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Marc-Antoine Desbiens
Marc-Antoine Desbiens
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DAH MANSION Two players game

The Project

Dah Mansion is a game built for the Vancouver Game Jam of 2017. The theme of the jam was dimensions so we decided to use the physical vs spiritual (ghostly) dimensions. It is a 2 players asymmetric mini game. One player is the human and tries to escape a big mansion, finding keys, finding weapons, and turning on the lights. While the ghost tries to kill the human by closing the lights, hiding keys, and animating objects. 

The Challenge

In the game we wanted to explore two important concept about games: choices and balance. We wanted to make sure each players can use multiple strategies, while making sure that the two players have equal fun and equal chances of winning. So we defined 3 main strategies for each player and planned how they would interact together. We tested the game many times and notice that using different strategies each game is actually very fun.

My Roles

Game designer and programmer. The full team included 6 other people: 1 game designer, 3 programmers and 2 artists.

Gameplay
Human Strategy
Ghost Strategy

The two players connect via LAN and must achieve their goal before the other. They can move their character inside the manor, take and drop items, and turn on/off the lights. Each character live in their own dimension so they are not affected by the same walls. The human don't see the "ghost" world so the ghost and ghost walls are invisible to them. Both players can use multiple strategies to reach their ultimate goal: escaping the manor or killing the other player. One important aspect of the design was balancing each strategy and balancing the two asymmetric players so that they both win as often and that all strategies are useful in the right situation. 

There are 3 main things the human player can do: progressing in the manor, slowing down the ghost progress, fighting foes. To progress they must find the right keys and open the corresponding doors. They can also turn on lights using the torch to slow down the resource collection of the ghost. Finally the human player can use weapons to fight the animated objects coming at them.

The ghost also has 3 available strategies: slowing down the human, using resources to animate objects, and increasing the resource spawn rate. The resources are called "ghost power" and appears in dark rooms. So the player can turn off the lights of the manor to make them appear more often. Then the ghost can use its "ghost power" to animate objects that will attack the player. It is also possible to move human items around (keys, weapons, and torches) to slow down the human player.

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Team members

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Hours game jam

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Moments of fun!

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