Wizarduo

Production:

In my studies for Informatics I came across the question: Why are computer games only played with Keyboard+Mouse Input and not for example Mouse+Mouse or Keyboard+Keyboard?!
Well the last option seems a bit odd, but I couldn’t resist to program a game with dual mouse input, which turned out to be quite easy. There are certain plugins with mouse driver classes, that can easily be used inside Unity, to display two independent mouse cursors on screen. But what can you actually do with that data?!
At that point i decided to make some kind of wizard game, where you have to combine two elements from a set of five. The combination then casts a certain spell. Therefore the core problem for the player is to draw with both hands simoultaneously, sometimes the same symbol (which can be done symmetrically), sometimes different symbols (which is of course more complicated).
So the next step in the production of my game was an effective shape estimation algorithm. First I tried Image Matching, which horribly failed due to the inconsistent quality of the input symbols, that would always look different indepent of the person and the hand they were drawn with. So I decided to try something with corner detection combined with a vector rasterization called the Freeman Chain Code. Whenever someone draws a square or triangle really fast, you can easily detect the sharp corners of the symbol. That’s why this method worked really well.
The next challenge I walked across was the movement system. Mouses don’t have that many input options: Left click, right click, mouse wheel click and the mouse wheel itself. So what do you do with that?! I decided to make symmetry a core element in my game, so the right click of the right hand would do the opposite as the left click on the left hand, as both are clicked by the middle finger. Also UI buttons on the screen turned out to be quite useful, as the best thing a mouse can do are not the buttons but the precise movement of the cursor.

Gameplay:

The core element will be symmetry, which leads to some kind of symmetrical story. Also I found the idea quite nice to have two main protagonists, a boy and a girl, who are both represented by one of the two mouses. So when you walk around in a dungeon they hold hands and act together like one player object, whereas there will also be an openworld top down view, where you can walk around with them independently and solve some kind of puzzles.
The elements, that are combined for the spells, are represented by feelings: Anger, Love, Happiness, Sadness and Peace. You can only use these elements, when you feel them. For example the players get angry, when they are attacked, but then they loose their state of peace. And there are much more reactions and interactions like this.

Each element has a different representation:

Anger: Damage element, that is associated with flames
Love: Attraction element, which can be used to make enemies become your friends and help you
Happiness: Intensifies other feelings, some kind of power element, that comes with thunder
Sadness: Defensive element, sad people build walls around them, represented by ice
Peace: Healing element, the players peace bar gets loaded when he does nothing

Future:

-After all was implemented I discovered the additional potential of my game: People could play the game together loacally. Each player gets one mouse and can control the different part of the protagonist, which is therefore highly interesting for gamer couples. That also leads to thoughts about an online Coop, which would actually ruin the idea behind the game, but shouldn’t be forgotten.
-The gameplay is not quite exciting yet, as I haven’t made any functioning AI enemies yet.