Survive to Party - The Survival Party Game

This week it's a little reflection on the game Control before we jump into creating a new party video game with survival mechanics and an open world. Interested? So are we!

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Keep blending!

Chapters

• 0:00 30 Second Intro
• 0:30 Main
• 3:00 30 Second Outro

Transcript

0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender, the podcast of Hypothetical Games. For some reason I've opened like Matthew Berry. Hi! I'm Matthew Berry! Yeah, I don't know what happened there. I know, know, I don't know. But welcome everyone. Welcome back and welcome if you're a first time listener to the Gaming Blender podcast. We are the podcast of Hypothetical Games. Every week, myself and Matthew create a new hypothetical video game from nothing in about 20 minutes and normally we come up with a corker. I've drawn the numbers for today though and I'm interested to see how it's going to go but we'll get to that in a minute. I'm here as always with Matthew. Matthew how are you? very well. Thank you. There was just something on my mic. So I was trying to just get it off. Moving moving the mic subtly trying to make it was it was the rest of the mic. It was in the wrong position. There we go. I think I fixed it now. There we go. It's all lovely. The mic, the smothering thing that is on top of the mic. I can't think of the technical terms. of professional husbandry that we do before. Yes, that we do before, that you clearly just didn't do. No, I completely forgot to do it and I noticed it on my camera and I'm very sorry, listen, but it is lovely to be here with you, Scott, um and your wonderful intro voice. And I'm very much looking forward to the game that I will be designing today. I'm tempted to go back to my Matthew Berry voice. I won't. for Matthew Barry. For anyone who's not familiar with Matthew Barry, because I know obviously his fame will be mixed around the world. uh was in this probably biggest thing of Lacey's is what we do in the shadows performance way in the TV series where he plays the English one who speaks like this. You may have seen the clip on social media of him going, What are you doing here in New York City? Which is the one that goes around. uh he's in the new for TV series as well he's the guy that he he he is the guy that voices all the all the the cons worth robots which is quite cool yes fall out yes video game and speaking about video games Matthew what have you been playing recently anything exciting well, well, well, well, well, I've been excited to tell you this because I'm intrigued. I'm not talking, I have been playing Control, the, uh, the multi award winning game of the year nominee for back from 2019, back when the world was normal. I know I it's been, it's been sat. was a free download on PlayStation plus about three years ago. And it has been sat sadly on my library as I did the old add to library thing and then forgot to play it. And it is one of the most bizarre, so gameplay wise, let's just get this out of the way gameplay. Yeah. Okay. Love it. You go around you've got gun the gun automatically recharges so it reloads recharges But when you're out of ammunition or whatever you can pick up pretty much anything in the environment including Lumps of rock from the floor around you and just pelt your enemies with those instead and that works Perfectly because the way it does you just tap a button you rip something out and because so much is interactable Interactive interactable. I don't know so much as interactive, like you're never short of something to throw. So you're never looking around desperately trying to find something. It's just really smooth. You can pop things off. fantastic. Dialogue and plot. I cannot state how much I have never experienced anything like this. And we had a sort of preamble before this because I was like, I'm trying, I was trying to prime you for this discussion because it's just so bizarre. You haven't played Alan Wake either. I've played bits of Alan Wake. Mm. feels very different to this. But just the way, I'm only, I'm about for full disclosure, about three, four hours in. I am loving it, but you turn up and it starts and everybody talks like you're in the middle of a film. Yeah. but drops the exposition as if you know what's going on. it does explain it, but also doesn't give you any tips of like anything. It's just incredibly brutal, the dialogue. So you turn up. no sort of context is basically what you're, what you're saying. but the characters don't react like there's context. This is the weirdest thing. I'm going to delve into, yeah, well, see, Federal Bureau of Control, you start off, you're literally controlling this person. You walk into this building, absolutely no one there. It's completely deserted. You run into the janitor who's all creepy and goes, hello. And he has a, forgive the accent, but he is called generic foreign essentially, because they don't really specify the start where he's from. He's like, hello, you've come for job. go down there, you work for me now, say that thing, and then they just, then you just go, your character just goes like nods and goes, yep, sure. And goes down to the elevator