My Role

The team for this project was assembled on the fly at the event so the members had never even met each other before.

We openly discussed and brainstormed possible ideas within the group and once we settled on a direction we were all happy with, I took on the role of lead designer, lead artist and project manager.

Design and Documentation

Once the teams were formed we were provided a few words as a theme for our game: Multiplayer, Competition and Cooperation.

Keeping the theme in mind and striving for a unique type of gameplay, I felt that we should try to force players who are ultimately competing with each other to nevertheless work together at times. The goal of the game for each player was to rescue a damsel in distress before the other player. However a timer counts down at all times and both players fail equally if neither of the two can complete the task before it reaches zero. Players take turns and they can choose to lay down traps or disarm them.

Thus, gameplay is about deciding when to help and when to hinder your opponent, while balancing the fact that if you never cooperate and no progress is made ultimately both players fail.

I created a detailed design document that gave all team members a clear idea of what we were working towards. I used placeholder assets from other games as a means to explain mechanics, scale and gameplay so that the development teams could start building early build and we could begin to playtest.

I managed an asset and feature list to help distribute tasks among the development and supporting art teams, taking into consideration priorities and importance within the short timeframe of the Game Jam.

Result

As is customary for Game Jams, we were not able to fully implement everything we had initially drawn up in time for the deadline, just 7 days after the theme was revealed.

However, we had a working build that had the core gameplay loop intact and wholly original assets in place. As stated above, Noir VS placed in the top 3 for the competition and was particularly singled out for innovation and gameplay design.