Pirate Party

During my third year 'Group Project' module I worked as part of a larger group of students from the art, design and programming games courses. We were tasked with creating a game which contained a 'social' element such as split screen, online play, local multiplayer or a scoreboard system.

We decided to create a party game similar to 'Mario Party' featuring a collection of minigames and a board which the player pieces moved around with the aim being to do a full lap of the board before the other player. By making the game feature an intuitive split keyboard control scheme, 2 players could play at the same time without the need for additional peripherals.

1/4

We had originally decided that the game should be suitable for 4 players. This decision was what drove the majority of our creative decision-making process however part way through we realised that the scope would be a lot smaller if we made the game 2-player instead. A lot of the systems I was responsible for creating were modular and therefore we were able to adapt the game to fit the new design without causing any additional work or removing already implemented work.

On this particular project, I was joined by a second programmer which allowed me to hone my skills in working with others of the same discipline, something I had previously not been able to do for one reason or another.

I enjoyed working on this project as there were a lot of different systems that needed to work in harmony in order for the game to run smoothly. During the process of creating this game I was able to experiment with new concepts and master others that I was already familiar with.