Hold Your Honk

Projects | 2024 | Links: Global Game Jam Page

A vibrant clown behind bars gestures for silence under a guard’s watchful eye in this title art for Hold Your Honk.

Developed for the 2024 Global Game Jam, Hold Your Honk is a comedic stealth game built around the theme "Make Me Laugh." Serving as the principal designer, I came up with the game’s core premise: a dystopian future where laughter is a capital offense. I authored the full game design document to coordinate our team during the 48-hour jam, ensuring the narrative of ‘Chuckle Rehabilitation Centres’ remained consistent across the mechanics and environmental design.

The gameplay centers on a unique laugh meter mechanic, which serves as the player’s primary failure state. Unlike traditional stealth games where you simply avoid line-of-sight, players must also manage their character’s internal composure by using a ‘Don’t Laugh’ action, where players hold their breath to mitigate laugh damage at the cost of mobility. Additional environmental hazards like whoopie cushions and banana peels that force the metre to rise make the level more challenging.

I designed three distinct playable characters for some variety, though we only had time to create assets for two of these. These include Bobbie O'Kelly, a cynical ex-clown, and Keith the Mime. Each character would feature unique dialogue-based interactions and context actions for different items on use. Of course with time being limited, a lot of these mechanics had to be dropped, but they were to serve as a way of combining some interesting item mechanics along with the game's absurd lore.

I’ve attached the main GDD for review as well as the game build here, if you fancy giving it a go:

Download GDD Download Build

Additionally I’ve provided the itch.io link for the game below.

Hold Your Honk - itch.io