Llama Palooza is a hectic couch co-op party game in which 1-4 players tries to stop endless waves of rampaging llamas from destroying their village.

A unique feature of the game is that the players doesn’t want to actually kill the ‘enemies’ since the llamas are the livelihood of the village. They’ve been driven crazy by the shaman of a rivalling village, so the players wants to subdue the llamas and place them inside enclosures. 

Project Type: School project

Role(s):  Lead Designer

Team Size: 18

Project Duration: 10 weeks

Software Used: Unity

Languages Used: C#

I was the lead designer, one of two designers working on the game. I worked on nearly every aspect of the games design, such as:

• Game Mechanics
• Players’ abilities
• Enemies
• Level Design
• Balancing

A significant amount of time was also spent testing the game to find bugs and to ensure the game works as intended in conjunction with programmers.

Design Features

An important idea for the game was that it should be possible and desirable for the player to stop the llamas without killing them.

• The player uses non-lethal weapons – sleep darts, stun grenades and a herding stick. Dealing enough damage to a llama will knock it out, but it will wake up after a period of time.
• Knocked out llamas can be picked up and thrown by players. Throwing llamas into enclosures captures them permanently.
• Players may kill knocked out llamas by damaging them again or by throwing them into water. 
• Capturing llamas rewards the players with ammo and increases their score. Killing llamas reduces their score.

The players have a fairly limited amount of ammo and capturing llamas is the main way to replenish it. Llamas may be killed accidentally when the player faces a large number of enemies, or they may be killed intentionally as a quick way to get rid of the threat, but doing so leads to the risk of running out of ammo and makes it harder to earn a high score.

Another goal was to create chaotic and highly interactive situations where players should have to communicate and work together to succeed, while mistakes can have hilarious results.

• A player that takes too much damage is knocked out and will die after a period of time unless helped. They can be revived by other players, or picked up and brought to a safer place first.
• Players can also damage and knock out each other, so they must be careful not to hit each other.
• Players cannot fight while carrying llamas or while reviving or carrying other players or llamas, so they must rely on each other for protection and to hold off the llamas.
• Players can easily run out of ammo, and it is mainly gained from captured llamas. Players need to coordinate so that whoever needs it gets ammo.