and you're controlling all this going, well, who was that? Why am I here? What? And then your character's just talking like, yep, this, this must be the way. To what? Sorry, what? Where are going? Then you, then something happens, which means, and this isn't a spoiler because it happens in the first half an hour of the game. Something happens where you become in charge of the Bureau of Control. bright. the problem is, well not problem, I suppose you could say it's like, this is the way it works. This is the dialogue of the game. You then talk to everyone and everyone goes, hello director. Thank you so much for joining us director. Director, should sort out the maintenance tubes. And this character, your character is just going, cause your character has got an ulterior motive, which I won't say just in case to keep as much. But your character's got an ulterior motive and is just going, yep, sure. I'll go and fix the coolant pipes cause I'm the director. also, and you're in the brain, you're always cut to a certain turn on one log where she goes, and maybe I'll do this other thing. This will help me with this other thing. And everyone's just acting. No one says, this must be weird for you because you've just become director out of the blue. Everyone just accepts it and just goes, yep, director, lovely to meet you. What? What? What's that mean? I have question. Why is the director responsible for the maintenance of the cooling pipes? of these games where they go, you were essentially all powerful because of this MacGuffin that's happening and going on. So it's because you're the most powerful person. Anytime they say there's a problem, your character puts their hands up and goes, I'll go and sort it. So that kind of works slightly better. But it's just bizarre the way they just assume that you're completely up to date and your character doesn't go, whoa, what's going on? In moments, you're literally transported to different realms of existence. And the baddie is this thing called the Hiss, which literally makes bodies float in the air and it's making it's very horror esque to be fair. It's got hissing noises and murmuring as bodies float in the air around you and your character walks around goes, oh, that must be more of the hiss rather than what I would have done, which is, my God, why are their bodies floating in the air? It's very strange and your character's going around going, I must see these people must see these people and it's the one the most like visually striking games I've played. It really looks great. And there's some really nice touches with it being spooky and mysterious, but then the character speaks and I'm just going, what are you? doesn't feel human. Yeah... Hmm... Yeah, that... So, I have a problem with playing games that don't explain themselves enough. Now I understand that a lot of people have problems with lots of exposition. I get that. You don't want a lore dump, at the wrong moment and in the wrong way. But, on the flip side, if you don't tell the gamer what's going on... It's very difficult for the gamer to feel attached to the game and attached to the characters and want to sort of play more. doesn't have a law drop at the start. So when I, again, when we were doing the priming chat earlier and you said, I don't like it when there's no exposition, I went, well, technically they're not keeping anything from me. Technically I do know everything that's going on, but there's no emotional context to anything. There's no, there's no, oh, I'm, I'm, cause it turns out the bit you got, you do have a personal connection to this bureau. There's a reason why you're there in the first place, but it's very matter of fact delivered. Like I'm here because this happened. There's no sort of emotional beats or anything. Everybody's very matter of fact, just says what's going on. And that makes you feel like something big. There's a big hole in the script as if someone went, chop that out, chop that out, chop that out, chop that out. It might come together at the end, but at the moment, you gave me, if you asked me to put a gun to my head and asked me to rate it, I'd give it a sort of eight and a half out of 10 and say, the plots throwing me off. really feel quite, it feels very cold to me. Yeah. I'm not sure I'd... Yeah. I'm not sure I'd get on with it. It sounds like... Gameplay-wise it sounds great, but in terms of... I like there to be a story that I understand. It's one of the main reasons I struggle with the Dark Souls games and the Elden Ring because... Because the way it's delivered just doesn't work for me because... Because you have to go and find out what the hell's going on. I'm like... But can you not tell me? Tell me. So I can see why you struggle with that. However, I would say that is the most rewarding method of storytelling. I genuinely think that because now now stick with me. I'm not saying it's necessarily the most enjoyable. I'm saying it's the most rewarding. So you find a plot element at the start that says this is, I'm just going to use the names of Elden Ring because I know the plot slightly better. They say this is Marika's vase or whatever it is. And then many times later you discover the Marikas vase, the item you've