Nemesis Sidekick is a two players, offline, vertical scroller space shooter game. Players control two playable characters, Hero and Sidekick.
The game features two play modes, Nemesis and Sidekick.
Nemesis is a competitive play mode. On this mode, only one player can be the winner of a game. The aim is to complete the objectives of each level and be the last player alive.
Sidekick is a cooperative play mode. On this mode, either both players win or lose a game. The aim is to complete the objectives of each level with both players alive.
The project
The game also features a faction system. Hero is blue, while Sidekick is red. Players can only hard or be harmed by enemies of the opposite color. Purple enemies however are able to damage both players.
Nemesis Sidekick is an open source game made with the Unity Engine in C#. The game code is under a GPLv3 license, and all its assets are under a CC BY-SA license unless explicitly stated otherwise.
A small gallery can be found here.
On a personal level
I have always wanted to do my own videogame. Is just a personal challenge. After trying out tutorials, tools, books etc. I felt that I was just pushing the act of making a game further and further away, so finally one day I got down to it and started coding a game. Sure, its far from perfect, but at least is my own.
On a game design level
I have quite a few ideas for videogames in my head, but this one seems not to be overly ambitious and fit for an opera prima. The specific idea for this game came to my mind one day sitting in a friend house. We were discussing how hard is to find offline cooperative games, where you can just physically sit in the same room as your friends and play together. The I had an idea, what about a game that must be played two players, and where being physically close to each other played a part in the gameplay?.
Little by little this idea took shape in the form of Nemesis Sidekick, and I expanded it a little bit with other interesting gameplay concepts.
First the game is two players only, and both players play in the same keyboard. This forces players to be very close to each other, and this has some implications. As the game was conceived as competitive in nature, I pictured players harassing and messing with each other in order to get an advantage in the game.
In order to make the experience more interesting, I decided to add a second, cooperative game mode, where I could experiment with other mechanics.
In the current iteration, the competitive mode (Nemesis) requires one player to eliminate the other and beat the level (right now only points are counted) to be the winner. The little twist is that when a player dies, he gets a speed and power buff. That means that every time your enemy becomes more and more dangerous, and sort of balances the game.
The cooperative mode (Sidekick) requires both players to survive and beat the level together. The twist here is that friendly fire is enabled, and the death buff is applied to the other player when one dies. So, in the one hand you want your partner to survive in order to beat the level, but on the other you would like that sweet sweet buff.
Current state and future plans
The project has been stale for a month due to me changing jobs, country and not having internet at home. Hopefully I can get back on the road again soon.
The game currently has mostly placeholder graphics and sound/music, and the levels and enemies are just testing prototypes. Also the game hasn't been playtested by anybody else than me, so I didn't had any feedback about the game system. Right now I am more concerned about learning how to make games, and my aim is to put in place some basic system that can be extended to produce a complete game. Of course I am open for anybody who wants to contribute, collaborations are always welcome!.
