Introduction

We are second year students at Howest DAE and for our game-projects course we are going to make couch-coop game. Our team exists out of two Game Developers: Soetinck Joachim  and Delanghe Niels and three Game Graphics Production students: Debusschere Pablo, Eriksson Rave and GoetVinck Elias.  The name of our game is Block-Jocks.

Block-Jocks is a 2v2 arena building game where the goal is to reach a high up platform before the other team does. Blocks in different shapes and sizes will spawn around the arena that can be used to build your way to victory.

Players need to pick up and carry around blocks to build their tower, ramp, pile or whatever they choose. But the other team can always try to steal your blocks. All players can punch, knocking down enemies they hit for a short second. This will also cause them to drop the block they were carrying. To gain the upper hand and get to blocks first the characters temporarily sprint. Doing so depletes stamina that slowly regenerates, so it is vital to save it for when it counts.

Players can also use several power-ups that will either help themselves or sabotage the other team, including bouncy blocks, explosives, speed boosts, invincibility and more.

A timer ticks down while playing, motivating players to build as efficient as possible; but with many dangers to your construction (including the enemy team, that can attempt to steal you blocks at any time) can quickly ruin all your progress. This gives players the option to either play fast and risky, building thin to get higher, or to play it safe and build a larger, more stable ramp. If neither team could reach the platform in time, the team that has the highest construction wins.

This was the first week of development. We started with researching different mechanics and art-styles.

Research questions

Our biggest research question: “Which engine are we going to use?”                                                                                       

We made different small prototypes of our main mechanics in both Unity and Unreal engine. Unity was beginner friendly to write code in than writing C++ in Unreal Engine. When testing the physics in both engines, Unreal engine was easier to use and gave better results than Unity. For the game we use a static camera. In both engines this was easy to make. This moment we are still not sure which engine we will use.  

“How are we going to stack the blocks?”                                                                                                                                                     

At first we had the idea that the players had to build towers but after a while we came to the conclusion that this was not the best option. We want the player to decide what type of structure they want to build. This gives players the option to either play fast and risky, building thin to get higher, or to play it safe and build a larger, more stable ramp.

“Where does the player holds the block?”                                                                                                                                         

 For this we had thee ideas. The first idea was that the block would be attached to the back of the player like a backpack. We scrapped this idea because this would make it confusing for the player to know if he could pick up another block or not. The second idea we had was that the player would hold the block in front of him. This was also not a great idea because the player can get punched by other players and when the block is in front of the player, he would not be able to get hit. The solution that we came up with is that the player holds the block above is head.

“What art-style are we going to use?”                                                                                                                                                         

We started out concepting different characters in different settings to get a sense of what theme would look the best for our game. We are still in the concept phase but are getting to a common idea of what setting we want. Examples of settings are: space-setting, prehistoric setting, farm setting. Currently we are mostly leaning towards a space setting but this could still switch around.

As for the style of the game, we all had the same idea . In our game, blocks kind of fly around and hit you in the face. But we want to make it feel like this doesn’t hurt. Kind of basing us on ''fall guys''. We want to go for a bouncy and bulky style where even if u fall 20m down this doesn’t really hurt. we can accomplish this with a lot of chamfers and avoiding straight edges. Furthermore we are still kind of thinking how we can express this style even more.

What’s  next?                                       

Next week the programmers will focus on the size and shapes of the blocks. They will also test the stun mechanic that will be in the game. The artists will focus on the concrete concept, art bible and the creation of the materials in Unity and Unreal.

 Stay tuned for more updates.