been finding all the way through was made of one of their children kind of thing. And that sort of kind of gets revealed by an item thing and you go, hang on, I know what that is. That means that that vase was back there. And then you as a viewer go, my God, I've worked that out. But I do appreciate there is a long journey to get there and it doesn't always have that payoff and you have to read every item. So that's why it's rewarding, not necessarily saying it's the most enjoyable. That's me. If you listen very carefully, you can hear me on that fence. That's you signing off on that one. We will do what we've come here to do, which is to make a hypothetical video game. What I do, what we do every week, whoever's hosting, we draw random numbers which pertain to one genre and two mechanics. Shut up. And two mechanics. And then also a narrative as well, before I forget that. Matthew, are you feeling confident today? Are you feeling lucky? I dunno. I am feeling um fortunate. I'm feeling blessed. You're feeling fortunate and blessed. Okay. Well, what you have to create the genre is a party game. So if you were doing this in real life that would be a Pictionary or Charades or something like that. But obviously this is a video game context. Okay, marry a party, fine. You say it with the video games. You could say, why don't you go to Charades? however, your mechanics, while they work together, may not necessarily work with this shodra, so you have a party game with survival and open world mechanics. in open world. DISCUSS! Oh dear. So party game, aka Mario Party and stuff usually breaks down by having easy, quick short games that you can quickly win. Survival open world suited to having long form entertainment where you go on for a long time and slowly build up your character. So what we discovered from that, that two completely opposing narrative, completely opposing things, and I won't be able to do this. This has been the Gaming Bender. Thank you so much for listening. No. So my first thought. is can you have it as a sort of party game where have to turn up with your own equipment. So therefore you've got survival elements you have to gather from the open world, sort of almost as if, you know, Hunger Games. Have you heard of Hunger Games? It's a small independent... Imagine if you had Hunger Games, but every so often they got together to, I don't know, play whack-a-mole. But you had to build the hammer you used to whack it. That's essentially what I have in mind. So you are a character and you essentially dropped into this play area. And let's maybe say that you have, like every game is a fixed period of time to make it more party-esque. Cause the thing about party games, you play with your mates. don't, so actually this is a tangent, but it makes sense. One of the reasons I never got on with fighting games is because you always used to go around your mate's house to play a fighting game. I was, I never owned one. You'd go around your mates. I never had any friends. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Sorry. Go on. my friend said that. So, right, okay, rewind. Sorry, sorry, I'm back in the room, I'm back in the room. just moving all the swear words out of my head so I don't swear enough to edit this. Right. So, but you think about uh you played a party game, you'd go around your friends to play the party game and they would know all the moves. So essentially it just become an act, you'd become a sacrificial lamb of them showing how cool their thing was. And no one was on an even playing field. So one thing I always liked about party, so one thing you have to do with a party game, if you want to play amongst people, everybody has to start on the level playing field. Mm-hmm. I understand that's slightly difficult if you know the game, but let's park that. You will start out, let's say the game takes two hours. there are in that two hours, half an hour's worth of mini games. In the time between mini games, you spend foraging, getting equipment, getting skills to build up. So what you have is say you all get dropped into this world and then you get told like a klaxon goes off and says, the next game will be dance with penguins. And you go, to dance with penguins, I need great tap shoes because we're gonna recreate the great scenes from Happy Feet. I need to go and carve myself some tap dancing shoes. So you have to go off and make yourself an axe and get yourself some wood. I don't know where I'm going with this bit. I'm just making a point. So then you have to make all the equipment you need. And so maybe, maybe say that's more simple. It's just throwing a javelin. So you have to go off and make said javelin, or you can go off and your character can exercise in order to get stronger and therefore increase your attributes for said throwing. Mm-hmm. And then that's the balance you play like that's and then each time you'll do the announcement and then you know what's coming. Maybe you get the announcement right at the start where it shows you all of the activities you're going to be involved in. then you play a sort of risk reward game going, well, actually I'm going to spend the entire time getting strong because I know it's going to be good for these three activities. But I'm going to know I'm going to flop in the arithmetic section. