Royal Riot
Trailer
Pitch :
Royal Riot is a goofy 2v2 fighting game where two teams fight each other in an epic medieval battle.
As a Knight, fight for your honor and make your foes kneel before your might!
As a Squire, squeeze your way through the battlefield and pick up weapons for your knight!
Game concept & constraints :
The main objective of this project was to create a couch game playable by 4 players locally.
After brainstorming several different concepts, we decided to make a 2v2 game with the goofiest gameplay possible.
The game features a duel between two knights (players 1 and 2) accompanied by their squires (players 3 and 4). To defeat their opponents, the knights must grab weapons generated by a forge and attack their enemies by spinning and striking. However, only the squires can pick up weapons and healing items and hand them to their knight. This means players must communicate, observe, and be as fast as possible to win the duel!
Conception
The ragdoll and the balancing :
To make the combat more unique and encourage players to make mistakes, we decided to put the knights’ arms in "ragdoll" mode.
This means that to fight, knights must spin around or make large movements to attack.
This mechanic caused many challenges, both in terms of programming and game design.
I was in charge of balancing, and to prevent major issues, several parameters had to be considered :
-
Weapon damage
-
Reach
-
The number of hits possible per second
-
The weapon drop rate at the forge
-
With limited time, we had to balance the game as much as possible in just a few test runs.
The gamefeel and UX
Four players, one battlefield, weapons flying everywhere, healing items, deaths, mud... All these elements required a lot of work and repeated adjustments to ensure clarity and effective feedback.
I really enjoyed discussing ideas with the rest of the team and gathering feedback from testers to explore possibilities and get a clear understanding of the most urgent needs to make the game as enjoyable as possible.
Having a game playable with a controller allowed us to work with vibrations, adding a new dimension to the game feel.
