I return from my almost two month long hiatus to reveal Vagus (or The Vagus Project)! Truth be told, there isn’t much to show off yet, even though I’ve been easing into the project over the past few weeks. Despite that, Vagus has a much more complex design in comparison to my last project Tytans II, so I have plenty to yap about in this preliminary post.
Tytans II has taken an indefinite back-burner position. I learned a lot about Unity and C# though it, which was my original intention when I started the project. Given that it served its purpose, I don’t really regret moving on before polishing it into a final product.
Now that I’ve addressed that, let’s talk about Vagus, a competitive multiplayer game that takes inspiration from a Japanese card game.
Vagus really started out as a kind of spaceship arena-shooter with an emphasis on high inertia. The special part of the idea was the high inertia; really, the whole idea kinda revolved around it. My first idea for a map included a singularity in the center that players would use to swing themselves around the arena. High emphasis on deliberate movement.
The more I played with the idea, though, the more annoying the idea sounded. Players wouldn’t be able to react quickly. New players would most likely just orbit the center opposite of each other and take pot shots. Close fly-bys would be fleeting, or would result in a DPS race as the two players just kinda unload on each other.
So I swapped out high-inertia movement for a proper game rule set, one that I knew facilitated quick, but strategic game play. I’m fortunate to have learned about Karuta during my hiatus. That said, Karuta can’t really be played on a computer. The physical aspects of playing are to important to the game. Also, the rules call for a 15 minute memorization period, which wouldn’t fly in a video game. Oh, and players need to able to speak Japanese; and, to play competitively, players must memorize 100 separate poems.
I could go on.
Nevertheless, I stuck with the idea of integrating Karuta into my existing game idea. The above is a gaudy representation of the result.
Players still control spaceships, but the map and the objectives are very different. Each player has territory on the map. In each territory are 12 (could be changed) nodes. Each node has some identifying marker that can be seen by both players. In each round, a marker name is slowly revealed to both players. The first player to capture the node with the matching name removes the node from the field. If the node was on the capturer’s side, nothing additional happens. If the node was on the opposite side, the node is removed and replaced with a node from the capturer’s side. The first player to remove all nodes from their side wins.
Karuta has some rules for selecting incorrect cards that I may or may not use. Really it depends on the pool of node identifiers I end up using and how node capturing ends up working. There wiil certainly be a penalty for capturing an incorrect node, though.
On top of this, players can actively fight each other. Death doesn’t really mean much other than losing positioning and being unable to act for some time.
I’m working on “classes”, which consist of sets of four interchangeable passives that affect playstyle. Stuff like moving faster in friendly territory, placing markers that can be teleported to, or just being a menace that focuses on keeping the other player out of the game.
There’s still a lot to work on. As of now, I have parts of the Main Menu UI finished along with some the backend for multiplayer/the lobby. Unity’s default multiplayer functionality has really helped me get this project off the ground (though I’m still figuring out the API). Right now, I’m focusing on getting player setup in the lobby at a starting point, and then I’m going to start thinking about gameplay options before I dive into making a prototype of the actual game.
Oh, before I go, Monday probably won’t be update day anymore. Expect either Thursday or Friday to take its place.
Aaaaand I think that’s it. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!
