Post Mortem: Together
For my 4th Minima game I fancied doing something that was multiplayer on a single tablet screen and the kids were asking for something that we could all player together.Firstly, we had some counters that can be dragged around by the individual players. Then we added obstacles that must be avoided and gems that must be collected for points. It was a pretty simple idea and we were finding it fun but it felt like it needed something a bit extra.
After a bit of fiddling we came up with the idea of linking all the counters together with a sort of rigid umbilical. We gave these collision so that the game could also end of an obstacle hit the links. This gave the game a really nice tension where players were working together to stay alive but working competitively against each other to collect the most points. Initially we had the game end with no results if all the players didn't last the time limit but as most games ended with destruction it became frustrating that no-one knew who won. So we changed that to how it is now.
Months after release, the game was mentioned in a 'best 7 unknown games on tablets' which resulted in 1000 downloads in only a few days. Which was nice.