Setting Sail: Dizzy Deck Devlog #1

It’s 1200 BCE, and you and your crew have just finished feasting on some cattle from the Island of Thrinacia. Spirits are high, and with bellies full, you’re ready to set sail again. But as you near the next island, the seas become treacherous.

The ship rocks violently, and as you look to the skies, a figure looms—lightning in hand. The gods are furious. You’ve eaten the sacred cattle of Helios, and now they seek revenge.

Can you survive the storm and make it to the next island, or will the wrath of the gods capsize your ship?

Welcome to Dizzy Deck – A Couch Co-op Adventure!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first official devlog for Dizzy Deck, a couch co-op game set in ancient Greece. We're a team of 2 programmers: Matthias and Esteban and 4 artists: Noor, Laura, Jan and Yorg , working on this project for our course at Howest DAE.

The core of Dizzy Deck revolves around you and your friends working together as a ship crew, withstanding the elements and random events on the high seas, while your ship rocks, rolls, and constantly keeps you at the tip of your toes!

Game Concept

In Dizzy Deck, you and up to 3 friends will take control of a brave (and slightly clumsy) crew, trying to sail through treacherous waters while completing various tasks. The catch? The ship moves, the environment changes, and the challenges never stop coming.

Inspired by ancient Greek mythology and seafaring tales, players will face stormy weather, mischievous gods, and even sea monsters along their perilous journey. With your ship always tilting and sliding, teamwork and communication are key to surviving the voyage!

Let’s dive into what we’ve been working on during our first development week.

This Week’s Focus

As we kick off development, we had a few key questions to answer for the direction of the game:

Shader and Asset Pipeline

• Will we use a shader, and will it work with our idea for an asset creation pipeline? We’re considering using toon shaders and/or stylized textures to give the game a playful, ancient Greek look. We need to ensure this works with our asset creation process and pipeline.

We made multiple prototypes, ensuring that no matter what game engine we’ll choose, we can reliably stylize our game with a shader.

Cell Shader prototype in Unreal Engine 5 

Cell Shader prototypes in Unity

• Can we make a water material that ripples when objects come in contact with it? Water is a big part of the game’s environment! Creating realistic ripple effects that don’t bog down performance is the challenge we’re looking into.

Water Shader prototype in Unity

A prototype by one of our squad’s members proved that it is something we should be able to tackle but we still must decide how exactly we’ll approach this topic as we don’t yet have a final camera angle chosen.

Engine Choice

We also had a series of questions to determine which engine would best suit our needs:

• Which engine works best for making sliding objects? Since the ship will constantly tilt, objects and characters need to slide and move with the motion in a natural way. In Unity we created a modular sliding system that that's easily adjustable to our needs, while in Unreal it was tough to make the sliding boxes feel natural.

Sliding objects mechanic prototype in Unity

Sliding objects mechanic prototype in Unreal

• Which engine works best for making the boat tilt around? The tilting mechanics are crucial. The ship must feel dynamic, constantly shifting to create a sense of danger.
• Which engine works best for ragdoll player characters? Players will be thrown around by waves, and ragdoll physics will add humor and realism to the gameplay. In Unity we created a player character that is completely ragdoll based. However we haven't had the time to implement animations with the ragdoll system yet, this will be the next step.

Ragdoll mechanic prototype in Unity

At the time of writing this devlog a final decision has not been made yet, our devs are still prototyping game mechanics in both engines, making sure that we choose what’s best for our game!

Art and Aesthetics

Dizzy Deck is set in a stylized version of ancient Greece, drawing heavily from mythology and inspired by the story of the Odyssey. We’re exploring ways to blend a fun, exaggerated art style with hints of historical accuracy.

We’re working on nailing down the look of the ship, characters, and environments, focusing on strong shape language and simple texturing that makes the production process feasible in the limited time we have while giving our game a distinct and fun artstyle! Some of our references:

Next Steps

Our team is now hard at work prototyping the core mechanics, focusing on getting the ship's movement and player interactions right. We’re also deciding on the best camera angle for the game and the size of our main prop—the Greek ship!

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be busy creating an Art Bible for the project so that all the artists can easily steer the ship in the right direction and continue to refine the mechanics and overall feel of the game.

We’ll be back with more updates as we sail toward new horizons. Thanks for coming aboard and stay tuned for more exciting developments from the Dizzy Deck team!