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A small group of Riot Games developers announced only a few days ago that they would be participating in Thunderdome X, a 48 hour “hackathon” where Rioters are encouraged to make any change to the game that they wish, as team PVC (Player Voted Content). Their mission? Develop a community dictated game in 48 hours or less. Development started on August 16 and will end on August 18.
The goal of team PVC is to be as open as possible for the entirety of development, allow players to vote on what they want and eventually release the mini-game to the public to test out for themselves. While it was noted, that the later might not happen, the team is hopeful and the game already look promising.
At the start, players voted on what they wanted and were able to choose between several genres of game as well as a League of Legends theme.
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What eventually won out was a 2D Platformer with an arcade aesthetic. Once the team knew the guidelines, they came up with a more detailed plan on how they would apply both theme and genre.
It was decided that:
- Ziggs will be our main character
- We'll focus on a few single-screen platforming levels vs. long side-scrolling dungeons so we can focus resources and depth of gameplay
- WE WANT DESTRUCTION!!! but don't want to scare the engineering team with too much destruction (and bugs)
- Ziggs is defined by tossing bombs and satchel hopping, let's try to get that in!
- We want enemies and boss fights!
- Ziggs vs. Brand sounds sweet
With all that being said, they moved forward with the project and have been updating the community along the way.
Last night, they posted the first gameplay footage of their workable prototype.
Ziggs is able to throw bombs and jump around, just as he was intended. So far, so good. The team has noted that they are currently exiting phase one (asset generation) and moving into phase two (polishing up assets, making it all come together).
To keep updated on development, you can visit the forum mega post here, visit their Instagram here or jump into their Discord here.