Hiding

Ages ago I made a post about the idea for a 2D/3D coop platform game. In the game two players share the same game space but they each see it from different viewpoints. They control the movements for the player character together. One player inputs left and right which can be seen in the other players viewport. The other player input up and down again this is only visible in first players view. The combination of co-control and the incomplete view of the game forcing the players to talk or scream to each other to rely the information their co-player lack in their viewpoint to safely navigate through the level.

I keep coming back to ideas for local multiplayer games that utilizes hidden information so I might as well start writing them down.

Semi Coop Maze Runner

An iteration of the 2D/3D coop is a maze-runner game where the two player do not share the same game space but they still control the movement of the player character in the co-players space and not in their own space and share potentially power-ups or downs. 

The top image is player A's screen and the bottom is player B's screen.

In the example above player A sees the screen a the top but her up and down input only affects the player movements on player B's screen seen below and vice versa. So again the players must communicate to get their characters trough the maze without hitting the walls. Picking up or avoiding items is also a combined effort whereas collecting points could be a secret mission for the players making the game semi-cooperative.

Game Mechanic for Non-Color Blind

Another way of hiding information is to play with color. In this mockup all 4 players see the same game space and the same objects are present in the space but each player have their own background color which naturally hides the game object that share that color. 

4 players, same game space, different background color.

Again this could be a collaborative game where the players have to talk to each other to fill in the whole picture. One could also imagine that the players were teamed up in intricate ways making the game competitive.