Pit of Doom – a Impending Doom Game

”Pit of Doom” is a multiplayer impending doom game for the PC. The game brings the players to the role of a person that has fallen into a pit with polar bears at the zoo, and her friend, desperately trying to pull her out of the pit. Both players are locked together in a chain which makes the situation deadly even for the person standing at the top. The task for player number one (the player at the top) is to pull player number two (the player at the bottom) out from the water in the bear pit or else both gets dragged down and eaten alive.

As players of “Pit of Doom” you choose to play the friend in the water wanting to escape the pit and his friend that tries to rescue him. Both players will always die, because the top player will loose stamina the more he is struggling to pull up the bottom player by the chain and will eventually be dragged down. By pressing A and D alternatily on the keyboard the top player will slowly start to pull up the bottom player. While pulling, a bar will appear over the top player. This bar represents her stamina. This bar will start full and then decrease during gameplay. When the bar is empty the top player will be too exhausted to continue. She has to rest and the bottom player will slowly slip down into the water again during the resting period. If the top player continues to pull the chain during the resting period to prevent the bottom player from slipping further down she will hurt her hands badly and will not be able to continue pulling the chain at all. The top player will not have enough stamina to stand against the weight of the bottom player and will get dragged down in the water and eaten by the polar bears, which then also means game over for both players.

While the top player is struggling to pull up the bottom player, the bottom player will have to grab the chain connecting them both. This will be done by clicking the left mouse button rapidly. With the other hand the bottom player will start finding grips in the wall to lighten the weight for the top player. This will be done by clicking the grips on the wall with the right mouse button. However there is a catch for the bottom player aswell. The more the mouse button left is clicked the more sweaty the hands of the bottom player gets and it will trigger a scenario.

The Scenario is that the bottom player looses the grip of the chain but since she still has her hand on the wall she has a few seconds to try to get a grip of the chain again. The bottom player will be able to do so via button mashing a randomly generated keyboard key. If she succeeds to press the key in time, she will manage to get a grip of the chain again, but the top player will loose a big amount of stamina. Otherwise the bottom player will not succeed and the top player gets dragged and falls into the water and both players get eaten by the polar bears and the game is over. The reason the chain gripping key is randomly generated, is to make the situation for the players even more stressfull, forcing them to keep an eye on which key they are pressing.

There is no win condition in the game. Either the top player will run out of stamina and will not be able to rest long enough to recover stamina to pull out the bottom player because the polarbears are closing in, or the bottom player will get too sweaty hands from all the struggling and will eventually loose the grip from the chain. This is what an impending doom game is all about. In “Pit of Doom” the players are supposed to feel the despair being forced to rest in a crisis situation before being able to continue fighting for their lives and to feel the panic falling down in the water and being eaten alive by the bears. Still at some times the game mechanics will also make the players believe they will survive the dangerous situation and save eachother from being eaten by hungry polar bears. One example for this is when the bottom player succeeds to get a grip of the chain after loosing it because of the sweat.

In order to be able to make “Pit of Doom” a multiplayer game and not have to split the screens it had to be made in a perspective when you see the polar bears closing in at all times. It results in a more structured gameplay experience. To split the screens would have made it into a more caotic gameplay event which wanted to be avoid. The players should still be aware of the closing in polar bears which would result in even more fear and panic feelings.

To make “Pit of Doom” into a multiplayer game was a matter of course. It contributed in creating different emotions. If the player does not panic or feel fear while playing the game, the game creator has failed the task of creating a impending doom game according to Adam Mayes lectures. But we human are social beings. If one flees the other flees aswell, if one player gets scared the fear is transferred to the other. Besides the game experience gets more intensive when there are two characters. With these reasons the choice to make “Pit of Doom” a multiplayer game was made.

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