A boy and a girl sit in front of a glowing screen, their faces awash in hollow blue light. The boy’s right hand fingers tremble over the arrow keys of a keyboard; he bites the nails of his left. The girl’s painted nails tap on the A and W keys. Suddenly the boy shouts, “No not there!!” and the girl startles, hands now high in the air, before she retorts, “Yes huh! That’s totally right!” He yells back “No way!” and juts his finger at the screen, pointing, only to have it slapped away, and the two row for a moment. On screen a pair of characters die horribly, first burned alive and then devoured by piranhas, again and again, all the while their godlike puppeteers screaming back and forth: “That’s not where it goes!” “Yes it is!!” “Now I’m dead again!” “Well that’s your own fault!” “Come stand over here!” “Here?” “No, here!!” “THAT WON’T WORK!” “YES IT WILL!!!” Until suddenly the girl is calm. You’d swear you can actually see the light bulb that illuminates over her head as her expression changes. “Wait... wait wait wait...” As her character pushes a box, the boy’s follows suit, jumping into position - he instantly knows what she wants him to do. A few precise movements later, and a victorious chime echoes through the room, their characters now dancing on screen. “YES!!!” the two shout in unison, and suddenly they’re in an embrace, sharing a kiss.
Their first kiss.
Okay, that ending may be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but the rest is a (mostly) real account of people playing the first major release of A Jolly Corpse, Wyv and Keep! Wyv and Keep is a 2D platformer that relies on solving wooden crate-based puzzles, avoiding deadly traps, and running from cannibalistic pygmies. Just like real life! You’ll even delve deep into a volcano... And most of all, you’ll rely on cooperative play between Wyv and Keep. In most cases, a box must be pushed atop a switch in order to open the door to the next level, and there are multitudinous obstacles waiting to fail or kill the players. A single player can take control of both characters, either by switching back and forth between them, or for more experienced gamers, even by controlling both at once. But every level requires the characters to work together to advance, so the gameplay really comes to life when the characters are being controlled by separate people. Especially by a pair of close friends or lovers. Or mortal enemies! Boxes and switches in the Amazonian jungle, you ask? Yup!
A live play session of Wyv and Keep. It's all cooperative fun... until the arguments break out :)
As we’ve developed Wyv and Keep, we’ve gotten to see quite a few sets of playtesters experiencing co-op puzzle-solving first-hand. When we get to see different types of personalities come out there are often heartwarming and always hilarious results, and this is when we really feel rewarded as game developers. Sometimes in a couple we can easily see who wears the pants in the relationship, as one will quickly proceed to start giving orders to the other (whether those orders be correct or not). Their partner will often even do the actual puzzle solving, meekly suggesting ideas that are actually correct. Other pairs seem to take on the personalities of the characters themselves, with those playing Wyv rushing headfirst into adventure, and those playing Keep sitting back and making sarcastic quips as the other dies horribly.
Two evenly matched friends tend to be the funniest to watch as players quickly walk astray of the teamwork path and vie for top position, working together only just as much as necessary before battling each other to be the MVP of any particular puzzle, and especially for the apparently much coveted position of one-who-activated-the-switch. We’ve seen some disagreements become volatile during especially difficult levels, but one thing that’s shared across all personality types is that when the level is finally solved, all is forgiven in laughter and hugs. There’s probably even some viable material here for people studying interpersonal communication and relationships! But we’ll leave that to them. We just want to make games.
Careful... careful...
We also want to create hysterical, memorable times for our players. We took great care in the design of the levels to ensure teamwork be required in every one of them. This interaction starts very simply in the early levels, for example having one player to jump into a 1x1 gap so the other can push a box over them, rather than have it fall into the gap and become immovable. But the required synergy quickly builds, and in later levels a large number of precise steps are required from each character in order to advance. Some have asked whether a mentally intense puzzle-solving environment is appropriate to co-operative play, and we’ve been thrilled with the results.
Where a single player and a single mind can sometimes be advantageous in avoiding communication difficulties early on in the game, a team’s strength comes from having two different minds both working to solve a puzzle, and this strength starts to shine as the game progresses. Later levels require lots of planning and lots of trial and error, and where a single mind can get stuck in a particular mindset and fail to advance, the ability to bounce ideas off another person and have another creative mind working on the same puzzle really becomes an advantage. But communication is certainly something players will need to work on together if they want to see the game to the end.
Of course, simply picking up your friend and tossing them into a pit of lava is just as much, if not more fun than actually solving a puzzle, and that’s why this is absolutely encouraged. Get sick of someone barking at you about placing that dynamite correctly? Push them into that 1x1 square and drop it at their feet, and then see what they say about placement. They make fun of you for getting bit by that snake one too many times? You can actually carry it over and have it bite them. And I think you can still carry pygmies too. Not sure if that’s a bug or... Anyways, even though we’re huge fans of a dynamic duo talking over their plans before a level, executing a complicated sequence of action and timing puzzles perfectly, and getting a gold medal in both time and retries at once, we’re just as much fans of petty bickering getting in the way of any puzzle solving whatsoever. Afterall, PvP was always most fun when you weren’t supposed to be doing it, wasn’t it?
