Simultaneous Multi Game
Developed by: Finn Kennedy, Emmanuel Turner, Shannon Saw, and Jianting “Eva” Hou
Simultaneous Multi-Game consists of two players competing to win at two games simultaneously. Players control the game using two Official Xbox 360 Wireless Controllers with each player using one controller. The projection on the wall in shows the game being played, with two different games being played simultaneously.
My contributions to Simultaneous Multi-Game are conceptualising the concept of the game, planning the game, designing the gameplay, designing the look and feel of the game, designing the game controls and implementing the controllers, playtesting the game, and developing the obstacle course game.
Left: Pong, Right: Connect Four
Right: What happens when a player wins one game
Left: Snake Right: Obstacle Course
Game win screen
The four games
There are four potential games for Simultaneous Multi-Game, and two randomly chosen games are selected for each match. The first is a Pong-style game - where each player controls a paddle and must deflect a ball to stop it passing into their scoring zone (see Figure 11). The second is an obstacle course game - where each player begins at the bottom of the screen and must reach the finishing square at the top dodging the obstacles along the way (see Figure 12). The third is a snake-style game - where moving increases the length of the player’s snake avatar, and each player must avoid hitting the side of the opposition’s avatar (see Figure 12). The fourth game is a connect four-style game - where the player controls an avatar at the top of the screen and sends blocks to the bottom of the screen to connect four of their own coloured blocks before their opponent.
The reasoning behind using four games is to increase the skill ceiling of the game. Having four games to learn is more complex than learning one, and having to learn two games simultaneously adds to the high skill ceiling. These four games are chosen to implement into Simultaneous Multi-Game because they could be easily described to the players. Each game played individually is simple, and that offsets the complexity of playing two games simultaneously. The games needed some measure of recognisability to ensure the players could quickly learn the controls. Because the concept of Simultaneous Multi-Game is stranger than Maze Racer, these decisions to balance the complexity were used. Using games with efficient descriptions aims to balance the strangeness to a level that is not too strange.