Welcome to Mechanical Duo - the asymmetric two-player couch co-op game of coordination and trust. Play as either an invincible bomber plane with limited vision that must rely on cues and signals from the field to deliver precise firepower and aid, or a tank on the ground that must work with the aircraft to endure waves of enemies.

Together, you will both need to push your teamwork to the limit to survive - or die trying.  May the best duo win!

Basic Instructions

As Air

You are the most powerful character. You are invincible, and your powers will be the key to your teammate's survival.

Keep your teammate alive by any means necessary. Use WASD to move, hold SPACE to drop bombs, and Q to drop repair packages (these controls can be rebound) to assist your teammate.

Be careful! Your teammate will look the same as an enemy on your screen, so you will need to pay close attention to your teammate to avoid friendly fire.

Watch out for jammers! On difficulties above Easy, radar jammers will stop your radar from working when nearby. Coordinate with your teammate to destroy them as soon as you can.

Your supply of bombs and repair packages will eventually diminish until you run out. When they do, move to the blue refill point indicated by the blue arrow to refill your entire inventory.

Press the tilde key (~) to pull up the upgrades menu. Remember that some upgrades will lead to other upgrades, so make sure to check the tree on upgrades before buying them!

As Ground

You are the most important character, for your death will result in defeat for your team. Coordinate with your teammate and kill all enemies or kill the final boss to win (win condition depends on difficulty).

Stay alive by any means necessary. Use the arrow keys to move, hold LEFT MOUSE to shoot, and RIGHT MOUSE to shoot flares (can be rebound).

Flares can go through walls and will appear as an orange dot on your teammate's screen. They can be used to mark locations for your teammate to drop health or to mark radar jammers for your teammate to destroy.

Press the backspace key to pull up the upgrades menu. Remember that some upgrades will lead to other upgrades, so make sure to check the tree on upgrades before buying them!

Tips (If You're Struggling)

As Air

Whenever you go refill, drop health if you still have it, even if you don't think your teammate will reach it in time. The blue point will refill your entire inventory anyway.

If you're having trouble avoiding friendly fire, look at your teammate's screen (it's an intentional feature) or get Recon Drone. The recon drone will display a green arrow when it detects your teammate nearby, and a red arrow otherwise.

Prioritize destroying jammers whenever you can. Communicating with your teammate and using the flare really helps here.

If you need to, get Stronger Package. It's not that important for easier difficulties, but it's very helpful for the harder ones.

As Ground

Play defensively and don't worry too much about picking up enemy drops quickly, since they do not despawn (healing packages do, however).

Flares can go through walls, so if you see a radar jammer in an inaccessible spot, you can shoot a flare on top of it to signal to your teammate to bomb it.

If you need to, get Armor or Composite Armor. One or two tiers of health upgrades aren't that important for easier difficulties, but they're very helpful for the harder ones.

Advanced Instructions

If you made it this far, good job - it means that you've played this game more than I actually expected anyone to. Here's some more documentation on things you need to know for higher level gameplay:

Switching Abilities

Some upgrades have "Ability" in their description. These upgrades grant abilities that are similar to the repair package and the flare.

For air players, pressing shift+Q (can be rebound) will allow you to switch between any abilities you've bought and the default repair package ability that you start with. For ground players, pressing shift+RIGHT MOUSE (can be rebound) will allow you to switch between any abilities you've bought and the default signal flare ability that you start with.

Dual Abilities

These abilities require both players to use and are among the most powerful abilities in the game. They are distinguished from regular abilities by the text "Dual Ability: Upon both players' confirmation..."

For air players, pressing E activates the dual ability, while for ground players, pressing MIDDLE MOUSE activates the dual ability. When a player has activated the dual ability, the icon will display "Ready" on their side of the screen. Both players must activate the dual ability for it to be used.

Dual abilities are refilled at the blue refill point like all other air abilities. Just like normal abilities, air players can press shift+E (can be rebound), and ground players can press shift+MIDDLE MOUSE (can be rebound) to switch between multiple dual abilities. Switching a dual ability for one player will switch dual abilities for both players.

Credits

Game made with Godot 4

Sprites made with InkScape

Sound Effects:

Enemy Shoot

Player Shoot

Bullet Impact

Missile

Nuts

All other sound effects made in LMMS

Developer's Notes

This game was made over the course of about six months (although in terms of time, it was probably only equal to about two months of full time development) as a spiritual successor to Poly Mission, a game that I made about a year and a half ago for the Multiplayer Game Jam. However, Poly Mission had many flaws that I wanted to address, namely:

1. The presentation was awful.

2. The upgrades system was arguably even worse. It was not only convoluted, but also anticooperative in nature - since both players upgraded using the same resources, upgrades would often become a game of spamming upgrades for one person while leaving the other in the dust.

3. On top of that, enemies gave rewards immediately when killed, and since the plane was so stupidly powerful, there was no reason for the tank not to just run away from all the enemies and simply wait for the bombs to fall.

4. The map was ridiculously large. It probably took ~30-40 seconds for the plane to make a round trip for bombs, which was super irritating. Also, the flare was unwieldy and had basically no practical use other than to mark the approximate location of the tank.

Seeing these problems, I made changes in Mechanical Duo accordingly:

1. I learned to draw in Inkscape and gave the art a major overhaul.

2. The upgrades system was scrapped for a far simpler Vampire Survivors-styled upgrade panel. However, instead of using levels, I opted for a currency system to allow more powerful upgrades to be weighted differently. I also made two types of currency so that players wouldn't have to compete with each other for upgrades.

3. Instead of granting currency upon death, I made enemies drop collectibles that needed to be picked up for upgrades. Poly Mission did have this mechanic added after the jam, but it was more or less just pointlessly stapled on as an afterthought.

4. I shrunk the map by about 500% and made the plane loop instead of simply bouncing off the walls to enable quicker travel.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with how this game turned out. Poly Mission walked so that this game could run, and looking back at Poly Mission, this was definitely a significant improvement over its predecessor.

Lastly, since you made it this far, I just want to say thank you for reading. One of the reasons I remade this game was because barely anyone played Poly Mission, and I wanted to give it a second chance. You probably don't know it, but the fact that you cared enough to even read this whole thing means a lot to me.

Chances are, by the time you're reading this, Finally Finish Something 2024 will still be going. So please enjoy the rest of the jam, kind stranger, and I hope we'll meet again.

Thank you, and good night.