Zomboat
Massive Multiplayer Online Zombie Infection Game
The apocalypse is here! Civilization is failing! The cities are burning! Zombies have taken over! Your last hope is a voyage on the last freighter leaving L.A for Hawaii. Thankfully you knew the captain of the ship. Unfortunately for you, one of your fellow passengers has been infected. You are about to board ... THE ZOMBOAT! Take on one of over twenty random characters with one of several random skill sets and tools for survival. You might be a medic capable of spawning health packs, or a grizzled ex-cop with his taser, or the retired track star who can still run faster than everyone else! Who will be the zombie? Will you make it to Hawaii? Will you be saved there or drift at sea forever?
The Game
Zomboat is a massive multiplayer online zombie infection game made with Unity C# and the happyfuntimes library at the Global Game Jam 2017. The cool part about using happyfuntimes was that the amount of people that could play our game was basically limitless, as all players had to do was connect to the game url with a computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. At the game jam, we had over twenty people playing our game at a time!
The premise of the game, to put it simply, was somewhat like a game of tag. Players spawn in on the zomboat as a character with a different class of skills (runner, policeman, medic, etc.), or in one special person's case, as the zombie. The goal of that zombie was to infect all of the people on the boat within the given time limit, by touching or "tagging" them. Each of those infected became a zombie, and could also infect more humans. The humans' goal was to have at least one survivor (to make it to Hawaii, of course).
Our Global Game Jam submission page can be found here.
The Team
The Lessons
This was my first time at a Global Game Jam, and so one of the things that I learned was basic skills for game jams, such as how to budget time in a 48-hour development life-cycle, how to work with people of other disciplines (artists, sound designers, etc.) in a short period of time, etc.
Additionally, I got to work with Craig Morrison, the Design Department Manager for World of Warcraft. It was immeasurably valuable to be able to work with an industry professional and see how he leads a design process. Some of the skills that he taught us about design are things that I still think about today when making games. Later in the next school year, I was able to take his Game Design course at UC Irvine, which proved to be one of my favorite courses of all time.
In terms of programming, there wasn't anything particular that I learned, besides how to develop in game jam environment. I worked on designing and implementing the character classes, importing and placing the art assets, gameplay logic, etc.