I'm making retro themed pixel art 2D and low-poly 3D games

A good co-op revival mechanic

My upcoming Heretic inspired co-op FPS fantasy shooter will have a strong co-op focus, while still feeling fun, fast, simple and old-school. It's time to return to a simpler time when fun had a lower barrier of entry.

(Original Heretic screenshot)


The original Heretic (and Hexen, and Doom) all had co-op as an afterthought. Ending the game when one player dies the way it does in single player doesn't seem like fun, nor does sitting around while your friends complete the level without you. So the easy solution was just to let everyone instantly respawn at the level start with basic weapons. Unfortunately this doesn't make progression a challenge, just tedious. Reappear, run back to where your friends are, keep shooting, till the boss dies, next level.

But several good solutions to this problem have been created over the years.



Left 4 Dead has regular "check points" where you will be able to pick up downed players. These are entertainingly themed as "rescues" that fit with the game's story of rescuing survivors to help fight against the zombie hoards. So if someone goes down, there is only a short wait before the player is rescued again. And the team is at significant risk during this period while they are one player down than they should be, so there is a chance for everyone to go down and fail the level.



Gears of War has a revival mechanic, so if one player goes down, the existing player can "revive them" at their own risk, running out into the battle field and pressing the revive button. If you're lucky, you both get to keep playing, but there's also a good chance the surviving player will get shot and go down as well. When all players are down, the game resets back to the last checkpoint, which is the same progression penalty as single-player mode.



The new Minecraft Dungeons has a more heavy-handed mechanic; as soon as one player goes down, the "night creatures" emerge and continually do the surviving players damage until they revive the downed player. This is probably the most extreme example, providing the quickest turnaround for a downed player to come back, but the highest risk of failure if even one of you goes down, which encourages you to play together.

I've come up with a storyline which binds the life force of the 4 players together. When one of you goes down, one of the other players can revive you by giving you half of their remaining health. Obviously the players will decide amongst themselves who's got the most health, or if it's a heat of the moment thing, one of the nearest players might decide to do it.

This keeps you in the game without waiting, but also keeps everyone's health heading downwards together with more deaths. Eventually, once you have 2 hitpoints, you can revive someone and you have 1 hitpoint each, but you can't revive someone if you have just 1 hit point. So there might be a small period of time where the remaining players are running around with just 1 hit point, unable to revive anyone else, but realistically, everyone will be dead very quickly at that point. Then the game will start again at the start of the level.

What do you guys think? It's definitely not a finished concept and discussion is welcome. Putting into practice will be the real test!