lag or skill | Devpost

Inspiration

We were inspired by fast-paced browser shooters like zombsroyale.io and classic top-down arena games that focus on movement, quick decision-making, and chaotic multiplayer fun.

What it does

Lag or Skill is a 2D top-down multiplayer arena shooter where players dash, shoot, and outplay each other in real time. The core gameplay emphasizes mobility, positioning, and fast reflex combat in compact arenas.

How we built it

We built the game using the Godot Engine with its high-level multiplayer API for networking, combined with NodeTunnel as a relay to simplify peer-to-peer connections. Development was powered by rapid prototyping, late nights, and an unhealthy amount of energy drinks.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was learning Godot from scratch while building the game at the same time. None of us had deep prior experience with the engine, so nearly every system such as movement, shooting, UI, tilemaps, and multiplayer syncing required constant research, experimentation, and debugging. We were frequently jumping between documentation, forums, and tutorials just to understand core concepts before implementing them in our own way.

On top of that, managing real-time multiplayer introduced complexity around player state synchronization, lag handling, and scene replication. Building everything from the ground up under time pressure meant solving engine-specific problems on the fly while still designing fun gameplay mechanics.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We shipped a fully playable real-time multiplayer shooter from scratch, with responsive movement, dashing mechanics, synced combat, and working online play

What we learned

We gained hands-on experience with Godot’s multiplayer framework, UI systems, and scene architecture, explored relay-based networking to avoid NAT/router issues, improved our Git collaboration workflow, and (unexpectedly) improved our karaoke skills.

What's next for lag or skill

We plan to add more weapons and abilities, expand map variety, improve and better structure player behavior logic, polish gameplay balance and feel, and eventually deploy a self-hosted relay server for better performance and scalability.