Date: 2014Tech: Unity game engine, Microsoft IllumishareTeam: Myself and Jay Chilibecki (as a reserach intern)My Role: Lead Investigator, Lead Developer
Lemmingrams/Goombagrams was a prototype asynmmetric co-operative game developed in the first year
of my PhD research.
It's first incarnation, Lemmingrams mashed-up Lemmings and Scrabble.
As part of a collaboration with Microsoft Research's
Illumishare
project, the Scrabble-style player could even use real-world letter tiles
on a physical tabletop to position their pieces while the Lemmings-style player could use a
touch-screen tablet.
Screenshot of the AR version of "Goombagrams". Players formed the game board using physical tiles which were tracked by an overhead camera.
Eventually renamed Goombagrams, later iterations of this prototype swapped out the complex,
custom-built hardware interface for
commodity tablets and gamepads, while switching the asymmetric mash-up to Scrabble with
Super Mario X Megaman:
where one play controls a Megaman-style platforming character seeking the exit of each level. The second
player focuses on solving a series
of Scrabble-style word tile puzzles that can help/hinder the platforming player by create new platforms,
containing/freeing enemies, or activating machinery.
Simulaneously, the platforming player can uncover new letter tiles for their partner.
Screenshot of Goombagrams v2. One player navigated a platforming game while their collaborator manipulated later tiles to affect the game world.
Deliberately developed in parallel with Beam Me 'Round, Scotty!, the
purpose of
Goombagrams was to test the utility of my evolving design
framework for asymmetric co-operative games
in a novel context.
Early in it's development, the mechanics of Beam Me 'Round, Scotty! often flowed
from that game's narrative theme in a bottom-up fashion:
i.e., since Kirk and Scotty are crewmates on a Star Trek-style away mission it makes sense
(or at least, players expect) that Scotty should be able to teleport Kirk.
In contrast, Goombagrams' was a narrative blank slate and so gave us a chance to design new
mechanics from the top-down, without worrying about narrative justification yet.
We could deliberately target specific forms of interdependence mechanics in terms of
directionality, synchronicity, and necessity, etc.
Not only did this "exploring the design space" approach prove illuminating for the design framework,
the lessons learned with Goombagrams> would prove critical by the time BMRS3 came
around...
Screenshot of a Goombagrams level centered around a letter tile-controlled elevator that ferried the platforming player back-and-forth around the puzzle/level.
