This game jam required me and pre-selected group to make an analogue version of an existing digital game. The game chosen for us was Dead by Daylight from Behavior Interactive. Over the course of on week we created a hidden information board game with mechanics inspired by the source material. Th final product tested very well and Dead by Daylight players with more than 1000 hours even told us that it felt like they were playing the actual game.
For this project I was a co-leader. Because the other co-leader was ill though, I took over most of the pre-production work. Our first goal was to isolate the main systems and mechanics that needed to be part of our game for it to reflect the source. We settled on a few main ones. These were, Hooking, Killing, Chasing, Hiding, and Generators.
We then split off to create our own original concepts. Mine was the following diagram and flowchart. We ended up sticking to this Idea.
The main Challenge with this game was finding a way to create a asymmetrical experience We wanted 1 killer and 4 survivors.
We also wanted a chase mechanic. The game consisted of a hidden information, battleship style game where the survivors needed to move around the board and repair the broken generators without being hooked and killed by the killer. Each team has their own identical board and depending on what tile the pull after taking a movement turn, the may have to alert the other side of their location using number/letter coordinates.
Using some D&D whiteboards, we made a quick prototype with the concept.
When figuring out our chase mechanic, most of my team was stumped, I came up with a unique system to simulate the chasing in dead by daylight. I believe it captures the stress and tension that those moments bring to the game.
The chase system works like this: The killer player will initiate a chase by declaring their location. If there are any survivors within a 3/3 square around the killer, then the survivor must respond with their location. the survivor now has a chance to try and escape. Once the chase begins, the killer and survivor who is being chased must declare their location each turn until either the killer ends up landing on the same space the survivor is currently on. If this happens, then that survivor is hooked and must hang their token on a paperclip shaped into a hook. If at any point the killer announces their location and survivor is not there, the the chase ends and the survivor has escaped.
After some guided and unguided playtests we learned that the survivors were much stronger than they should be so for our final version we changed the movement system to be slower. with these changes, the killer had much less dominance over the board.
After making some final changes to the rules and making a new larger set of boards and tokens made from much nicer materials, we were able to show our game off in the showcase.
This project taught me a lot about the value that having an engaged and interested team has. We were able to create something great because the whole group was really into the Idea. Everybody was always asking for a task, so much so that I actually had a difficult time finding things for people to do near the end of the last day.
I am very proud of this game and I even got to watch somebody execute real dead by daylight strategies effectively in our adaptation which I feel a great indicator of our success.
Jack McLoughlin 