A sheep-fueled, systemic Third Person Brawler
HIRT
—A sheep-fueled systemic Third Person Action Brawler
by David Hunziker und Basil Sutter
In HIRT, players find themselves in the role of competing shepherds, fighting for the holy pastures of their clans. On small island they fight for dominance, using the freely roaming sheep they find there as tools and weapons, friends and foes. Players make the sheep ram their competitors, launch the animals with godly forces through the air, cut of their wool and turn it into munition or simply sneak up to their foes, disguised as sheep themselves, and hit them from behind. Islands are loaded quickly behind each other, as they are designed to create fast paced, energetic matches between the shepherds. We use small to midrange sized maps and a binary damage system, with one hit being an immediate kill to achieve the desired play style. There are no respawns or retries, each player only gets this one chance on a map. The last shepherd still standing wins the current map for his or her clan.
HIRT follows a systemic approach of game mechanics. Mechanics and effects are combinable and logically cohesive, which creates unique and chaotic gameplay moments. Objects, weapons and animals can be picked up, thrown or used by the players or certain weapons. On each island, our system generates weapons, sheep count and other features according to a randomized version or even mixes it up completely. Thus, even when players stumble upon the same island again, new situations and conflicts will arise.
Examples:
- A player who hides as a sheep can be picked up by other players, rendering him/herself incapable of doing anything and probably ending up being dropped in the ocean
- Ripping the wool of players who hide as sheep forces them to unhide
- Sheep dropping on players kill players, therefore jumping over players and becoming a sheep in the right moment kills them as well
- Sheep express emotions; Making them angry might come back at players
HIRT is a work in progress game that was first developed as the Bachelor thesis of David Hunziker and me. It was our Bachelor project in the Game Design program of the Zurich University of Arts. HIRT was then further developed by Basil. You can follow the game now on Steam and it helps us a ton if you wishlist it.
