Stream Arenas

Starting Characters
Nigel has an Ego
Bridge brawl!
Barry and Nigel soak'n up the fans

Inspiration

As a game developer and a Twitch streamers, I feel like chat interactive games are the logical evolution in video games. Creating a deeper interaction and involvement with the viewer has gone back as far as choose your own adventure books! I'd left my job just prior to Covid to travel stream, upon having to return home and for lockdown I wasn't sure what to do with myself - and I wasn't ready to go back for a day job just yet! So I decided to knock a bucket list item off and work on my own Twitch interactive game!

I've been thinking about how to integrate the game with some sort of reward system for Twitch bots / to channel points for awhile. Once I found out about this competition and that there was actually access to the Channel point API, I knew I had to do something with it!

What it does

The game already has a tight interaction with Twitch. Encouraging as much interaction with the platform and streamer as possible. When you drop bits or sub to a channel, different types of events are triggered in the game; plus people control their character through chat! I thought that having unique events for Channel points was the only way to go!

The game has a concept of Bosses and Beasts that can be spawned, killing them benefits your character in-game while them killing you benefits the streamer. A nice risk reward balance for all.

So now you can spawn a unique beast and boss using Channel Points! You can also choose the next arena that will start with Channel Points! There's an Old-Time camera filter you can turn on that makes the game look like a 1920's cinema film for a short period using your channel points.

Have a lot more plans for integration ideas, but these are the ones I managed to get tested and in the game for this :D

How I built it

The entire game is built in Unity C#, So naturally all this is wrapped into Unity as well. Also, there's a backend system for global Leaderboards, seasons, skins, characters, profiles, stats.. all that fun stuff :D

Challenges I ran into

Some of the major challenges I faced was trying to balance the events, the hurdles really shone out when I realized that Streamers could edit events. Also, I had to consider game state and what do with events if they weren't fired in the proper state! Heck of fun!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm honestly just super proud of building this game by myself. Solo Gamedev is a huge undertaking and it's been super stressful, but insanely rewarding. The game isn't a smash hit (nor is it complete), but having loyal players that I didn't know until after the game launched - that's a win for me!

What I learned

So, Fricken much.

Beyond the learning of more around Twitch, backends, coding, architect.. which, I learned leaps and bounds... I think creating a project like this where you're dependent on your players in a huge way (No one streams the game? No one can play), you learn a ton about yourself and how you interact with people. You also learn how much passion, want, and drive you have for your project; because it's not an easy road and there's no one to blame but yourself when things go wrong!

The channel interactions made me be very thoughtful as well, I wanted something that was enticing to do for the game, but was balanced. I also didn't want to take away from the current events that encourage supporting the streamer you're playing with (bit/sub events).

What's next for Stream Arenas

TO THE MOOON! Hahah. Honestly, I have a road map as long as Santa's naughty list, I just want to keep working on the game, making more connections and have the opportunity to build what I envisioned when I started the project. So for now, the future is a lot more crunching :D

Early Access Trailer