This game was developed over the course of a 6-day class at Columbia College Chicago.
One player plays as a security guard looking through the museum's cameras for pesky thieves. Up to three other players play as those thieves, trying to seal enough artifacts to make them rich. The thieves, however, must also keep track of themselves through those same cameras.
Contribution
As the systems designer, I programmed the score system, pickups, drop-off point, security guard reticle and targeting system, as well as the sound programming, and multiple camera display.
Development
The Short Story
Asymmetric, local multiplayer
After conceptualizing the idea, we took inspiration from Game & Wario's 'Fruit'
The systems naturally balance themselves with the number of players
The Long Story
We took inspiration from Game & Wario's 'Fruit' on the Wii U. The game naturally balances itself with the number of players. The more thieves there are, the more the security guard has to catch, but also, the easier it is to find those thieves. There are only so many artifacts, and the thieves also compete against each other to steal them. The more thieves, the more items need to be stolen, the less items the guard needs to watch. To prevent the security guard from spamming the "I spot you!" button, we added a strike penalty. The security guard loses after three strikes. The game has been published on Itch.io and can be downloaded here: andrewjrines.itch.io/happy-heist