PartyToons.io - Multiplayer party game

Dev diaries
#1

Hello everyone!

Me, @BunBunBun and his brother Stanislav (artist and animator) wanted to make a multiplayer game in a “game jam” style. Initially, we wanted the game to be super simple and finished within a month of work. We’ve got the first prototype in a few weeks, and it didn’t meet our expectations. Then we decided to change the game entirely. In the end, we spent around 2 months (+3 months of pause) to make a quite polished version of it :sweat_smile:

We’re glad to finally announce the first playable version of PartyToons.io! The game is inspired by Mario Party, Pokemon Stadium Minigames, and such. We have 5 mini-games implemented so far:

Playable link: http://partytoons.io/

We’re using Colyseus for the back-end, and of course Defold :slight_smile:

Feedback is very welcome! Also if you have any questions, let us know! :hugs:

26 Likes
#2

hello all :slight_smile: I want to add also the game is beta stage now. and it’s available to play from mobile browsers too. for mobile market we want to get a feedback from players and add more fun mini-games.

6 Likes
#3

Wow, really well made and super fun! I love these tiny mini/partygames where you play with a bunch of friends. Well made and with excellent graphics.

3 Likes
#4

I love it :space_invader:
Great work, congrats :vulcan_salute:

3 Likes
#5

Hah, very very cool!

3 Likes
#6

@endel This looks awesome. You should reach out to Snap Games because I think it’s a great fit for their Instant Platform. Let me know if you want an intro! :+1:

2 Likes
#7

@endel @BunBunBun
Do you have plans to write a article(postmortem style) about this project?

I have lots of questions for you :smiley:

  • Looks like you have two servers (eu, us). Are you scaling Colyseus or are they totally separated dedicated servers? If you are scaling what are you using? (Kubernetes?)
  • What about the db solution? What are you using? Are you scaling it? How did you integrated it in the Colyseus?
  • Are you using dedicated server for game play or are they client authoritative? If you are using dedicated server (authoritative server) are you using headless Defold and how did you orchestrate?

And many more :slight_smile:

I know those questions require complex answers and your precious time. If you can write a postmortem style article, it would be very helpful for new developers (new to Defold, new to Colyseus ) who wants to develop multiplayer games. Also it is good for awareness.

6 Likes
#8

Me seeing this (and also after playing for an hour):

Awesome work @endel and @BunBunBun

6 Likes
#9

Thanks for the kind words, guys. Glad you’ve liked how’s it going so far <3

@selimanac, glad you asked! Some of these questions we still have ourselves, so a proper “post-mortem” may come next month, or later :slight_smile:

Looks like you have two servers (eu, us). Are you scaling Colyseus or are they totally separated dedicated servers? If you are scaling what are you using? (Kubernetes?)

Right, we have 1 server on each location (EU, US), we’re not using any kind of automation tools for scaling. The only automation we have at the moment is deploying both servers from a single command.

What about the db solution? What are you using? Are you scaling it? How did you integrated it in the Colyseus?

We’re using MongoDB inside the US server instance. So both EU and US instances connect to the same database in the US server. We’re also using @colyseus/social for this game, which is an experimental feature of the framework. The delay to connect in the database is not noticeable during gameplay because persistence happens only when the game is finished.

One thing I worry about is how to be prepared for an unexpectedly high amount of players joining at the same time. The servers should be able to handle a considerable amount of concurrent players (400+? we didn’t stress tested it), but there is a limit. Once this limit is reached we’d need to do something. I hope we actually get this traffic, so we can write about it!

Cheers!

9 Likes
#10

What happened? Were the servers fine with the amount of visits?

Cheers!

1 Like
#11

Hello @endel,

I’m on your discord server regularly and appreciate how open to helping others you are. This is impressive to get done in such a small time period. How has the growth been? What are you using to determine player feedback and are you iterating on the design based on player feedback?

Cheers,
Spen

1 Like