CopyWrite

Almost a year ago now, I put a little project called Wit Send on this website. It was a Jackbox-inspired game about creating Shakespearian insults, and while fun, it was quite flawed. For the holidays of 2022 I wanted to make a new game both as a gift for my cousins, who are also Jackbox fans, and as an activity for my creative writing club at my high school. And thus, CopyWrite was born.

Design and Gameplay

CopyWrite is played in five rounds. During each round, all players write a sentence of a story, and then depending on the game mode, some or all players then get to modify the sentences that someone else wrote, with the aim of not getting caught modifying it. Then, players vote on which sentences they think are copies and which sentences are the best, creating a (very) short story by the end made up of both original and modified sentences. Players are also awarded titles such as "Sneakiest" or "Best Writer" based upon gameplay, which I felt was an interesting alternative design to traditional scores.

Process

I created this game over several weeks, starting with the code for Wit Send and modifying both the gameplay and the underlying game engine to make it more reliable. This process involved almost completely rewriting the networking and backend systems to enable players to rejoin the game even if they get momentarily disconnected, along with some other improvements. Looking back, I could have structured the code for this project a lot better to make it more maintainable (using TypeScript would have also helped a lot).

Conclusion

This game was a lot of fun to make and playtest, and I kept on modifying it long after the gift was given. I do not have any plans to release this game in its current form, but I really enjoyed working on games of this genre and I may revisit the concept eventually.