MAD - Must Avoid Destruction

MAD – Must Avoid Destruction was a prototype developed during a solo one-week game jam by Master's students at the University of Gloucestershire. The theme of the jam was “Non-Violence,” encouraging creative approaches to gameplay without relying on combat mechanics.

MAD – Must Avoid Destruction places the player in the role of a world leader, tasked with navigating escalating global crises in an attempt to preserve peace and stability.

The theme of “Non-Violence” is explored through the abstraction of geopolitical decision-making, where leaders are removed from directly committing acts of violence. Instead, players must weigh the threat and potential use of force against peaceful resolutions and diplomatic compromise. The game highlights how both approaches - aggression and diplomacy—can lead to complex and often unpredictable outcomes in international affairs.

Ultimately, the player’s goal is to prevent the ultimate final act of violence - the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Interfaces

A key technical showcase in this project was the extensive use of interfaces to enable interaction between separate game objects.

For example, the IInteractable interface defined the conditions under which objects could be interacted with, as well as how those interactions would function from the player’s perspective. This modular approach allowed for flexible and reusable systems, supporting a wide variety of in-game interactions.

This same approch extended to the IDisplayable interface which governed any object intended to display UI and text information in the game world.

Game State Flow

The game flow was managed using a state machine, which encapsulated and abstracted the current state of the game into discrete, modular chunks. This design allowed for cleaner control logic, making it easier to modify, extend, or add new functionality as needed.