The Odd Story Behind “Watch Your Back!”
Our games usually don’t use admin, but “Watch Your Back” is a different story.
Concept
Watch Your Back was a game that we released on the 11th of last year’s January. The idea was simple, and you could say it’s a TF2-style murder mystery. Most players became Red Scouts, with a bat. Only one outlier player is a Blu Spy, perm-disguised as a Scout. You can probably imagine the rest — the Spy has to eliminate all Scouts discreetly so a Scout wouldn’t eliminate the Spy. Sound clear? Great.
But alas, there was one teeny-tiny problem. At the time, there were no scripters on the team, only validators. There were only two vital people on the team — YourLocalBloxxer and Josh. They had to improvise.
And here’s where things get a little startling.
Admin Commands
Admin commands are great for a lot of things. You can add a blacklist to your server’s hub, control a random’s chat for YouTube content, or even just put a crown on a minigame winner. That’s not how the team used it in this game, though.
Early into the game’s development, YourLocalBloxxer uploaded a mysterious file into the game’s Google Drive team. Nobody on the team payed close attention to it until Josh noticed just how frequently the file was viewed — almost 18 times a session!
The file had a list of admin commands that YourLocalBloxxer would silently run to trigger different events on the game. For example, starting the game — as well as ending — was only possible if a team member had access to the server.
Aftermath
Now that the file is destroyed, the game is efficiently bricked. Toxi, the new lead developer, posted a Tweet about how he’s considering remastering the game.
Since then, Watch Your Back almost shutdown but remains up for legacy purposes. Even though the game itself is unplayable, you can still roam the lobby and enjoy the “Secret Room.” Wait, what did I say? Secret room? There’s no secret room. 👀
