Buddy Systems: The Nightmare Cooperative

During an average weekday, I play approximately 14 prototypes or demos, found while casting my Monocle of Sauron across Twitter, or searching IndieDB and the TIGforums. Most days, I end up bookmarking one or two projects and check back on them at a later date. Every now and then, faced with a deluge of AAA press releases for BB games, I decide to share a prototype instead, no matter how early in development it might be.

The Nightmare Cooperative caught my eye because it has the second best name for a game ever, being a description of this place on a Friday night when I want to make dinner and they're all out of fresh veg. It's also a single player team-based roguelike puzzler that shows great promise.

As has been the case since the very first dungeon-based adventure, in which Polyphemus was the QTE-based end-boss, parties of heroes are split into several classes. In The Nightmare Cooperative, these classes each have a unique special ability, triggered by pressing the space bar. Unfortunately, they're all controlled using the arrow keys, simultaneously, so the challenge is to position the right person in the right place at the right time, without getting everybody else killed.

It's a lot like leading small children on a school trip.

You can play the prototype demo now in your browser, provided you can run Unity.