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. So, to build on what you've said, how about... It's not in space. So, in space, no. So, how about this? you... Number one, think, you make the game run in real time. So, let's say you can set it for however long you want it. So, if you know your friends are there for three or four hours, you can set it... If you've got them. If you haven't got friends. Party games aren't for you. Then you can set it for that amount of time. What I'm picturing from your mini games to make it not whack-a-mole and tap dancing with penguins is to make it a little bit squid gamey. Okay? So they're dangerous and violent. Okay? And then to make it open world. What do you say to this? You get given a certain... a certain... You get given that that time limit is for you to complete all of those minigames. You can do it in what... it doesn't happen in an announced moment, you just have to go off and... So you maybe get explained each of the games before you start. Okay? And you get shown on your map in the open world where they all are. Okay? And maybe you say that you've got those four hours and you can either go and do those games as quickly as you want and try and get through them without making anything or building anything that might help you. Or you spend some time in between each of them. Or at the end, so where you could have loads of prep time, then do them all in a one-er. Or do one, prepare yourself, do another one, yourself, do see what mean? And then... Go on. like that idea because I mean, it makes it different. However, not and this is probably going into more detail than we need for this podcast. I would say there are two game modes. You do one game mode where you do all do them at the same time and you do one game mode where you you have complete freedom to do whenever because I feel like that I feel like that's a really interesting way to change the dynamic of a party game where someone can come out and go I just nailed all of them really quickly because I wanted to focus on building up to the final one or I wanted to focus on some bits and pieces. Yeah, I think you make it... I don't think you make it permadeath because I think that for a party game permadeath doesn't work, maybe obviously you lose time and you have to respawn and go back to maybe... abilities because you build up your attributes. I would say if you die in one of these mini games, then you'd get a knock on your attributes that you could have been earning. Do you build up attributes or do you build or do you lose your equipment? You could do both. You could do both. could just you just get a debuff as it were. Okay, yeah, that could work. That could work. the way I'm envisioning it is that, let's say you select the mode where it's not all in an order, it's not all at the same time, then it's almost as though the players can decide when they do which ones, which means that players can encounter one another, they can end up going towards the same one at the same time. They could even agree, because they're in the same room, they could even agree... Right, you against me and you could have 10 minutes to build up time and then we're gonna go for it. Yeah! Like you could do that and that could be quite entertaining and I think if you could have it on a four player split screen because... funny because you'd wonder, you'd look up and two you were doing javelin and one of would be collecting berries. What are you doing Keith? yeah, like, I think, I think you can, ah could you even make it so that one of them has to be a versus? So one of the, say like, for example, one of the mini games you have to do against someone. would be quite funny because you'd have to essentially either wait for one of you to turn up or you saw one person turning up and you can see their stats and what they've done and be like, I'm not challenging you, I'm leaving. And then you'd have this, you might have this period at the end where everybody's rushing to do a versus. That could be quite funny actually. Yeah, you, cause you, cause you also, could chat to people and say, I'll take you on, quite even. Yeah, yeah, like I think that would be quite interesting. think that would work. say buffs as well. Imagine you could unlock a buff that would hide certain attributes. So if you had this buff and it essentially went, you can't see my strength skill. So someone would turn up and you go, I want to use a versus, but I don't know how good you are. That would be quite entertaining. yeah, and you've also got the element of the actual player's skill because you're in the room with them. You know, and you can see how good they are at playing the game. So there's the how good is their character and how good are they? I think that's quite interesting. I'm just trying to think. Do you agree that we make the games a bit squid gamey? So they are like they are dangerous and they are. violence. And I think it could be quite funny as well in a way. I think I think there would be got sort of big things you make it first person. Well, actually, first or third person because third person can be funny when it's quite