OBEY - Highly Asymmetrical Multiplayer

Hi everyone :smile:
I thought I would start a dev log here to help show off a Unity game I have been working on: OBEY

We’ve all played games where you command groups of AI characters, or team mates. OBEY instead puts you in the position to command your enemies (human opponents), and to be commanded by them. Players are always free to obey/disobey. It is up to them to deal with the consequences of their actions in the game.

Think of OBEY like an RTS… except your units are the other players… and they are all untrustworthy scumbags who will stab you in the back first chance they get.

If you are being coerced you have only stealth, intelligence, trickery, and creativity to escape.

It is sort of like Counter Strike Jail Mod meets Spy Party meets Texas hold 'em

To win, make more money than any one else by the end of the round.
To make the most money, you have to take command of the giant robot (the robot player makes 10x more than the other players per second)
You take control of it by walking into the door at the base of the robot.
The player in the robot can easily destroy any player he sees trying to approach (IF he sees them).
That’s the basics - so superficially, it plays like ‘king of the hill’.

Here is the twist:
Experienced robot players will know that it is not always in their interest to simply kill the approaching players.
Why not? Because he can instead coerce them to do things to help him win (things that are against their own interest).
and that’s where the game gets interesting…

>>Play OBEY Early Access<<


“A sentry has sent 1TW of power to your bunny.”

2 Likes





1 Like

I really really like the art style you got going on here. Very distinct and darn good looking. And that huge machine gun thing looks freaking awesome! Teach me your ways! :slight_smile:

Unfortunately it’s kinda difficult to get an actual idea of how the game plays out just from text. Any chance we can get a little gameplay demonstration, or a little explanatory dev log video or something like that? Would love to learn more about the gameplay mechanics.

Even after reading your gameplay concept I don’t quite GET what it really means. Why do people have to obey anyone? Why don’t I just kill the other players? Might be just me being dumb right now but some more explanation would be nice.

Oh, and the link to your last screenshot is broken.

Keep it up and keep rockin.

looking awesome. I love the concept art especially.

Thanks for the encouragement guys :slight_smile:

Hey inko,
It’s a good question - it usually takes a little longer to explain how it works, so when introducing the game I always simply write that the gameplay is centered on the coercion of opponents into acting against their own self interest. So no, you’re not thick! Here is a little about how the gameplay works:

There are a couple of reasons why a robot player would not want to simply kill the other players:

  • he may suspect that you are AI, in which case AI always obey and can be used to his benefit.
  • the ‘loose’ players who’s position are unknown are very dangerous to the robot. In fact they have a pretty good chance of getting by (right now I would say about 40% - but it depends a lot on the map). So if there are a bunch of loose opponents, the robot player actually doesn’t have that much chance to stay in control for very long. If he simply kills you, you spawn loose again (if the robot can control you it is safer for the robot).
  • if you obey, the robot player may ask you to do things like place walls or mines (that make it harder to reach him), make you place lights and destroy cover (make it harder to hide), make you wear a collar that tells your location as long as you carry it, load his weapons etc… (I know you are asking why anyone would do this - ill get to that!)

Then, there is the ‘dropship’.
The dropship can be purchased by the robot player for a high amount.
The dropship:

  • enforces a spawn time on killed players (they spawn in the ship and have to wait x minutes to be dropped in again)
  • no $ is made by players while waiting in the dropship
  • drops players in front and open view of the robot where he knows where they are
  • allows the robot player (and other players while inside) to buy stuff with their (remember having the most is how you win, though)
  • if too many players are in the dropship, there is a way for them to destroy it (so robo doesn’t want to just kill everyone while a dropship exists or he will not only lose his dropship, but then everyone starts respawning loose - his control wont last long).

So now to your question, why would anyone obey?
So let’s say the robot spots you, doesn’t kill you, and gives you a ‘directive’ (you can see some directives in the screenshots). You always have the choice to obey or disobey - which disobeying almost always makes sense if the dropship doesn’t exist because if robo kills you you will just respawn loose, but if it does exist - you will just respawn right in front of him again! Hence, you gain nothing, and lose time and $ that you would have made had you obeyed. The robot can also bribe you to obey, too! (see the cents directive in the robot view)
So consider this:

  • once spotted, it’s very difficult to escape alive. Very low chance to survive.
  • you can try to pretend to be AI to get robo to overlook you
  • you gain nothing by dying (and restart in an even worse position)
  • if killed, you do not make any $ while spawning
  • you might gain money by obeying ( and depending on the amount could be a big incentive if you are losing)
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY: if you think you can find a chance to subvert the robot later, everything you do against your interest now will in fact benefit yourself later, since it will make it that much harder for the other players to then reach YOU! That’s because anyone in the robot inherits the dropship - walls - lights - mines - everything that was done by the previous robot master(s).
    AND whenever control of a robot changes, all players automatically ‘die’ and respawn. This means that if there is a dropship - you will have control of everything if you reach the robot because everyone will all drop in front of you, and they will have to find their own way to escape (kinda like half-life prison mod in this situation) they may try to confuse you as to who is AI or not, though… and they may have some tricks too since remember they can buy some goodies while inside the dropship, too.

