The making of DON'T CHICKEN OUT - a multiplayer rage game

My brother and I have almost finished making our first online multiplayer game, Don't Chicken Out. It was an absolute blast to make and you can play the free demo right now with the link in the description, either alone or with a friend in local or online multiplayer. Two chickens, an egg. Let's hatch it on the moon, we said. How difficult can it be to bounce an egg between two such as we? Hot dang, this is tough. Our eggs smacked and smashed in the dust. We weep, but we're together, for this adventure has online multiplayer. And so we explore the farm, city, jungle, and more. Through winds and traffic, dodging snakes and grandmas gone manic. Upside down, we float through space, die 100 times, what a disgrace. Sneak our way blind under the dense canopy of jungle vines, scale mighty peaks, losing balance, our egg falls, we shrilly shriek. "It is your fault! " this chick cries. "No, yours! " I tearfully reply. A car blasts its horn, and our child is smashed, dead before it's born. Yet we don't give up. How could we? When we learn others have made it in minutes. How crazy. If you fail, don't grumble and fret and scream. Don't Chicken Out has a free demo, now out on Steam. Guys, if you enjoy it, make sure to wish list you're notified when the full game releases. So for those who watched the last dev log at the start of the year, my bro and I set out on a journey to make a new game we would launch on Steam. We began by making dozens of tiny games using Unity to build up momentum. In Kills, Freedom, Sun-soaked Markets, Yuwanda, Amputation, Jewels, and more. Then we some of those prototypes, spending two weeks on a medical horror game and two more on an incremental style game where you would own your own market in the south of France. We soon realized the design of both games wasn't panning out as we liked. This was fine since we still hadn't invested that much time in either. So, we started fresh with a tiny prototype we had made late last year. Two squares with a basket between them attempting to balance an egg through torturous levels. The seed was planted. We then spent the next month building up this world, creating like lunatics. Again, keeping in mind that we wanted this project to be a blast to play and still have a very short development cycle of 2 to 3 months. Initially, I created this atmospheric silhouette artwork, but we quickly realized it kind of clashed with the humorous party style gameplay. At one point, each player was supposed to control two meditating monks floating upwards, but the chickens just had more humor and appeal. We really liked the ultra cartoony 2D visuals though. So, we went full throttle that. Also inspired by graffiti, street art, and the nostalgic flash look. Cartoony and bold. I also thought about Bennett Foddy's mountain, an enormous mixed mash of assets all piled on top of each other. Both absurd, intriguing, and often really quite appealing. This also meant I could make a bunch of characters and environment pieces and not worry too much about how they would all connect. The world would be absurd. After all, chickens can fly here. These little chickens, they're on a quest to reach the moon traversing the farm, city, jungle, Himalayas, and the galaxy. Each zone would have its unique flavor, mechanics, and challenges. The farm is an introduction to controlling your chickens and balancing the egg. There are basic traps, rotating platforms, and obstacles that switch on and off. The city is stuffed with traffic and nasty obstacle courses that will really test your friendships and skill. The jungle introduces vines which hide the players and egg making balancing extra spicy. There are also these egg traps which the chickens can move through but will destroy the egg. All these combined make the jungle feel rather dense and claustrophobic. Your chickens navigating the twisting tunnels with careful tiny movements. To contrast with that, we then built the Himalayas, a huge open zone with wild winds that make your chickens fly extra fast. What's more, your nest freezes over making the egg extra slippery. This will be a real challenging nightmare for some. But that's not all, guys. Now this is a brutal game and I think only a few very committed players will beat it. Basically those that just don't chicken out. But that's a tiny minority. However, even more casual players can still have fun playing through the farm for example. In fact, we had Meg and Granny play together which was hilarious. Go. Yeah, we did it right. Okay, great, yeah. You move it up and down.

Bounce it. Close, close. Don't move down, move down. Go. Basically, when the egg starts moving my way, you got to balance it help me balance out by moving down. I moved left. You moved right. You didn't catch the egg. The pro gamers out there can try and climb the leaderboards. The dev high score in the solo run is beating the demo in 6 minutes. And as a team, Liam and I beat the game in 9 minutes. And we've tested with the creator of the hit indie title Pedal Pedal who had an absolute blast. He died for example almost 100 times in the farm, but mind you we've balanced things out quite a bit since then. Oh, but no, no. We've got it, WE'VE GOT IT. GO. NO, NO, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. NO, NO. Holy moly. No. No. Careful. Careful. Okay. Next one. Do it. Relax. Let's take on here. Okay. Okay. Wait. Next one. Next one. Next one we go. Okay. And let's go. No. No. Okay. Check point. Yes. Oh my god. We did it. Online multiplayer development was definitely the greatest challenge for this project. We're using Photon Fusion, and even though the project is a very simple 2D physics-based game, online development remained really tricky. So, we're glad we trained on a minimalist project like this. As always, I wish most of the time was spent building levels and creating art for the world. Fascinating to notice how much time and energy needs to be spent on other aspects of the game creation process, such as the store page, trailer, menus, bug fixing, and the like. Absolutely classic game dev. The scope of the project was perfect though. We've got great game making momentum, and we almost have an extra mean title under our belts to play with friends and family for the rest of our lives. We uploaded an early demo on Newgrounds, and it was front page with some great ratings, which was an enormous boost for us. And now we just can't wait to get feedback from you guys, which will help us polish up the demo and full game. Now, the goal is to finish Don't Chicken Out by pretty much the end of this month. Although, we will likely wait until after Steam Next Fest to launch the full game, so we get those extra juicy wish lists. And that way we can also gain more feedback, balance, polish the game. Now, if you end up playing Don't Chicken Out, here's what we would mainly like to know. First of all, how did the difficulty feel, and were you able to eventually beat the demo? How smooth was the online multiplayer? How much fun did you have solo, and playing with a friend. Now, for the game's music, we worked with Dryden, who has taken part in a bunch of our previous Game Dev Challenges. Brilliant musician. Here's a quick clip from The Farm. Here's what he made for the city vibes. Let us know what you think, guys. I'll tell you one thing for sure, it is ultra catchy, especially The Farm. I find myself randomly humming it throughout the day. Subscribe to the channel and have an absolute blast playing Don't Chicken Out. Make sure to wish list it on Steam if you enjoy it. And yeah, thanks for watching, guys. Cheers.