awkward. think third person is more entertaining for the games. Maybe, maybe the open world is first person and then it's third person for the... you have to do the mini games in third person. man. Actually, do you know what would be really funny about that is you have you as you craft yourself some armor or whatever. Let's say it all looks ridiculous. So you can't see what yourself and you're like, I'm ready for the challenge. And jumps into third person go, I look like a twit. Yeah, yeah. I'm always, I'm envisioning like a, like some of the levels being like a really violent version of Total Wipeout. Actually, that's quite a good thing. Just put it as a basis. Did you ever watch? There was a CBBC show now for anyone not listening in the UK. CBBC was essentially the children's TV in the morning, starting from 6am till 8am. And then it would end and the really young TV would go on and you just still keep watching because it was an excuse not to go to school. But there was a program called The Raven. Do you remember this? I remember the raven, the raven's good. Yeah, the Raven, it was those sort of challenges where someone was running through and they were trying to dodge out the way of clearly styrofoam axes that were going across the screen like, no, they killed a child. No, they really didn't. Did you genuinely think they killed a child on national TV? This is the BBC. If it was Channel 4, maybe. Yeah, so I that's the way I sort of envisage it. I envisage it is a slight that slightly awkward vibe where everyone's taking it very seriously. But you look at it, this is just a bit silly, isn't it? But it's quite funny. Yeah, I think that could be... Maybe you make it so that the... You make it violent but not gory. that you make the graphics maybe quite pixely or quite blocky. Do you know what mean? So it's entered so that when someone gets hit they almost break into all these blocks. Do know what mean? Yes. Yeah. like arms and legs going everywhere and everyone's like, how funny and then they go. I think it can be quite fun. you think that maybe we make a rule where you can only harm other people in the games? can't harm each other outside. Yeah, yeah. the stuff should be about the prep rather than sabotaging players. Because then when you turn up, then it's, then you're taking each other on. It shouldn't be about, it's really annoying. Cause I don't get to organize myself because that's the kind of thing that puts, I to go back to my side tangent again, if you learn the game really well, you just sabotage all other players at the start and mean that they couldn't play. So I think everybody deserves a chance to like. I want to play this properly and give myself a good opportunity to do better. I think if you make a large number of game types, uh let's say for a three hour game you need to do six mini games for example. I think if you have a pool, an ever expanding pool, maybe starting with about 30 possible mini games, it's enough that it's not samey but it's not so many that you can't learn how to do them. agreed. the more you play them. Are you ready for narrative? I am. I'm just recovering because if anyone heard some noise on my side, it was my Mrs A giving me notification that it's going to rain tomorrow in London. She was meant to not do that at this time, so we will be having words later. Apologies if anyone heard that on my mic. I enjoyed it. No, no, no, no, it's fine. in rain near Wollum Green. I'm not in Wollum Green. Thank you so much for that information though. Well there we are. Are you ready for your narrative or would you like to talk about the weather some more? It's continuing intermittently until around 4pm. What's the narrative? your narrative is pursuit. Something is chasing you. Or you, or, or, technically you are chasing something. Um, if you, you know, wanted to flip it around. Maybe it's the piece, maybe it is a Will Smith film. Maybe it is the pursuit of happiness. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, pursuit, pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. So what do I think it's very easy to say the pursuit of winning that would be that would be the easy way out. I'm trying to think of somewhere making it slightly more complicated and slightly more rewarding. Could you put a mechanic in the game? Which uh is uh a pursuit mechanic. uh Which is tied into the wider story. Which is, the game can technically go on longer than 2 or 3 hours. However, could something be chasing the players outside of the game? So let's say they take a bit too long. Let's say they do 3 hours, they've done 4 games. Okay. uh And they've got two more to do. They can still keep playing and they can still win, but hey, there's some stuff that's going to be chasing you. Like, could you do that? do we do a spin then because obviously Battle Royale has that with the shrinking map. So this would be our version of that, but not shrinking the map instead having more and more minions or things that are appearing on the map to drive you to doing the games. And this can essentially be similar to, you know, in Hunger Games, obviously, they control the map to direct players into zones. This is the equivalent of that. There are minions that are sent