Co-op roguelike · Demo out, in development
A roguelike where a small group holds a line together. I rejoined the team to build the systems the whole experience runs on: core movement, weapon mechanics, respawn, character unlocks and quests. Development is still active after the demo.
- Gameplay developer and systems designer
- Five person team
- Aquila Games · 2023 to now
- Demo released, development ongoing
01The problem
Together Against Mork did not start as the game it is now. The original pitch was a straightforward top-down survivors-like: enemy swarms, simple movement, no structures, no tower defense. It played fine, but it gave a five-person co-op team no particular reason to hold a specific position together, which was the actual premise of the game.
02Research & rationale
Comparing the build honestly against the games it was borrowing from made the gap obvious. A Vampire Survivors-style swarm shooter is built around one player's build snowballing over a run, not a group defending something together. In MDA terms, the mechanics produced solo scaling as the dynamic, while the aesthetic we wanted was fellowship, so the format had to change, not just the numbers inside it.
03Iterations
Concept A: a 2D top-down survivors-like
Top-down, simple movement, enemy swarms, nothing to build or defend. The closest reference point was Vampire Survivors. Rejected once it was clear the format rewarded one player scaling up alone, not a five-person team holding a line together.
Concept B: 3D, with a tower-defense layer
The game was rebuilt in 3D and a tower-defense layer was added on top: a crystal to defend, structures to place, waves to survive as a team. This is the version in the walkthrough below: defend the crystal, build a loadout, hold the line together.
04Screens
05Walkthrough
06Result
What shipped kept the co-op premise but gave it a spatial reason to exist: a line worth holding, together, not just a shared screen. Movement and weapon feel, respawn pacing, and the unlock and quest systems were all built on top of that shape once it was in place.
- Unity
- C#
- Gameplay systems
- AI behaviour
07References
- Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI.
- Swink, S. (2009). Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation. Morgan Kaufmann.