Beam Foundation (@BeamFDN): How the Forgotten Playland team created a game to rival Mario Party

How the Forgotten Playland team created a game to rival Mario Party With social party game Forgotten Playland launching on the Epic Games store (https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/forgotten-playland-a6ffdb) on the 27th of March, we speak to their team about how the title brings whole new dimensions of fun to this well-loved genre. When it all comes together in a game, boy, it’s really something. When that special sauce is sloshing this way and that. When you get fidgety if you have to stop playing. When you start looking at friends and family as NPCs. You know what we’re talking about. Good games have power. But about that special sauce. What are the ingredients? How do you cook it up? It’s an elusive and mysterious business and it’s something that devs and dev teams pull their hair out over.. One of those teams is Duckland Games (https://www.ducklandgames.com/), who for close to two years have been wrestling with the particular challenges of creating a party game that will have you and your crew squealing with delighted frustration, bellowing hearty curses and generally having the time of your lives. One name in particular looms large in the party game world. Yes, we’re talking about everyone’s favourite moustachioed plumber and his Mario Party franchise, which has been setting the genre’s standards since 1998. For both Design Director Hussein and Production & Finance Director Zico, the Nintendo title is the reference point. “Forgotten Playland is basically Sackboy or LittleBigPlanet meets Mario Party,” says Zico, while for Hussein it’s “Mario Party meets It Takes Two”. With Sackboy, LittleBigPlanet and It Takes Two featuring doll-like central characters, these references relate to Forgotten Playland’s ‘PlushKyns’, the cute and endlessly customizable characters you play as. The conceit with Forgotten Playland is that, once darkness falls, the toys in the attic come alive and start to play. “It’s packed with fast-paced action, nostalgic charm, and unpredictable mayhem,” adds Head of Studio Will. “Every match feels like a playground free-for-all where only the most cunning PlushKyn comes out on top.” “Yeah, so it's a free-to-play PC party game with a social layer to it,” continues Hussein. “You play up to four players, all online or local players. You can even play with bots. And we have different types of game modes where you can go into these party games and compete against each other. Since it's a free-to-play game, we have a lot of progression and a rewards system implemented such as battle passes.” Welcome to The Attic 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GmfXSihagAAS70o.jpg For Zico, what sets Forgotten Playland apart from Mario Party is that “we have a social hub, the Attic, where you can find new friends to play the party games with.” Hussein concurs. “The social layer in the game is very important for us because that's our unique selling point. We’ve also made sure that the social hub has as many activities as possible so it’s very appealing for players to stay there and hang out. Design wise we were aiming to encourage people to spend more time in The Attic than playing the game itself, and we've got some pretty positive feedback on that so far.” Zico continues: “The thing with The Attic is that it supports up to 32 players. It’s a place where new players and communities can mess around and find new friends to play the party games with. It has games of its own – social games, which are much simpler and straightforward than the ‘proper’ party games – and they’re a way of creating social connections. The players who already have friends to play the party games with will spend less time in The Attic, I predict.” Don’t stop the party 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GmfXW9taAAAZ-7Z.jpg The Forgotten Playland team naturally wants people coming back for more, again and again and again. To do that, they’re not only launching with a healthy package of 20-plus games, they’re weaving intricate player progression mechanics into Forgotten Playland’s gameplay, “so that you're actually playing for something and leveling your character up with free cosmetics to make it unique,” explains Hussein. “For the current industry standard I think you would be surprised by the quality of cosmetics that we're giving out,” he continues. “Also the amount of player progression that we have, because we're going to have two types of progressions: one for the player profile and one for the battle pass, which comes with additional features and unique cosmetics.” With the game’s longevity in mind, Head of Studio Will emphasizes Forgotten Playland’s focus “on player expression, customization, and emergent gameplay – giving players more tools to create memorable, unpredictable moments.” The tools Will refers to include the ‘Customization Station’, where you can tweak both your character’s appearance and their personality. “You can use emotes, stickers and phrases to communicate and express your feelings with other players,” says Hussein. The Attic is another USP. “We’ll be offering new things in the social hub that people can do that correlate with events happening in the real world,” explains Zico. “An Easter egg hunt, for example. At Halloween, we might give The Attic a complete overhaul to fit that event, and cozy content at Christmas. That kind of thing. Content here will mean aesthetics, but also social games. Maybe we’ll have a ‘Decorate the Christmas tree’ event, for example.” What success looks like for Forgotten Playland 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GmfXcimbMAAw3SQ.jpg “We want to keep building new party games,” says Zico. “Unique party games that challenge the player in different ways. For example, we’ve got a memory game with Shuffle Square, a button-mash game with Halfcan Holdback and a balance game with Balance Beam Bonanza. We will keep making party games that bring these new challenges to the player. That will help us to keep building the core player base. In six months from now, if we have, say, 10,000 concurrent players, that would be a success to me because it shows you’re keeping players involved.” For Will, success means “having an active, engaged player base that keeps coming back not just for the mechanics, but for the sheer fun of it. We’d love to see a strong community forming around custom teddy designs, creative playstyles, and the kind of unpredictable, hilarious moments that make great party games stand out. If players are still discovering new strategies, sharing clips, and demanding more content, we’ll know we did something right.” In our next article, we’ll look at the bonus secret sauce Forgotten Playland is bringing to this party: web3 integration, including how they’re making it fun, seamless and entirely ignorable if a player should so wish. Forgotten Playland launches on the Epic Games store (https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/forgotten-playland-a6ffdb) on the 27th of March. Watch this space! 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