Camel Race

This is a game we made at the Berlin Mini Game Jam on July 2014, which took place in the offices of GameDuell. We were a bigger team than usual this time: Birgit Pohl, Kieran Turan, Andrej Svenke, Iwan Gabovitch and myself.

One of the themes of the jam was “Crossing the desert”, so we decided to make a racing game set in the desert where you control a camel and race against another camel. The “fuel” of the camels is water, so the goal of the game, rather than finishing the race first, is to survive longer than the other player, by finding and drinking water. The water is in jars that pop in the circuit, so basically the camel that is ahead is usually the one who can drink: this is how the “racing” element is introduced.

The game is local multiplayer for 2 players split-screen, you will need a friend to play with you. You can control it with the keyboard (cursor keys + right shift for one player, WASD + left shift for the other player), or with gamepads, that should be detected automatically when plugged (use the shoulder buttons for sprinting, the normal “action” butons for running). “Sprinting” is our implementation of what in other games are called “nitros”: the camel accelerates for a short moment, although spending more water than usual. Use this to steal water from another camel that is right in front of you and about to drink. Well, you can use it any time, but be careful not to run out of water and lose the race.

The game is displayed in fullscreen by default, you can switch to windowed mode by pressing F1 (and the window is resizable to your taste). Exit the game pressing ESC.

From a programming point of view, it was one of the first times I used the Box2D bindings of Löve2D. Usually I’d write my own basic collision detection instead of bothering to look at the API. I had some bad experiences with third-party physics engines before, specially at the times when I was using Stencyl, but this time I decided to force myself to use the given one instead. It went quite smoothly, I must say I’m happy with the experience. Besides, this project also let me do some practise with features of Löve2D that I don’t use often: split-screen display, resizable windows, particle systems, shaders, etc.

The background music is taken from Freesound.org, CC-BY licensed from the user “everythingsounds”. The other SFX, I don’t know exactly, but Iwan always takes care that the assets he provides for our games are copyright-free. The characters and UI elements were designed by Birgit; the background graphics partly by Kieran, partly by myself. Andrej and me coded together during the jam, using “pair programming”, which was a very pleasant experience.

Anyway, the game is free as usual, multiplatform as usual, GPL-licensed, ready to download and play. You still need to find a friend to play with you though.

Enjoy!