Clowntastlauhpe!
- Date: January 2024
- Project: Game Prototype
- Role: Lead Game Designer, Character/Environment Designer, Artist, Programmer
- Tools Used: Unity 3D, Maya, Krita, Github
- Link to Project: Play it here!
- Project Brief: A small experimental solo project I worked on over the 48-hour Global Game Jam 2024 weekend. It's a silly first-person shooter where you laugh into your microphone to shoot your "laughing gun" at folks to cure their depression. The Game Jam theme was "make me laugh", so I instantly wanted to design a game around real life laughing as a control input. I decided a FPS would be an interesting genre to go with. I did all the designing for game mechanics, characters, weapons, and levels. As well as all the programming, and 3D modeling.
The Global Game Jam 2024 theme was "make me laugh", so I wanted to make a game around laughing in real life as a way to control the game. With 48 hours to work on the project, I quickly designed and programmed everything within the game. If I had more time, I would have loved to flesh out the level designs and game mechanics a bit more, but I'm happy with what I was able to create on my own within the short time frame I had.
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The unique controls for the game are as follows:
- Say "ha" into the microphone to shoot.
- Say "he" into the microphone to heal.
- Press the WASD keys to walk
- Press Space key to jump
- Press "E" key to open doors.
I also allowed for shooting and healing to be done by pressing "V" and "H" respectively, in case the microphone input isn't an option for the player.
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It's not the most conventional way to control a first-person shooter, but that's by design. The awkward controls are meant to be comedic and experimental, and I'm happy to say it had the comedic effect I was looking for, as many of my testers were found laughing and giggling throughout the prototype. The game uses the Windows 10 keyword recognizer to recognize the word the player is using to either laugh or shoot. With more time, I would have worked to make the keyword recognizer more consistent, as sometimes it doesn't always recognize the word the player says into the microphone.
If I were to ever expand on the game, I would love to experiment with using VR controls to truly immerse the player in the game. I also would have loved to add more weapons and game mechanics based on microphone input and laughing words from other cultures, such as a grenade thrown with something like, "ho!" and a melee attack with something like, "fu/hu" (Japanese laughing sound). I also originally had planned for there to be a mime boss character at the end of the prototype, but didn't have enough time to implement him.
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Oh, and don't ask me what a "clowntaslauphe" is. I'll leave whatever it means to your personal interpretation ;)
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