Two players co-operate to survive after a space station disaster. This game was made in under 48 hours as part of Global Game Jam 2015 at the Toronto site. The theme was "What do we do now?"
One player is the Commander inside the space station, and the other is the Flight Engineer on a spacewalk. Each player can see various things and take various actions.
The Commander can see what actions the Flight Engineer must take to save the station. The Flight Engineer can see what actions the Commander must take. Without helping each other, both astronauts will die.
The players should be able to hear each other speak, but should not be able to see each other's screens.
To play, each player starts the game, and each chooses one of the two roles. The Commander is given a key code such as "CorrectHorseBatteryStaple" and the Flight Engineer must enter it into his game when prompted. This allows the players to co-operate without any network connection. After entering the code, both players need to press START or ENTER at exactly the same time to begin the game.
The Commander can move between the five sections of the space station. In each section, there are four gas valves that can be closed, and there is a display panel showing repairs that the Flight Engineer must perform. If the Commander is in a different section when a repair notification occurs, a red circle will appear and an alarm will play. The Commander must verbally instruct the Flight Engineer to perform the required repairs, by component and section.
The Flight Engineer can fly around the outside of the space station using a jetpack. He can reach all of the places that may need to be repaired. He can also observe gas leaks, which must be shut off by the Commander; the Flight Engineer must verbally instruct the Commander which gas valves need to be closed, by colours and section.
The players' score is the number of minutes and seconds they can survive before the space station is destroyed.
We elected to take inspiration from the following optional requirements for the Game Jam.
Noise Generator: The mechanic of the game is based on players having to stay in constant communication with each other.
Code for Good (Sponsored by Intel): Make a game with the goal of improving literacy, or inspiring interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Microsoft Windows
The binary distribution of this software is a ZIP file containing a Windows executable file and several resource files. Unzip all the files to a folder, and then run the executable file. You may need to first install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and/or the Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 4.0 Refresh.
We used the following technologies and tools, in various ways, to develop this software:
- Visual Studio 2013
- Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0
- .NET Framework
- ProTools 10
- Ableton Live 8
- 3ds Max 2014
- Zbrush
- Photoshop
- Microsoft Windows Paint
- GraphicsGale
- Diceware
- Git
- Gitolite
- Pivotal Tracker
- Google Drive
To build this project you need to install Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 (any edition) and XNA 4.0 Refresh for Visual Studio 2013.
- Alexander Allin
- Dan Lynch
- Sam Robinson
- Andrea Mele
Except as noted below, this work is Copyright © 2015 by Alex Allin, Dan Lynch, Sam Robinson, and Andrea Mele. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence.
- "Milkyway" by Blochi under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
- Hubble space telescope images from NASA