John Good
he/him
CS276 is 100% coursework module, and this was also the first year it was run. The coursework revolves around making a small game in a random team of 3. Their were some restrictions - it had to be 2d, and it had to use GDscript with Godot. Having learnt Godot that summer during GTMK25, I was fairly confident.
My team opted to create a roguelite, where the seed is based on the current time, meaning everyone playing at the same time would have the same seed. This also invited some meta-progression, in that you could play the same seed multiple times. Each level has 2 portals, creating a binary tree-like structure to each playthrough. Furthermore, users can send souls-like messages to each other, via a (quite simple) node server (yes, that was allowed, I asked). The server image was made public, such that players could host their own server, with their own difficulty multipliers, message length limits, seed durations, etc.
Since a big part of the game is the meta-progression between runs, and the hints left by other players, players looking for a challenge are able to intentionally play the next seed, with the expectation that there will be fewer messages, and that they should leave more. This means that the main run will always be populated, and new players will experience the game as intended (provided the player count is above 0 in the first place).
Throughout the game, the player can find chests containing extra items - stronger weapons, stronger armour, limited use spells that serve as powerful escape options, or potions that can provide run-lasting buffs to core stats.
