Couchjam I

Reviving the local multiplayer spirit

Back in 2014, me and three friends got together over a weekend to each create a couch multiplayer game for 4 players. We called it 4pxbcgj (four player Xbox controller game jam). Most of the games we made for that have been lost to time, sadly. But the memories have not.

I wanted to run a similar event, but this time I would keep all the games on my Raspberry Pi so we can revisit them whenever we want. Thus, Couchjam I was born.

The event

Instead of making the games over one weekend, I invited my friends over with a few weeks of of warning. The idea would be to create the games ahead of time, and we would just meet up to play them all.

It was great fun, and everyone made an enjoyable and unique game.

Here are our creations (apologies for the poor photos).

Alchemess

Michael’s game was a co-op potion crafting game. Every day, customers come to your shop asking for potions, and the players have to work together to craft enough of them before the day ends.

We were in collective awe of the time and effort that went into this game. There was a lot of depth and secrets to discover too!

aleon.

Seth make a semi-cooperative version of Space Invaders, potentially inspired by the pong demo. You have to shoot the approaching aleons, and then turn into a face to collect the stars before anyone else. Beware, if you hit an aleon, you’ll lose all your stars!

Chess & Zombies

Ben made two games! A multiplayer chess and a version of CoD Zombies.

In multiplayer chess, you cannot move the same type of piece consecutively, and each piece has a small cooldown. Pawns move orthogonally, and capture diagonally. There are no queens. It’s very fun and hectic.

Zombies was the only game to feature haptics. It was very satisfying to shoot, especially when you’re armed with a rapid-fire minigun!

Available here.

Dungeon Climb

Jack made a platformer in which you have to keep climbing as the screen scrolls up. Be the last man standing, and you’ll win!

You can shoot ropes from your character to attach to platforms, but once you’re attached you must rely on your momentum to take you where you want to go as you can no longer control your character, except to jump off.

Flick-Tac-Toe

I made bowls-meets-nought-and-crosses, which came in two variants real-time or turn-based. Both involve flicking pucks on the grid. Take control of cells to earn points, and if you manage to control 3-in-a-row (pretty hard with 4 players) you’ll earn mega points!

Space Oddity

Santi’s entry was a co-op space shooter. Defeat the geometric shapes which spawn in waves, and use relics to fuse into spell-casting entities within which both players need to work together to unleash powerful abilities!

Vibe Check

Zach brought a competitive spot-the-difference! Try and find differences in the AI generated images before everyone else, but spam A and you’ll be locked out from guessing for a while.