Our lovable heroes find themselves in a little bit of a bind
Adventurers who can overcome their need to kill each other, however, will have the greatest experiences with Wyv and Keep as they’ll get to spend the most time with them and witness all of the witty banter and charming interactions between the two characters. We wanted players to become invested in their characters and really enjoy the journey together, so we took just as much care in the writing of the script and the animations as we did to level design. You’ll quickly find Wyv to be a boisterous, adventurous free spirit with a one track mind that’s on the rails toward treasure. He’s slightly absent minded when it comes to anything other than gold coins, shiny gems, and priceless relics, and his solutions to puzzles tend to be the first thing that pops into his head.
Keep’s the polar opposite, as she’s careful, calculating, and responsible. We assume she’s got a love of treasure as well since she follows Wyv into perilous Amazonian jungles, but she often seems more concerned with her hair and makeup. She can be seen lecturing Wyv out of one of his sillier ideas or grabbing the map away from him when he’s led them in circles, and regularly saving the pair from certain doom. We think Wyv’s need to adventure and obsession with shiny things resonates with male fans, while girls relate to Keep’s love of sweets. Or if you’re a male fan with beautiful golden locks and who appreciates a cupcake? By all means!
Coordinated explosions? Not as easy as Michael Bay makes it appear
So why do Wyv and Keep play identically? Couldn’t they each have some special power? This is one of the questions we get asked most often at A Jolly Corpse, and trust that we’ve wrestled with this question ourselves. We considered unique abilities for each character, but ultimately decided that by making Wyv and Keep identical we really put the puzzle solving in the hands of the players, rather than the developers. If the heroes each had unique powers, this would make the solving of each level much more linear, as it would be immediately clear which player was supposed to solve which part of every puzzle. If Wyv could, say, construct ladders to reach high places, there would need to be puzzles where this was the only solution. While we did enjoy the prospect of each character having a unique skill and getting a chance to further their development, we didn’t want to dictate how players were to solve any particular puzzle.
We wanted them to decide this themselves, and work through every level together, solving step-by-step whichever part they figured out themselves. As a result, there are very commonly solutions to levels that we hadn’t even thought of. Yes, you’ve gotta get a box on that switch, but how you do that is often up to you! Keeping controls and abilities identical allows players to get attached to their character, as they can pick either Wyv or Keep purely by personality and aesthetics, rather than what they “do”. It adds another level of challenge to the game, as the solution to any puzzle is never immediately obvious, and requires analysis and deconstruction.
Challenge is something we feel has been lacking in modern games. Lacking, we say! All right, yes, it’s more of an actual fact than something that we feel uniquely. This really connects to a much larger discussion about the evolution of gaming as a whole, but in general we are hardcore gamers who look back fondly on the days of the SNES and Genesis, and have little interest in new casual “quick reward” games. Attention spans have become short, and recent generations of gamers can lose interest with a game in roughly thirty seconds if they aren’t permitted some sort of immediate gratification. We think this is a shame, and that some of the best gaming experiences rely on taking time to enjoy the game world and become personally invested together with a friend. As middle schoolers and high schoolers and into college, and even still today, we’ve had some of our best gaming experiences playing together with friends through a challenging campaign, probably not beating it the first time, or second, or even tenth, but finally conquering it all hopped up on Mountain Dew and crappy pizza. Or these days on beer and... well, crappy pizza. This is the kind of hardcore no-holds-barred late-night co-op gaming we want to bring back.
Hats! Everybody loves hats! ... right?
This is not to say Wyv and Keep has no rewards. It certainly does, but they will be more rewarding to a player who’s invested in the story, the characters, and the world. We believe that a reward can take the simple form of a particularly charming back-and-forth between the two heroes. It can be discovering a hat shop run by a constantly guffawing giant in an ancient underground pygmy cannibal village and equipping the heroes with Chun-Li hair buns and a viking helmet. We believe that yes, even in 2012, simply defeating a ninth level and advancing to the next world, earning a new template and new music and new traps can be its own reward. And we believe discovering the final (well, only...) boss and all of its unparalleled awesomeness (we spent a long time on it!) should be a reward in itself. Most of all we think players will feel rewarded just diving into the world together with a friend. Co-op gaming has always been one of our favorite activities here at A Jolly Corpse, and will continue to be as long as people are making great co-op games. Or even if the world ends and people can’t make games anymore, as long as we can still play Twisted Metal 2 on a generator.
Oh right, and the number one question we get asked: are Wyv and Keep lovers, friends, brother and sister, or cousins? We’re not sure! You’ll have to ask them. :)