In mid 2017, following numerous months of additional instruction at Full Sail, I was tasked with creating a game with a theme of "play both sides". Much like a Ludum dare, we were given this challenge to decipher and implement as we saw fit. Numerous possibilities crossed my mind when trying to decide on what to do. First, I considered taking the challenge literally, forcing a player to play two parts simultaneously in a split screen situation. After considering further, I then thought that maybe having a mirrored situation, much the same, might be interesting. Considering even further, I discounted both of these options and decided to go bigger and use the content of the game to fit the theme. Thus, Double Trouble was conceived.

 

In Double Trouble, the player takes on a third person perspective over the shoulder of an unnamed character. The ultimate goal of the character is to reach his wife, placed somewhere within the city the game is restricted to. Within this city are two factions, directly opposed to each other. The player can make a few choices while searching for the wife: sneak by both factions, hoping to not get discovered, attempt to combat the factions, with the pistol in hand, or blend with one of the factions. This is where the theme comes in. After a member of either faction is killed, the player can change clothes to blend with the respective faction. This is a point where some decent AI was required. This AI needed to concentrate first on the opposing faction, seeing them as direct enemy, with the player, if not disguised, as a second priority. If no opposing faction members were in sight, the player character would be chased, if seen, and attacked. After building in the AI, faction recognition, character animations, and pathfinding mechanics, I realized that players were experiencing exceptional difficulty in locating the end goal, the character’s wife, so I built in a compass to guide the player to their destination.

 

This project, from conception to completion, took place during one month. It was a solo project that I had to work on after arriving home from my day-job as an Exchange Engineer Consultant for Microsoft. The game is available to play below, including first iterations, spread a week apart. Simply download the file, unzip the project, and open the executable file to play. Hope you enjoy!