Last Man Standing (CAPSTN1 - Apr 2014)

I've been thinking of blogging because I really want to take a look back at how I did during my stay in GDD. To be honest, I'm going to miss it a whole lot. I'll start with Last Man Standing, a multiplayer arena hack and slash game.

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My first CAPSTN project was started way back in January 2014; I worked with my good friend Mark Antolin and we made a multiplayer arena game. The idea was very cool: multiplayer arena fighting game with controller support and Dark Souls-inspired hitboxes and animations. At the time, we were gunning to get approved for Spark, a year-long dev project.

Initially the game was designed to work over a network. It was meant to be a third-person game similar to Dark Souls, with multiple players able to enter the arena through LAN. I wanted to implement networking in a game because of the possibilities I saw working with multiplayer during Global Game Jam 2014, when I worked on Gemini. (for another post)

After a rocky start, we shifted development to LMS being a top-down arena-style local multiplayer game. This made a lot of sense, since it simplified the playstyle and gave us a more focused vision. This is when we added multiple weapons to choose from: a Great Sword, a Spear, or a Sword and Shield. During playtesting, people loved the different weapon styles and trying them out against their friends.

It was at this time that our other programmer took the lead with development. She worked closely with our 3D Animator and 3D Modeler to bring life to our game. Attack animatons and hitboxes were done by her, as well as controller movement and cutscene camera.

I really love Last Man Standing: with the project, we were trying to create a game that you'd play with your friends and trash-talk them, really drive competition. We set up our booth at Incendium with an HDTV and four wireless Xbox 360 controllers. People loved the game, and I can proudly say that our booth was the most popular one, with players regularly coming back with their friends to challenge each other.

Last Man Standing is one of my favorite games. Our vision of a multiplayer arena game was fully realized by the end of the term. Reception was extremely positive, with people giving suggestions and wanting to see more.

Final Grade - 3.5