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Pledge more than $1 to charity to play these.
Earlier this month Double Fine Productions launched a Humble Bundle asking people to vote on their favourite pitches for game prototypes. The people have spoken and these prototypes were created over the last few weeks and revealed earlier today in a livestream.
Important note: You still have until Friday 28th April at 6pm UK time to claim these from the Humble Bundle. All it takes is donating at least $1 to a charity of your choice.
So, without further ado, here's the kooky prototypes Double Fine has kicked up:
I Have No Idea What I'm Doing (Begins at 1:27:30 in the video above):
I Have No Idea What I'm Doing could best be described as a cooperative WarioWare in VR. One person dons a VR headset and has several seconds to do... something. It's not clear what. But everyone else not wearing the headset can see the VR person's setup along with instructions for what they should do. Sometimes this involves cleaning teeth, other time it's about being a tentacle monster tasked with eating people, and sometimes you just have to churn butter at a certain speed with the only feedback being the no doubt rowdy audience. Like Spaceteam and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes before it, I Have No Idea What I'm Doing is designed to facilitate a lot of yelling, but it's the fun, rambunctious, comical kind of yelling. Not the angry kind.
Kiln (Begins at 1:08:27):
Kiln is a 4v4 competitive game about sentient pots trying to douse the fires of their enemy base (i.e. kiln). The most unique bit is that players actually sculpt their character every time they respawn using a pottery wheel. Your height determines attack strength, while girth determines your HP. You could make yourself both tall and wide, but heavier characters take longer to sculpt and move slower.
The volume of each character matters too, as you'll need to use your unique shape to carry water from a fountain to your opponent's' base. As such, there's a lot of strategy in determining whether you want a big slow tank that could carry a lot, but will likely get ganged up on during their slow traversal, or a swift, skinny straw-like soldier. There's not a ton of depth to its combat yet, but the concept looks promising enough that with some more fleshed out systems and modes it could turn into a Gang Beasts-esque pleasure.
The Gods Must Be Hungry (Begins at 51:30):
Think Overcooked meets The Cabin in the Woods. You play as a chef in charge of cooking a colossal bowl of ramen to appease an angry god. There's a bit of Psychonauts-esque rail-sliding and platforming, but the main challenge is multi-tasking the preparation of various ingredients. Throw something in the soup too early and it will get too soggy, so you'll want to keep it in a warmer instead. Do that for too long and it will burn. Some ingredients cook quickly and require a vigilant watch, while others can be left on their own for awhile while you prep something else. Remember, the fate of the world is riding on this ramen. No pressure!
Darwin's Dinner (begins at 41:20):
This isometric survival sim recalls Don't Starve with a dynamically evolving ecosystem. Playing as a stranded astronaut, your goal is to use your vacuum ray to turn nearby creatures into nutrients so you'll have something to nosh on while hunkering down in your ship during radiation storms. However, what prey you decide to feed off of determines how animals will evolve over time. So if you leave too many alpha predators standing, your environment will only grow more hazardous over time.
Might as well ask, would you like to see any of these fleshed out into full commercial games?