in. Let's say we'll do it as sort of nanoparts, as all particles that are floating in the air. Right, to avoid this all cliche. And what they do is they start hovering around useful materials in the map. And as the game goes on longer and longer, more more useful materials start, patches the map start to get wiped out. And what they do, I know we're making this more of a mechanic than a plot, but I'll... no, no, I think it still works. Yes, because it's the pursuit. You're essentially being pursued by those who are demanding that the game continue. Um, and what we'll do, okay. I've got a really sort of meta plot that I'm going to do. The whole thing is a setup of you are a essentially a clone that keeps getting cloned, recloned, recloned. That's why you survive these violent attacks. So similar to Borderlands, when you die, you get reborn. It's like, thank you for using our cloning service. Um, but what it is, is it's like a large corporation. But what the large corporation are doing is they are testing mini games for their upcoming video game. Hahaha So they are testing game mechanics and you are playing those game mechanics and your character is dying. And what we can do throughout the sort of lore dumps, because it's a party game, I feel like you don't have a plot end to end, we'll just have lore dumps. After each game, each mini game has essentially the lore dump of who made it, what their position is in the company. And then maybe the, the, the victory thing as you unlock trophies, if you say complete a certain mini game 10 times, or if you win it 10 times or whatever, you get a little your law dump is you find out what happened to that game designer in the real world, how that game went down, and like what happened in their future career, and we can make it weirdly like darkly comic. So this person did really well, he then took on this. And then that game franchise failed, and he wasn't heard from again. I like it, I like it. I'm not sure there's much more needed to add to that, I think we fleshed that out pretty well. Do you want to come up with a name? And I will... You're darndest. Should we say it's a four player split screen just to make it easier? Four player split screen? Yeah, cool, happy. Okay, Listeners, there we have a party game with survival and open world mechanics and a pursuit narrative. set in a strange dystopian universe in which there is a corporation creating video games and they have cloned individuals to test minigames for their upcoming video games. This is a four player split-screen party game where you will join with your friends in your front room and each of you will take command of a strange blocky pixelated avatar where plunged into an open world you will be presented with a number of mini games a bit like Squid Game violent and dangerous you will be given the opportunity to tackle these however you wish and in whichever order you wish for one of the modes you will use the survival elements of the game to build and craft what you need, what you think you need for these particular games after your brief at the beginning of the game as to how these particular mini games are going to go ahead. And then you can challenge each other in these mini games or do them in whatever order you wish. If however you take longer than the time limit to complete all these games then the nanoparticles of uh this particular corporation will begin to eat the various important resources around the map. forcing you into those mini-games. And Matthew, the name of this strange dystopian game is called what? So I've got a few here. There's one that I feel like I just came up with as you start stop talking. So we might see if we can workshop it at the end because I feel like it's close to something. Why not? I'll leave that one to the end. Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's because, you know, that's what I just said. So the first one I've got is problem party. Problem party, And then I've got party to survive or survive to party, whichever way round you want. I quite like Survive to Party. survived a party. Then we've got a game day. Game day, yeah. And all work no play Okay. And then the final one is I thought I just said mini game in my head right at end. And I thought, could you replace game with something like that's similar? Uh... that's difficult one. Party pain instead of party game. hearty pain. Any thoughts? I think I have a party pain or Survive to Party. I quite like Survive to Party. Okay, that was Survive to Party. Coming to consoles. Definitely a console game, party game. Coming to consoles in the very, very near future in my mind. Well there you have it ladies and gentlemen. That has been the Gaming Blender Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have, please feel free to leave us a review. Please feel free to write to us. We'd love to hear from you all You can find contact details in the notes description bottomy bit of the podcast. So please, please see there. Yes, that. The bit I always forget. But anyway, we have enjoyed very much delivering you this particular podcast and in the meantime, I have been Scott. And I have been Matt. and please do keep on blending. Goodbye now. New York City! uh Very nice.