So, almost daily, thoughts of multiplayer Bit Shifter, and how it would work, tend to race through my mind. What modes will we make available? How would they work? These are all just pipe dreams until I actually get them out there, though. I want to see what everyone thinks.
Cooperative Mode:
The basic idea here is that we allow multiple players to tackle a difficult level or series of levels. The mechanics are quite easy to understand but there's such a large amount of subtle changes, and decisions based off of those, that it could dramatically alter the way you play the game.
Would we allow friendly fire? Im sure that would be amusing to a lot of players, also there's really no penalty for death other than being taken out of the game for a few seconds. Also to consider are the "bump" effects you get when you take damage. With proper manipulation of that you could probably launch the other player(s) to the other end of the map rapidly. Could we work that in as a necessary mechanic? I like the idea, myself.
Then there's the sharing/ownership of Bits. Would you be able to pick up the other players' Bits? That could make it easy for trolling, but it could also be used to help a newer player learn. The same can be applied for having ownership of those little guys. A troll could swoop around the map collecting all the Bits and just hoard them. Then we need a way of transferring them between players. There has to be a way around this issue entirely, it should come to us in time.
Competitive Modes:
The biggest issue altogether with fighting other players is that the ScanDisc is a tiny unit that moves at a tremendous speed. It actually moves just a bit slower than the projectiles you fire. Hitting another one is almost entirely impossible. We could take the easy way out and scale everything down for multiplayer, but that would change the feel of the game a lot from the single player campaign. Maybe it would work for:
Deathmatch:
Pretty simple gaming concept. This is the only real reason I can see for slowing down the ships, or placing a means to do so within the game. It would be neat to have some sort of object in the center of the map that a player has to gain control over (with Bits) which would slow the other ships down enough to to be targeted and destroyed.
MOBA Style:
I think this ties competition and our general idea in single player together quite nicely. You're basically laying down "friendly infection" rather than cleaning up, with the eventual goal of reaching the other team's datastream. Likewise the difficulty of hitting other ships is still there, perhaps if we made some controllable objects like the ones proposed for Deathmatch mode we could make that a reality.
Then there's other MOBA aspects we could add, such as "soldier" mobs, and power-ups that already exist in the game. Along with all the rebalancing those would require to create a fun and engaging experience.
Well that wraps up my thoughts so far on the matter. What does everyone else think?
