Under the Bell Tower

1. Under the Bell Tower
2. Overview
3. The Problem
4. The Solution
5. Our Game
6. Technologies Used
7. Thank You!

Inspiration

Under the Bell Tower is inspired by social deduction type games like Werewolf and Mafia, which offers people the opportunity to get to know each other in a closer social context. At the beginning, we fondly remember playing these games together to connect with people we otherwise never would have interacted with, and wanted to share this positive experience of social connection with other people who may find themselves in the same situation.

What it does

Under the Bell Tower is a 5-10 player social deduction game to make friends around Purdue! Players are split into two teams, Purdue Boilermakers and IU Hoosiers which consist of IU spies and one Bison, with the goal of each party to pass policy cards, and in the case of the Hoosiers, also to elect the Bison as Vice President after three of their own policies have been put down. Each round the president nominates a vice president, and then a vote ensues. Once elected, the president picks up three policy cards and discards one, then passes them to their vice president, who chooses which to discard and which to put down. Players are able to lie about what they got and their party in the chat. Once a certain number of IU policies have been passed, depending on the amount of people in the game, certain powers will be unlocked for the current president, such as Expel, where the president chooses a player to silence for the rest of the game, Investigate, which shows the president another players party, and Peek, which allows the president to see the top three policies in the draw pile.

How we built it

We used Javascript to develop the backend and logic, HTML for the user interface, Canva to develop the custom art, and Render to enable online multiplayer across different platforms.

Challenges we ran into

We faced challenges in making different game boards for different numbers of people, since the actual board and powers vary depending on the amount of people in, and it affected how our game logic for the president worked.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For Under the Bell Tower we are proud of our game's ability to connect people to a server for online multiplayer, as we have tested it even with friends across the state.

What we learned

Under the Bell Tower taught us how to collaborate as a team on a game. It required good leadership skills to make sure the game was cohesive and features interacted seamlessly.

What's next for Under the Bell Tower

There are plans to add more special powers to Under the Bell Tower in additive patches. Features such as being able to veto and do special elections where the president and vice president can be picked are planned for a future update. In a future patch we plan to do a user interface over hall with custom animations.