Randomat 2.0 - Solo Developer
An addon for Garry's Mod Trouble in Terrorist Town that triggers random game changing events that last for the rest of the round.
I started this project in first year of university and the explosion in popularity is what made me absolutely certain that this is what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. It's an old project at this point and I would do it completely differently if I started it now, but I am still proud of it and I still think it has a lot of very well designed events.
Design Philosophy
I set myself some ground rules when making this addon. First of all no matter what event triggers I wanted to keep the core identity of the game as a social deduction game. That's what you sat down to play, so if a random event forces you to play something else that kinda sucks.
Secondly I wanted to preserve the traitor roles as much as possible. Some people really enjoy playing traitor but can have a huge dry streak of always playing innocent, so if a random event removes your traitor round that sucks. Also events can trigger mid-round, so if you've made some awesome plays and you stop being a traitor then you just feel like you've wasted your time.
Finally the goal is for events to be fun above everything else. Balance shouldn't matter too too much so long as both teams are having fun. No event should decide the game for either team outright. If something benefits one team more than another then it should at the very least be an interesting challenge for the disadvantaged team. Some events are designed to be terrifying, some are designed to be silly, and some are designed to be interesting. In all cases the main goal is to illicit strong reactions from the players.
Events
Listed below are a few of the events I especially enjoy and my thoughts on them:
You can only jump once
Players die the second time they jump
This is one of my absolute favourites. Even if it doesn't catch you out it makes you realise how reliant on the space bar you have been. Announcing the death to the entire server when someone jumps twice will also always be funny, at the very least to everyone else. Having it be the second jump that kills you serves two purposes: first - if you find yourself in a hole when the event starts you can jump out, second - if you catch yourself jumping once, you get that moment of realisation and terror that is always funny.
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Alerts all players when any player with a buy menu buys something
Massively disadvantages traitors, but also is inherently a tool the traitors can use for their advantage too. You buy a C4 and suddenly everyone is paranoid, you buy a body bomb and nobody wants to search any corpses anymore. If you play in a regular playgroup you can buy an item that most people associate with a different player to throw suspicion. This event plays very different in a regular group and a group of randoms, but both are interesting in their own ways.
Total Mayhem
Players explode when they die
This is funny in so many situations. When you chain kill like 5 people it's hilarious, or when someone forgets people explode and kills themselves by killing someone else, or hugging someone you don't trust. I'm a big fan of any idea that is incredibly simple but can be used in so many ways. The only thing I'd change is the name. I was playing Heroes of the Storm a lot at the time and named it after Junkrat's passive because he explodes when he dies, but there must be a better name for this event.
So that's it. What, we some kind of suicide squad?
All players get a detonator that will detonate another player.
Very hard for the traitors to win the game in this event, but it's funny enough that it doesn't really matter. Definitely more of a social experiment type event than anything else as it can lead to blackmail, giant RDM chains, or sometimes just some really cool traitor plays.
All traitors have been blinded for 10 seconds
This one is often very funny. The traitors are blinded just enough that they can technically still see a little bit, so everyone else then throws suspicion on anyone who looks like they might not be able to see while the traitors have to pretend that they can. It does mean that this can be a feels bad moment for traitors if they are caught out by it though.
Randomness Intensifies
Triggers a new randomat every 30 seconds
Very occasionally it can just be funny to have your round thrown into absolute chaos. That is what this event is for. You don't want it to show up very often, but when it does it can be hilarious.