Overview
Madness Overdrive: Masquerade ∞ Sin is a 4-player local multiplayer party game completed in 48 hours at Global Game Jam 2026 NYU Game Center site, built in Unity and playable in browser. Set in a masquerade for gamblers, players pull a slot machine to draw emotion masks, then compete to match their mask's emotion to absurd scene descriptions read aloud — those who match escape, temporarily, from doom, pain, and amputation. The game won Best Audio Design and received an Honorable Mention for Best Visual at the site. I was responsible for the core game programming, slot machine mechanic, and UI and visual systems. Scene writing was handled by other team members.
Problems Addressed
- Delivering a complete playable game in 48 hours: The jam timeline required moving from concept to playable build in a compressed window, demanding rapid core loop definition and ruthless feature prioritization.
- Slot machine randomness and fairness: Emotion mask draws needed to remain unpredictable while maintaining basic fairness across players, preventing any single player from receiving consistently dominant results.
- Local multiplayer input management on a single keyboard: 4 players share one keyboard (Q, C, M, P keys), requiring accurate input differentiation and clear per-player visual feedback.
- Emotion-matching judgment logic: Each scene description carries preset emotion tag combinations (e.g. surprise + fear, sad + disgust), requiring a judgment system to evaluate player mask-to-scene emotion matches and deliver immediate feedback.
- Visual style aligned with game pacing: The game's absurdist tone required UI and visuals that matched the “madness” theme while preserving readability in a noisy party setting.
Solution & Implementation
- Slot machine core mechanic: Implemented key-triggered slot reel spin animation and stop logic. Each player pulls independently (Q/C/M/P), with reels randomly stopping on one of six emotion masks. On lock, results are evaluated against the current scene's emotion tags.
- Scene emotion matching system: Implemented preset emotion tag-based match evaluation supporting single and multi-emotion scene combinations (e.g. sad + disgust + surprise), producing tiered match results that trigger corresponding visual and audio feedback.
- Local multiplayer input system: Implemented concurrent management of 4 independent keyboard inputs, ensuring no cross-player interference, with real-time per-player slot state display (spinning / locked / result) in the UI.
- UI and visual system: Designed and implemented a UI visual style matching the “madness masquerade” theme, including slot machine interface, emotion mask display, scene text presentation, and result feedback animations — recognized with an Honorable Mention for Best Visual at the site.
- Game flow state machine: Implemented a full round-flow state machine covering scene reading, pulling, judgment, and result display, supporting continuous multi-round play with Space to advance or skip text.
Tech Stack
- Engine: Unity
- Language: C#
- Input: Unity Input System (single keyboard, 4-player)
- Platform: HTML5 (browser-playable)
- Duration: 48 hours (Global Game Jam 2026)
Key Features
- Four-player independent keyboard slot pulls (Q/C/M/P)
- Six emotion mask random draw system
- Multi-emotion tag combination match judgment
- Absurdist scene script library with NPC type tags
- Turn-based game flow state machine
- Themed UI visual system (masquerade × slot machine)
- Immediate result feedback animations and audio triggers
Challenges & Tradeoffs
- Feature scope under 48-hour constraint: A full scoring system and elimination mechanic were not fully implemented within the jam window. Priority was given to ensuring the core slot-pull and emotion-match single-round experience was playable, at the cost of multi-round progression depth.
- Judgment granularity for multi-emotion combinations: Some scenes carry 3 emotion tags (e.g. sad + disgust + surprise), requiring the judgment system to define whether and how partial matches score — a deliberate tradeoff between rule simplicity and strategic depth.
- Balancing absurdist content with readability: Scene descriptions are deliberately extreme (e.g. maggots eating a leg, turning into a cockroach), requiring UI text pacing that complements the comedic effect without players missing the key emotion information mid-laugh.
Results & Impact
The game won Best Audio Design and received an Honorable Mention for Best Visual at the Global Game Jam 2026 NYU Game Center site. It has been released on itch.io and is publicly playable in browser.
Next Steps
- Complete multi-round scoring and elimination mechanics to give the game a full win/loss structure.
- Expand the scene script library with more NPC types and emotion combinations to improve replayability.
- Improve single-keyboard four-player UI guidance to reduce the onboarding barrier for new players.