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[timeaisis]

What is It?
A Quick Death is a two-player competitive western showdown that started in a game jam about ~6 months ago. It started as a very classic twitch-based "who can pull the trigger" first type deal, but was expanded to having a risk/reward system with a slowly increasing accuracy gauge and obstacles. The goal, obviously, is to be the first to shoot your opponent.

What makes it different than just your average twitch-reaction game?

• It's one button! I've always been interested in how much you can do with one button. Not that this really differentes it in the twitch reaction category.
• Also, the accuracy gauge - how likely you are to hit your opponent with your gun. (you have six shots, btw)
  
  • Waiting causes your accuracy to increases over time, represented by the cone in front of your character shrinking.
  • Firing at your opponent reduces your accuracy and increases the bullet spread of subsequent shots.
  • Your opponent firing at you also reduces your accuracy, but not as much.
• Obstacles - It currently features about a dozen different obstacles, hazards and modifiers in a bunch of different combinations (crap in the way, wind, rain, lightning, destructible terrain, etc.). I'm adding more all the time.
• A fun scoring system based on tennis advantage rules. Games consist of seven rounds on levels with various obstacles. The winner has to win by majority of seven, but must win by two. The game keeps going until that is reached. It's also got a pretty cool "intensity" mode where if you and your opponent are in a stalemate for too long, everything moves faster and accuracy gain rate incrementally goes up each passing level.
  
  

Challenges

• The biggest challenge I have right now is clearly communicating the concept. At first blush, it looks like an incredibly simple videogame (and it is), but there's more to it. Most people that I give a demo to seem to think it's just a who can mash buttons faster but quickly learn there's more strategy to it than that, and then end up really enjoying it. However, it's really hard to sell that point, so getting interest has been challenging.
• The other big challenge, for me at least, is art. I'm looking to bring a lot more obstacles, levels, and characters (there's just the one right now) to the game, but that's tough for me at this stage.

Greenlight Trailer
Here's the trailer I made for greenlight.




Website
I have a very rudimentary website: http://aquickdeath.com/. Mostly just links to other pages at the moment. I'm also on greenlight: greenlight, but success has been extremely limited. I do have a free demo on itchio, however.

Status

• The core gameplay is essentially done. I have a nice stable of 20 stages and a dozen or so obstacles and modifiers.
• I have many more stage ideas that I'd like to implement.
• I have a completely designed hero mode with special abilities (mostly coded, too) I want to implement but art/animation is a big blocker for me here. I really want a unique half dozen characters with anims and such.
• Currently trying to build an audience, but having a pretty difficult time (again, it's hard to sell the concept out of the gate).

Comments/feedback/whatever very much welcome! Thanks all.

[OuterBrain]

This is an awesome idea! Very simple and elegant, but I can imagine it having strong  "one more round"-ability.

1. What are you thinking about in terms of platforms? Just Steam?

This could be perfect for touch screen and that could be a big market for you.

I.e. player 1 taps the left hand side of the screen to fire, player 2 taps the right hand side of the screen to fire. Or simple wifi functionality to play with others in the room, like Spaceteam.

A lot of potential.

2. Stalemate mode sounds great

3. Do any of the environmental hazards harm players? You could have one obstacle type that fires something at one or both players, and can actually kill the players (they have to shoot the object before it hits them). Or perhaps it can't damage the players but can block their shots and the player has to shoot it down (I guess that's just like a regular obstacle).

[timeaisis]

Some screens

[timeaisis]

This is an awesome idea! Very simple and elegant, but I can imagine it having strong  "one more round"-ability.

1. What are you thinking about in terms of platforms? Just Steam?

This could be perfect for touch screen and that could be a big market for you.

I.e. player 1 taps the left hand side of the screen to fire, player 2 taps the right hand side of the screen to fire. Or simple wifi functionality to play with others in the room, like Spaceteam.

A lot of potential.

2. Stalemate mode sounds great

3. Do any of the environmental hazards harm players? You could have one obstacle type that fires something at one or both players, and can actually kill the players (they have to shoot the object before it hits them). Or perhaps it can't damage the players but can block their shots and the player has to shoot it down (I guess that's just like a regular obstacle).

Hey, thanks for your thoughts! I appreciate it.

It's funny you mention enviro obstacles that harm the player. This is what I have been working on the most recently:


It's like a third shooter NPC that reacts to players missed shots. One shot you make, he notices you, a second, he shoots and kills you. If the other player fires, however, his attention is drawn over there.
I really like your shoot the object before it hits them idea. It could be like a bomb or something in the middle of the stage that you can shoot back and forth between the players. Or as simple as a swinging something that you have to hit before it kills you. Thanks for the inspiration. I do have a few obstacles that are kind of "in the way" but destructible that you have to shoot down before the bullets can "pass through" to your opponent. It makes those rounds a nice game of chicken as the each player doesn't want to do it because they know the opponent will get a free shot afterwards if they are fast enough.

