Welcome! If you are reading this post, it means you are probably interested in our game, and that means a lot to us! I'm Hugo Campos, the Co-Founder of Electric Monkeys Studio. If you don’t know us, we have developed Gravity Heroes (that just won the “Golden Cube” award yesterday, crazy right?!), a local multiplayer game for up to four players and Gravitational, a VR game that received several awards at BIG Festival and SBGames. However, we are not here to talk about past projects, we want to talk about our new game: Hired 2 Die.
What is Hired 2 Die?
Hired 2 Die is a game focused on the cooperation between two players. You and a friend are the new employees in an organization that deals with the paranormal, offering contracts that pay a salary based on the difficulty of the tasks in its clauses. You will have to move boxes around an office or even fix slot machines in a casino, all this while trying to survive the ploys of terrible creatures. Only through teamwork will you be able to finish your job in time. And, if you are feeling courageous (and lucky!), you can even accept a contract to try and imprison the creatures.
This Devlog #0 is the first part of a new vision for the project. We are committing to better our communication process with our community, and the first step towards this objective is in the creation of Devlogs, which will be updated every two weeks showing our plans, different game strategies, new mechanics and the development process of new monsters, all in a manner which is as clear and transparent as possible.
What are we doing now?
We are hard at work to finalize the development of the first stage of the game, the office. This milestone represents something very important for us: a playable alpha version. A stage in Hired 2 Die has three maps (every one representing a different difficulty level), three advanced tasks, some basic tasks, and, obviously, monsters, for a unique, strategic, and fun experience.
What is already in the game?
We have added various tools to help you prevail and finish your job with perfection. First, you have access to the powerful security systems present at your job site. You can turn lights on or off, open and close doors, and trigger alarms remotely. But your most important tool is the security cameras, which let you see rooms and corridors from a “safe” location, keeping you ahead of terrible creatures lurking in the shadows, tracking their position, restricting their movements, distracting them with alarms, and controlling the lights to keep them away from your objectives.
Second, you can manipulate various equipment and items, that can be delivered during the stage to help you formulate the perfect plan to execute your job. However, everything in life has a price, be it money or time. The items bought during the stage must be paid for with the money received from completing tasks, and, unless you pay extra, the delivery man might take a while to bring your orders. Therefore, buying items must be carefully planned between the players, since, as the days go by, the horrors that inhabit your workplace get more menacing and dangerous.
Last but certainly not least, the biggest of your aces: your partner! You can monitor the various security cameras, making use of the doors, alarms, and other systems to distract or restrict enemies, while your friend desperately tries to finish a job, that, sometimes, needs calm and attention.
And this is the exact feeling of cooperation that we want not only to have in the game, but also with the community! It is still early to talk about a playable version, but not to include you in the development process. We have a Discord server that will be updated with the Develogs regularly, where you can make comments and talk to the team. We want to hear your ideas, comments, and make a better game with your feedback. In the future, we will invite players to the Alpha version of the game.
I sincerely hope this Devlog got you interested in the project, and we hope to see you back in two weeks!