Hello all,

Wanted to post about some of the changes and features we’ve added to PINHEAD after it’s initial hosting on Garry’s Mod (or GMod), for anyone that missed it…check this out if you fancy… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zymA22ohkWI  

The original gamemode we made for Garry’s Mod was very gory and gladiatorial in it’s nature! Bald human avatars faced off against each other in a large forested map with just a crowbar, a camera and a detonation device. Blood flowed freely and most of the gameplay was quite chaotic and involved a lot of bashing each other up in frantic exchanges.

From the feedback from the GMod version, we realised the scene/map we created was far too dense and was hard to navigate as well as see through as it featured a large hilly mound in the centre of the scene. For the new demo, we’ve stripped it back which from testing it has enabled a lot more stealth and considerate gameplay decisions from players, you no longer have to run long distances to get into any action – the feel is very different as a foolish move could give away your position and increase the chance of your PIN being punched and BOOOOM!

Another key change has been the introduction of projectile weapons, which are great when the player wants to use a sniper style technique and go for a long-range attack. We’ve introduced the energy ball which fires a long distance with considerable power to give the player an extra stealth ability and potentially punish berserker style players. Although I think the game allows several styles of play, we want to engineer the elements of gameplay somewhat to allow more stealth and sneaky gameplay.

We found in the GMod version, players would often hide in corners or against walls when their health bar was low or they were about to be stunned, meaning if stunned their PIN wouldn’t be revealable…. this was frankly a very daft oversight on our part, but also a big part of the fun of game development, trial and error! The idea of a magnet was thought up and introduced as a way to combat this technique and stop players hiding in frustrating corners and parts of the scene. The magnet is also a great weapon and very fun when applied to an unsuspecting player, probably my favourite game feature…

The final big change was taking away the humans and introducing more friendly / generally nicer robot characters! We discussed this a lot at the start of the demo’s development and decided that featuring robots was perhaps more suitable and pleasing for a wider audience, as well as being less ‘rough’ by replacing the blood and guts with nuts and bolts instead! We also were keen to introduce more modifications and tinkering options with each player’s avatar, which fits better in our view for a robot.

Thanks for reading! More to come soon.