As for platforms, I'm really only thinking about PC right now (so steam, itchio, maybe other pc platforms -- open to suggestions), but looking to expand. I have thought about mobile, but I'm a complete newbie when it comes to game dev on mobile so I wouldn't know where to even begin -- although I am in Unity so porting should be not as challenging as usual, I'd imagine.

I think touch screen would work really great, though, like you said. Left tap for left player, right tap for right player. And since that's the only input, there shouldn't be too much confusion.

[timeaisis]

Working on a character color select screen as of now. Since I only have one character sprite right now, sometimes players have trouble figuring out which "side" they are on when the game starts, which usually ends with the first round having them just randomly firing and figuring out which player they represent on screen (this is due to Unity's sometimes random assignment of controller ports to actual player numbers).

So I've decided to solve this (at least temporarily) by having the players select a character color before going in to the game. It's a veiled attempt to get them to just verify what side they are on before the game starts, sure, but it also let's them customize their character, even just a little bit. In the future, I'll have multiple character sprites to choose from, so this code will not go to waste.

Here's the menu flow.


Might as well talk about a few of the options contained in my menu for now.

Right now the game is separated into two distinct modes:

• Endless Mode - Here, players just continue playing endless rounds on random stages until they decide to quit. The stage list it draws from is about 30, containing some stages that are a little too crazy for "regular" point-based mode (combining many obstacles and hazards at once, for example). It still keeps score, but it's purely a for fun or even practice type mode for two players.
  
• Classic Mode - This mode consists of (ideally) 7 rounds where players compete for the most points on at seven stages. Within classic mode, players have the option of choosing from a stage list (list of seven base stages to compete on), that all contain different stages with different hazards and obstacles with limited overlap. Players can also choose what kind of scoring they want the game to use here.

For scoring, I have two distinct "systems" for scoring. First off, rounds begin on a new stage and players score a point from winning on a stage (shooting the other player). After a point is scored, the next round begins on a different stage. This continues until one player has enough points to win the entire game.

The two scoring systems I have are:

• One is your typical best-of-seven system that, at the end of seven rounds just gives the win the the player who has the most point. Of note, the game does not end immediately when a player reaches four points, it just continues for seven rounds, even if the other player has no chance to come back. This is a problem I've fiddled with a lot, but I generally like to give players the ability to play on every stage they've selected, or else they just might never get a chance to play on the later stages in a list.
• The other scoring system is a tennis-similar advantage based scoring where the winning player must win by at least two points, with a minimum of 5 points to win the entire game. Starting at 4-4, players go into deuce similar to tennis. Gaining a point here gives a player the advantage, and winning another point awards them the game. If at any time the other player scores while their opponent has the advantage, the game goes back to deuce. Even though there are 7 "set" stages for advantage scoring, once the allotted stage list runs out (this is only possible if deuce is achieved) stages begin to be selected randomly until a winner is determined.

Although that second scoring system seems convoluted in explanation, it seems to be extremely intuitive to players in my playtests, albeit occasionally taking them one game to fully get. The other fun thing about advantage scoring is it allows the (completely optional) intensity modifier that makes everything faster on each consecutive round after the first deuce. Generally makes games end faster, but also makes them more and more well intense as they go.

Anyway, those are the current game modes and such in A Quick Death. I'm happy with the amount of options I have, even though they don't sound like too many. My other big "mode" addition is going to be a Hero Mode that gives each player a set of special abilities they can use throughout a game activated by building a gauge from round to round. I have a lot of this implemented in code already, but I need to get new sprites for each individual hero. I think my next update I'll focus on some design of what I have for my hero characters, if there's any interest in that.

[timeaisis]

Here's some

Obstacles:

• Wagons/Caravans - Kind of the bread and butter obstacle of the game. They pass in front of both players, and it blocks shot from both directions.
  
• Bottles/Boxes - These block your shots as well, but can be destroyed. It creates somewhat of a game of chicken on which player will destroy them first, as the other player may be able to react quickly and shoot in response.
  
• Wind - Wind blows in either east or west directions, affecting accuracy of the corresponding players. Wind towards a player decreases their accuracy significantly, while blowing with a shot increases it. Wind can change rapidly, and is indicated by a small flag in the center of the stage.
  
• Rain - Rain slows accuracy build time. That's it. It's usually combined with other obstacles, however
  
• Lightning - Lightning occurs on dark (nighttime) stages. When lightning strikes the screen flashes, temporarily increasing both players accuracy fora short period of time, as the whole stage is brighter. This becomes an opportune moment to try to kill your opponent.
  

And here's a weirder, experimental ones I've been working on:


Basically like a hot potato kind of deal. Not sure if it reads, but it's funny.