Announcing Couch Breakout!

Hi, everybody! I have a new game available today. It's called Couch Breakout and it's a multiplayer arcade game meant to be played over an online couch multiplayer service like Parsec (www.parsecgaming.com). Parsec allows friends to connect to your computer and everybody to share keyboard input. That means up to six people can play at once, running a single copy of the game on one computer. It also kind works using Zoom, but only for a two-player game, and lag seems to be more of an issue.

This is a little bit of a different type of game than the ones I usually make or publish here. It's very small, even by my standards, and pure goofy, chaotic, arcade fun. I made it in the last week of classes for the students in my Experimental Games class, as something we could play together on our last class session. I was inspired by our discussions about games that could break down the barriers of social distancing, and the experimental games that several of them had created to play over networking platforms like Zoom and Discord. Couch Breakout was still a little rough when we played it at the end of the semester, but we all had fun, so I'm releasing it for everyone. Find some friends, connect using Parsec, and play a few games. Hopefully it will be a fun diversion and an excuse to connect with some folks that you miss seeing.

To my students: thanks for sharing your creativity, your cleverness, your insight, and your dedication with me this semester. I wish you all the best and expect you will achieve great things as game designers. Be brave and good luck.