Back 2 Back is a single player action survival game where you control two unique characters to kill off hordes of zombies. One character is limited to close combat weaponry while the other has an arrisonal of ranged weapons such as guns and bows. Both characters can perform special abilities unique to them, slay zombies to get upgraded weapons, and gain special bonuses by performing certain actions. When both characters die, it’s game over.
We wanted to create a survival game based on the flow and mindset of Fighting-Game’s puppet characters, where you control multiple bodies at once and constantly have to manage separate characters. Eventually, this led to a gameplay loop based on Terraria’s Old One’s Army event along with some visual inspiration coming from the popular zombie games Left4Dead2 and Plants vs Zombies in which zombies would try to approach the center of the screen and deal damage to the stagnant characters. To balance this mix of titles and help prevent the game from being a mashing fest, our central game mechanic is the ability to swap the character’s and change which side they are attacking while keeping the zombies at bay. This means neither character can be on the same side at once, and the timing restriction on how quickly you can swap will force you to carefully manage your swapping, reloading, and abilities as the zombies arrive wave after wave.
Currently you can enjoy the game on any pc using our website and a keyboard or controller (We personally suggest a controller for ease of use).
One thing our team did really well was defining a set of goals to achieve each week. This would typically contain 1 major change and a couple of minor changes, consisting of additions, bug fixes, or mechanic changes. This allowed us to easily see what changes our playtestsers liked, disliked, and didn’t notice. This strategy can be seen in a couple of places. First was our Kanban Board that tracked the implementation of each change over the week. This included what was involved with the change, who was working on it, and an expected completion date. There's also evidence of this method in our playtesting notes. During our playtests, we would pay particular attention to how users interact with the changes we made. This allowed us to go back and alter the changes if players didn’t like them, or ignored key features.
If we had 2 more weeks to work on the game, the 3 items would mainly revolve around clearing up confusion and polishing the game. First, we would refine the UI to make navigation of menus and indicators for controls more obvious. Second, we would find a better way to let the player choose which control scheme they like better, as well as including keyboard icons. Finally, we want to fix minor bugs. These include, but are not limited to: able to open pause menu on death screen which breaks the game, NullPtrReference after a character is dead, and the tutorial has different abilities from endless mode.
This test was the very first unveiling of Back 2 Back to an audience. Testing was conducted in the classroom on laptops. Controllers were provided as requested by testers.
Testers generally approved of the concept and controller support. However, some issues were present with the controls and players desired more clear instructions.
In Digital Prototype 2, we continued to improve the game with UI to enable health, time survived, and a Lose condition. During this time, we also began to establish the world and art style of Back-To-Back
Users were shadowed and observed while playing. Players found the art charming but were still confused about how to play. Many players found our UI too easily ignorable, even when it has pertinent game information such as health or a Swap bar. There was no strategy, as many players would just button mash.
For alpha, we implemented a tutorial with custom dialog. We added a new wave system and added healing mechanics. We also introduced an option for users to choose whether to have the button direction correspond to the player or not. We also added a start menu to allow users to access the tutorial, sounds, and a basic weapon upgrade system. We also attempted to add a manual reload bonus system.
Users were not finding the tutorial as helpful as we had expected. They also found our reloading system unrewarding and unresponsive. Also, our characters quickly became imbalanced as our ranged character got a semi-auto rifle.
abridgesfam05@gmail.com
rjbeal1@uw.edu
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