u/tats_oni

Tältä näyttää meidän pelimme Medic Mayhem! Se julkaistaan ensi viikon perjantaina, vielä kerkeät auttaa meitä ja lisätä sen toivelistallesi Steamissä. Kiitämme! Toivottavasti peli näyttää hauskalta. Sitä pelataan samalla koneella toisia vastaan, tarkoituksena on ambulanssia ajaen pelastaa lelusotilaita ja koota niistä tarpeeksi iso joukko vastustajan päihittämiseen.

Projekti on kolmen kaveruksen aikaansaannos, olemme työskennelleet n. 3h per viikko kahden vuoden ajan. Meitä on kaksi koodaria ja yksi jokapaikanhöylä (minä). Olen tehnyt pelien parissa hommia kuutisen vuotta, mutta tämä on itselle ensimmäinen Steam-julkaisu.

Enkuksi kuulee tämän genren peleistä paljon termejä “local multiplayer” ja “couch coop” jne, mutta miten ne oikein suomentaisi? Sohvamoninpeli kuulostaa söpöltä, mutta ehkä kuitenkin liikaa peliltä jossa pelataan sohvilla.

Tldr: Game jam entry in Unity remade and expanded in Godot and published on Steam in two years by working 3hrs a week.

First off i’d be really interested in hearing y’all’s experiences in collaborating with friends, doing rev share, and remaking jam games. Please share those!

Me and two friends remade our 2020 game jam project Medic Mayhem as a Steam game. This is a first for us, many things feel new. We are releasing soon so I’m looking back at the development and want to share some thoughts about the process.

Quick background info: Medic Mayhem is a local multiplayer action game, players drive an ambulance around a toy battlefield collecting wounded soldiers. Eventually one team gains more soldiers and is powerful enough to destroy the other's base.

We started in 2024 and followed this strict development methodology: spend 3hrs every week on the game. So nope, we didn’t work on it full-time or actually that much anyway. In total we each worked only for about 2 months but  s p r e a d  over a two year period.

We’re doing rev share based on the time spent working but as we’re approaching launch (21st of August) we have all worked the same amount of time. Simple! If you’re interested in these aspects of gamedev, Randy Smith goes into detail of how he was running indie studio Tiger Style and doing rev share with collaborators in this video (about 18mins in): https://gdcvault.com/play/1017759/Case-Study-of-a-MicrostudioRev share is perhaps more relevant only after the game earns some money, so i don’t have any insights about it yet. Only that it feels like the right way to do this. Amount of time spent = your stake in the game. As we decided to work 3hrs/week, each 3hrs spent results in one “share” of the game. Each payout is then done based on the shares people have. How many payouts we do per year will be determined by sales. Because we have no way to promise the game is going to make any money, i’d have a hard time doing this with random people, it could be just wasting their time. With friends it’s different.

Why did we pick this project? The game’s jam version was (at least by our standards!) kinda popular so perhaps people would like a commercial version too. We also realised local multiplayer games are usually not super successful but we had to balance commercial goals with what we actually wanna work on. Since the jam version is from 2020 the idea had some time to mature and we were eager to see where we could take it.

Jam version was made in Unity but nowadays we are much happier to work in Godot. Thus remaking was done with a different engine. Not much of the original version was or could be kept. This time 3D objects were modeled by us (tho we still used some ready-made assets) and many new functionalities were programmed. Original music was commissioned (with rev share) and stuff like re-bindable controls (seriously, for PC games this is a must!) and general settings were added.

The car's controller script was rewritten at least three times, moving from a realistic physics based one to a arcade-like with high manoeuvrability. Driving is the core of the game and has to be the best we can do. We set a goal: testers should naturally express how fun it is to drive. With the final iteration of the controller we got there and were so happy!

Out of all the new things added this one was the most weird: the game would have no in-game text, only symbols. No language barrier is an awesome thing but explaining the game’s logic without words is a challenge, often a frustrating one. We had to test this like hell and the whole thing earns a post of its own. The result might in no way be perfect but it’s unique. Honestly, that’s what matters!

Thanks for reading this far. For reference the remade game on Steam and the old jam version on itch.

Back to the questions: your experiences of working with friends, rev share, and jam game to commercial release?