About this project:

Chaotic crowd game where players use their smartphones to control a character on the big screen.

This game was developed during Create Game Jam 2015. The theme for the jam was “Satan’s Unicorn Hero”, but we decided not to use it

The game won the audience award for Most Innovative Game.

Originally, we were inspired by crowd games such as the recent phenomenon known as “Twitch Plays Pokémon”. We wanted to create a game where many players would try to control the same character. Additionally, we wanted to create funny-looking physics akin to those of Octodad. The game’s concept was that players would try to move around a character’s body parts by moving to e.g. the arm and make an impulse. If enough players did that, the arm would do an appropriate action. The game was supposed to take place during a date, so players would have to give a hug, kiss, pour wine, etc. However, if they moved to the wrong body parts, the ragdoll physics would start acting in weird ways, hence the inspiration from Octodad.

Unfortunately, there were major technical issues involved with this game concept, mainly due to the animation and ragdoll systems.

During the few last hours of the game jam, we decided to scrap the original game concept and use what we had already developed, namely the server system which allowed for multiple players to connect via a browser from their computer/smartphone/tablet and control a character on the big screen.

We chose to make a simple racing-styled obstacle course in which players must follow the camera and not fall behind. It’s a simple concept, but because of the many players (we playtested with around 20-30 players), it feels chaotic and fun.

Players can join by scanning a QR code (or visiting this link) and control their character using a simple virtual joystick. Additionally, they can create a small bubble to get a boost or push the other players around.

Credits
Gustav Dahl
Jacob Junker Larsen
Jens Viggo Jensen
Kaspar Pawlak
Mads Poulsen
Marco Madsen
Mathias Utne
Morten Hansen

Music:
“Boundless” by frizzyo