

By the way, if you are interested in the development of games, you might want to read a short article about Hugs & Kisses on my own blog - it mostly describes the process of creating the level for the game.

Of course it was also very nice to meet many teams from all over Germany and Austria at the jam, seeing their games come to existence during the three days, and of course having a good time together. If you want to find out more about them and their games (and speak a bit of German), click your way through the bpb game jam wiki and have a look at their projects!

Rat King at the Gamescom 2017

In the last full week of August we not only visited the Gamescom, which is the biggest gaming convention in Europe - we actually went there to showcase our current project, Behind Stars and Under Hills, at the Indie Arena Booth. As Jana is part of the orga team of this 'convention within the convention' we took the opportunity to present the game on 9m² and get some feedback by gamers. (Of course, the 'game' itself still is a prototype, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung.)

Behind Stars and Under Hills is very much pre-alpha (which means nothing is set in stone, everything is a placeholder, and anything can change) and won't be finished for at least a year. But it's important to let people see and feel a project early enough, so you don't develop a game eventually nobody wants to play. This is why this time, in contrast to our Gamescom presence 3 years ago (with TRI), we offered sheets of paper and felt-tip pens so players could write down their feedback. Quite an impressive amount of colorful text was produced this way, filled with criticism, wishes and comments.

So, to say it loud and clear: thanks to all our players! While for me just standing around and talking all the time quickly became tiring, and the whole experience was stressful and even annoying sometimes (thanks to loud presentations by some hardware vendor, offering t-shirts to the cheering masses), meeting so many cool, polite and interested gamers was a blast and made up for any inconveniences. Personally I was a bit surprised that most visitors of our booth were delighted by the design of our game and of the dialogs. To be honest, I expected people to be less patient - but here it shows the benefit of being part of a site dedicated to indies only, as the expectations of the visitors coming by are different.

During the five days of Gamescom the most common gripes with the game were the lack of a button for sprinting and a missing (auto-)map. Of course we already planned some kind of map, but are not sure yet how to implement it exactly. We'd like some kind of 'cartography skill', to make the maps more meaningful and part of the gameplay. Or maybe we'll just distribute hand-drawn maps in the game's world, to support the lore and the immersion.

On the other hand, sprinting is a different thing. We never planned to have it, as we actually want to make a "slower" game with a certain atmosphere to convey. (If you remember the development of TRI, you will feel like having a deja vu.) And maybe such a sprint mechanic could even lead to new problems especially for people with short attention spans, where they wouldn't process the environment anymore and just rush through, and find their way even less. So it's possible not the lack of running is the problem, but the amount of backtracking (e.g. having to go back to familiar place because of a quest with an NPC there). Maybe having a map already fixes this particular problem; thus adding maps has a higher priority for us. In any case, something like teleporters between the levels (anchored in the background story) are definitely planned.

A bug found during the gamescom: sometimes an NPC can stand on their head

I regret a bit that I wasn't able (physically and mentally) to play some of the other games, not even at the Indie Arena Booth. Behind Stars and Under Hills is so unfinished, fragile even, that I couldn't bear leaving it alone to the masses for too long. I mean, it was the first time the game was playable for the public!

But of course it never really was alone, as we had help by our wonderful volunteers - here's a shoutout to Björn, Jacky, Ludwig and Max! Not only did they explain the game to interested bystanders and answered questions, or helped players who got stuck, they also handed out flyers and made the whole experience much less of a hassle than it could've been. Here's hoping the Gamescom, loud and chaotic as it was, has been a wonderfully crazy experience for them, too.

Our next plans are to develop Behind Stars and Under Hills further of course, and refine it a bit - for example, the whole storyline still is too hazy so we need to work on it a lot more. More gameplay has to be implemented, more characters created, more levels built... Also coming up is the Poznan Game Arena in October, but it's much too soon, i.e. that we probably won't have much new to show. Still, if you happen to be around, come by and try to find crazy old Willard in our small game demo!