Rokurokubi

ROLE

Game Designer / Programmer

DESCRIPTION

Rokurokubi is another game I made in a team while at university in about 7 weeks. It was made at the same time as Monster Ball Breakers and also in a team of 6. The only difference was that for this project, we were only designers, so we had to make our own art for this game.

In this game, Two players take control of the head and the body of a japanese demon trying to get revenge on their ex-partners in the yakuza. Both players can either fight directly the enemy or if they can avoid detection, they stealth assassinate the enemies. By doing a stealth kill, the character can then use the dead body to use their special ability. The Head eats the body and replenishes health while the body can take the health to be able to pass in front another guard.

YEAR

2019

GENRE

Co-op, Beat-em-up, Stealth

PLATFORM

MADE WITH

Unity

Dynamic Split-Screen

Since Rokurokubi has sneaking sections, we wanted to allow the two players to separate themselves from the screen and still have an idea of where they are in relation to their friend.

To achieve this goal, we look at multiple games with split screens to see what could work for a game. By simply pulling back the camera, we would only make the game less visible and we would still need to put a maximum on the distance the camera could be pulled back until the game becomes unplayable.

We actually found our answer with the dynamic camera of the Lego Star Wars games. by having a dynamic camera, the characters could still be at the same distance from the camera while being a long distance apart from one another. Their half of the camera would then move around the screen and if the players wanted to regroup, they only needed to head towards the middle of the split screen. I started working on it as soon as production started and was able to get it working in 3 of the 7 weeks we were allowed in the production.

Beat'em up

Rokurokubi was produced at the same time as we were making Monster Balls Breaker in another class. By having already used Unity’s animator controller for that project, I offered myself to do it again but for Rokurokubi as soon as I finished with the dynamic split-screen.

I was then in charge of making the hitboxes and making the hits of the animations connect to the ennemis as well as making the 3 string combo work for both characters. It was during this production I discovered how hard it is to make melee combat that feels good to play and how hard it was going to be to make an enjoyable beat’em up.

We also wanted to make the partners feel truly like a team so we decided to encourage teamwork and not let the two just do their business separately and not communicate as players normally do in regular beat’em up. To that effect, we decide to have a combined health bar so that if one of the players just gets hit, they don’t only eliminate themselves, they also eliminate their friend.

If I could do it again

As we were all working on two projects at the same time we could give 100% of our attention to both of them and sadly, Rokurokubi is the one who got hit the hardest in my case. We were able to make the base of a beat’em up, but it clearly doesn’t hold a candle to any of the classics as the beat’em up aspect doesn’t feel satisfying enough to keep interest. Stealth was mostly ignored by players during playtest as we mostly focused our efforts towards the beat’em up and it is also bugged.

If I could do it again, I would first fix what was broken in our last build and try to bring a better balance between the stealth and the beat’em up aspect as we wanted the beat’em up to feel good, but not allow the player to go in the action guns blazing. We initially wanted one player to be able to handle 2 to 3 enemies at the same time max and 3 would be if they were really good at the game.

Another thing I would change would be, of course, the ui as it is pretty basic. As we were all designers working on this project, the art had to be done by people inexperienced with video game art so we decided to put our effort in the visuals in game and left the UI in dire need of a make-up.

Lastly I would at least add one of the functionality we wanted to implement at the beginning of production as even the players during the playtest come to the conclusion that it would be really fun if the two player could recombine at one point by ether using a power or at predetermined area of the game to become a powerhouse. Our idea was to have the body have increased strength while the head would have been able to shoot projectiles in multiple directions to keep enemies at bay.

Monster Balls Breaker

Holo-Cars