There is balancing and features to be added, but this is the idea. :slight_smile:

  • Also, a ground player might even join the robot’s side is if time is running out and they see no chance to win 1st, they may take payment to stay in the game (2nd or 3rd) in exchange for ‘outing’ or spotting other players for the robot.
  • players will be able to pay each other as well, so there can be counter-bribes, and people even working together over skype or whatnot. I want to incorporate and balance this type of ‘cheating’ into the game, if I can.

(btw… I can’t figure out why the last image link doesn’t work… tried fixing it but after spending some time fighting with the post editor… I decided to simply invite you or anyone else who is interested to visit obeygame.com :slight_smile: Thanks for letting me know though!)

1 Like

… You should probably never try to explain this game again after all of that text. Maybe you should ask somebody to type up a short gameplay treatment for you, along with working on a video of actual gameplay.

Yes. Thanks for the feedback. I agree with you. Hardly anyone will read it, or fall asleep reading it. I think I will try to make a video soon about it.

I actually did read it, tough I think I have to agree with ANTMAN on this one :wink:

Anyway, it sounds like a pretty interesting concept. Actually reminds me more of a stategy game then an an action game which i totally didnt expect based on the screenshots.
It might be a challange to portray all these complex mechanics to the player without forcing them throug a wall of text though, but I’m sure that can be done.
How far into development is it? have you played it yet?

Should you ever be in dire need of testers, give me a call! Would love to give it a shot :wink:

1 Like

Yea, you guys already convinced me I need to make a video to really make it clear and quick to understand.
You are also right that it is more of a strategy/mind game than a game requiring quick reflexes. Although having quick reflexes can only help, I do not want the game to rely on ‘twitch shooting’ or accurate reflexes. I want mastery of this game to center on subverting opponents with intelligence, creativity, and subtlety.

OBEY is playable right now. The basic mechanic of hiding and sneaking and taking over the robot to score is in place and it is fun. I am working on getting the other, deeper gameplay going - but to do it I have to implement a variety of features to balance it and also spend time on flashy FX for the kickstarter as well (kind of unintuitive for me to work on visuals first but here we are! :p)
I would say the game is about 30% done at the moment.

Thank you :slight_smile: I really appreciate you offering to test. I just might give you a holler! I played your game yesterday actually, it’s pretty neat - reminds me of an old game called 'Think Tanks’.

Good luck for your project.
I like the style.

1 Like

This looks awesome… Love the gameplay ideas.

1 Like

Tis fresh. Hippo like.

1 Like

Thanks for your encouragement guys! :slight_smile:

Been working on some effects:

check out those PROFLARES!!!

This robot-monkey-machinegun is just awesome !

1 Like

working on getting the dropship working properly…



inventory!! :smile:


Last night the first playtest with 6 people occurred!

Not surprisingly, several issues came up, but overall it was a success.

  • Networking held up perfectly (this was my biggest fear where things could go wrong).
  • the desired gameplay did arise intermittently (albeit in a very unpolished form).
  • after playing for a bit, everyone started trying to trick the person in the robot
  • an issue that came up is that buying the drop ship almost never helped the person who bought it, but the next person who took over the robot

One of the most surprising things was that when some people first played, nerd rage came out because they kept losing when they played in the style of ‘kill everything that moves’. I purposely put in various disincentives to play this way, and I thought that the lesson would come quickly, but it didn’t. I am not sure how to communicate how to successfully play in this game, it is the most difficult things I am encountering so far is communicating the game. Maybe it is just a side effect of making something that doesn’t play like other games, but shares many of the tropes (shooting, inventory, etc)?
I am planning to make a video about it soon (like you guys suggested earlier) to help.

It’s always going to be tricky introducing what essentially people view as an optional mode like king of the hill or whatever. Although your premise is a great one, people have grown up with different expectations out of the box so there’s challenges ahead.

1 Like

Yes, was one of my takeaways from the play test as well.

Added a non- placeholder reticle for robo:

and made some posters to help promote the game at the Boston Festival of Indie games… where OBEY will have it’s very own booth! Come say hi if you will happen to be there :smile:

Did a play test last night with several new items:

Some fixes to do… but nothing scary. The desired gameplay emerged for a large part of the game but was not yet dominant. At several points I was being coerced to basically give points (uranium) to an opponent, until i could find a time to toss my collar and get away.
I am most happy with the changes caused by the addition of the ‘collar’ item.
All collars in the game can be seen easily by robo (eg the orange triangles point to collars):

Having the collars really changed the dynamic and pushed it into coercion territory… players in robo consistently used them as designed, ordering “put them on or die” to make subjects trackable and hence submissive. … yet allowing bunnies to drop the collar like any other item left just enough ‘out’ to allow bunny players to find narrow opportunities to escape (I was able to do this myself multiple times).

The pointer unfortunately was not used much. I think I have to make it more practical and beneficial to use. It could be because of the map though: the test map had an outcrop between robo and the drop area so it was hard to point out players that were near robo from where most of the pointers were.

Also, sentries are working now!

The sentries flip on as soon as robo changes hands to fry any players that might be tailing the new robo player or camping the door. This was supposed to cause players to think twice before going in if they saw another bunny trying to race in. In the playtest however, it usually just caused a game of chicken where both players just rushed anyway, with the second player getting fried. It worked well though, I don’t think I will change it since it gives new robo players 30 seconds to consolidate their situation before competition for robo begins again.