Viktor's
Mayhem
Pull the lever. Take your curse. Survive the arena. A TV game show nobody should want to be on, hosted by someone delighted by your suffering.
The game
Viktor's Mayhem, released in Spanish as La Ruleta del Infortunio, is a TV game show nobody should want to be on. A slot machine rolls your fate, and whatever misfortune it lands on, you carry into an arena fight. Move, dodge and attack your way through it while a delighted host commentates your suffering.
Designing around randomness
The design bet: make the punishment the content. Random handicaps re-texture the same arena every run, so each curse changes how you have to play rather than simply making the numbers worse. The real work was balancing the misfortunes to stay genuinely fun: cruel enough to earn the show's premise, never so cruel that a run feels lost before it starts.
What I designed
- The show-format game loop: slot machine, then curse, then arena, then payoff.
- The misfortune roster and the balance rules that keep it playable.
- Combat and arena encounters tuned around WASD movement, dodges and melee attacks.