Peacenet Packet Injection minigame

Hey there. I’m prototyping a minigame for my game, The Peacenet. In this minigame, you are a malicious network packet trying to make your way through a data tunnel to a target computer. Along the way you have to avoid security packets sent by the target which try to damage you, collect health packets that restore your strength, collect Burst packets that allow you to increase your speed, and avoid Antivirus packets who try to decrease your speed.

You move your network packet vertically with the mouse.

In the current prototype, only health and security packets are implemented, and there is no way to actually win the minigame yet. Right now the rules are simple - avoid red rectangles, collect green ones, try to stay alive.

Here’s a build you can download to try it out. Works on DesktopGL platforms. Feel free to give me feedback on what I should change and adjust :slight_smile:

https://watercolorgames.itch.io/the-peacenet#download (Itch doesn’t seem to want to give me a direct download link, so just go grab the latest the-peacenet-windows-prototype-packetinjection build)

1 Like

Hey :slight_smile:

This seems like it’s ok for me, but I would worry about it taking too long to play just because it’s kinda simplistic. If I found myself doing this for longer than a minute or two, I might get kinda bored. The upside is that you can easily increase the difficulty and/or variety of this kind of thing by mixing up the behaviour of the antivirus packets or adding different types of them. Like, instead of coming straight across, they can move in different patterns. Perhaps you can upgrade your own packets with defenses to, say, deflect the antivirus packets or use a pulse to destroy them… or something.

I also see what you’re meaning about this being in 3D. I think it would actually be fairly easy to implement in 3D, at least for the objects themselves. The effects for the tunnel, which I’m sure you’re envisioning, might be a little more challenging haha.

Heh, luckily my Peace Engine (planning on renaming to “Serenity Engine”) is getting 3D support soon so that’s gonna make things easier :smiley: