The Tonightest Show
How to Play:
As the talk show host, use the keyboard to play the typing game.
As the band, use the gamepad face buttons or keyboard arrows to play the rhythm game and the left and right mouse buttons or gamepad triggers to send difficulty modifiers to the opposing player
The Tonightest Show is a rhythm/typing versus game about a band on a late-night show purposefully trying to sabotage the host as he reads from a teleprompter. I worked with a team of four other people to develop it for Game Jam 2023.
For this game, I primarily did tech art and 3D modeling, which involved creating the host, band, and studio set. I go into a bit of detail about these below.
The Non-Exploding Talk Show Host
Our initial inspiration for the game was that we thought it'd be funny to see a late-night talk show host get so angry that he had a meltdown and exploded on live television. Unfortunately, time did not allow for this to become a reality. Our host's muppet body remains perfectly intact and I will forever carry that shame.
However, I did still have time to make his appearance change depending on his anger level. This was achieved with some simple lerping between textures using a global shader variable that's updated along with the rage meter, and a face swap when the meter reaches the 75% mark.
Calm vs. Angry
The Band and Studio
Below are some better looks at the band and environment. These are decently viewable in-game, although the weird multiplayer split screen might make them a bit hard to fully appreciate.
The band playing their incredibly practical and realistic instruments
I felt that making the audience out of 2D textures gave it a sort of Rhythm Heaven/WarioWare vibe, which seemed right for this game
The band's logo. It's not good but I'm proud of the concept
We wanted to make the typing game appear diegetically on a teleprompter, which ended up having to be a bit squished for screen real estate purposes
A look at the desk corner that ended up not getting much use