Lockdown Protocol is a first person social deduction game, combining real time action and communication, 3 to 8 players.

In this game, players have to work together to collaboratively complete tasks in time. While most players will do their best to complete this objective and ensure victory, a small portion of dissidents will try to stop them at all costs, without getting caught.

The game is avalaible on Steam.

The goal of innocent players is to complete a common list of tasks during a limited time. Players must therefore organize themselves to be as efficient as possible.
Tasks require the manipulation of various handheld tools and anchored machines across the map.

Efficiency in communication and tool management across the team will be key, while staying cautious because dissidents will exploit any breach in the strategy to waste innocents’ precious time.

Dissidents have the same gameplay as other players, aside from the ability to recognize each other. It means any player can contribute to tasks, waste time or even kill other players.
Dissidents will have to cause chaos by their own means, with no unique role specific game mechanics.

So they can hide items, spread misinformation, purposefully slow down tasks, or even wrongfully accuse others to raise doubts. If it’s not enough, even a screwdriver can become the perfect murder weapon.

Murdering all innocents ensures dissidents’ victory. However, eliminating all dissidents won’t guarantee you can finish all tasks in time. Additionally, innocents have no certainty of taking down a dissident if they ever come to murder.

Our game design decisions have the common goal of sending the player in an immersive environment that praises vigilance and anticipation.

Intuitiv & spontaneous to handle

We tried to articulate a gameplay around rich controls that are easy to handle to the largest audience : 

The player can walk quietly jog, or at the cost of stamina and noise, choose to sprint and jump.

If the player has their hands free, they can finger point, interact with the environment or pick up an item. An item in hand can be inspected, dropped, thrown, consumed, or even used to attack, all of that with only two buttons.

Most items can be stored within a pocket with a unique slot, allowing the player to hold a total of two items.

Other controls are limited to taking out the game assistant tablet, putting hands up, or accessing quality of life settings not tied to the gameplay (walk/jog toggle, microphone preferences, opening settings menu).

a challenging environment for communication

Our goal was to define ranges of play that are long enough to set apart certain players, while forcing them to occasionally cross each other and encourage interactions. Certain tasks will require moving across different rooms to interact with a specific machine, find a tool or deposit an item.

Players will find their way across the map through the architecture signage or with the help of their game assistant tablet. The tablet contains a map, explanations on procedures for every task and informations about most elements of the game.

immersive voice chat within a realistic sound propagation

We developed a tailor-made sound propagation system, forcing any sound to follow a cohesive path within the environment, rather than simply being muffled behind walls. The player won’t unrealistically hear the sound source location, but the complex echo resulting from the entire path and how it is affected by the environment.

It means the player won’t always be able to pinpoint the exact location of a sound, but will know the precise direction it comes from, taking the environment geometry into account. On the other hand, locating a nearby sound is much more natural and accurate. 

Lockdown Protocol incorporates a voice chat working with this sound system. Players can isolate themselves to have private conversations, hear a faraway call for help or clearly identify who speaks in a group conversation. It makes all exchanges a lot more immersive, which serves the gameplay by bringing situations that wouldn’t be possible without this system.

A headphone is highly recommended in the game (and the following video) !

a novel stamina management

In Lockdown Protocol, many actions consume stamina such as sprinting, jumping or attacking, but stamina and health works in pairs.

If you have enough stamina, it will absorb a portion of damage in place of health but if you have no stamina left, you can still perform action at the cost of health. On the other hand, stamina is contained within the health bar, meaning lowering health also reduces the available stamina, making you a more vulnerable prey.

Because stamina recharges fast, you generally don’t want to use health to perform actions but also keep stamina as extra protection in case of aggression, making stamina management a complex decision in real situations where time matters.

a multipurpose gameplay for many game modes

This gameplay was specifically designed for the current rules of our game, but also as a solid base that can easily be adapted to various game modes revolving around player communication within an immersive environment you can intuitively interact with.