game studio project
gameplay concept
A rogue-like shmup. Inspired by Spelunky and Everyday Shooter.
An exploratory shmup, where the game entities have more interactive behaviour than "fly at the player in a set pattern". A shmup that gives the player a feeling of mortality, at the same time as encouraging them to take risks and discover new things.
In the world there are entities called pyxes, they're living beings, but also a convenient form of energy. Left to their own devices, they fly around aimlessly. If an enemy captures them, they begin powering it. Damaging the enemy is enough to dislodge the pyx. Pyxes will also follow you around, so you can bring them places to power certain devices or doors. If they start to bug you, you can blow at them to send them flying away.
The player navigates a procedurally generated arrangement of rooms, separated into areas, or levels. The transition between one area and he next is continuous, they are connected by an in-game hallway. The hallway will usually be blocked by a heavy door which must be powered to open it.
What's going to be interesting, though, is designing enemies which will interact in the rooms. Enemies could
- totally ignore you until you bother them
- try to grab pyxes from you and run away to scatter them
- do nothing but alert other enemies to your presence
- swoop around and agressively attack you
Finding out what sorts of enemies are interesting is a challenge, and will take a lot of trial and error. Prototyping is a must.
I want the game to be very replayable. There's going to be a scoring mechanism, but I haven't figured out the details yet. One option I like right now would be to let you redeem pyxes at the end of each level, and take the rest with you. Taking them with you makes getting through the next level easier, but redeeming them nets you more score. Since you can only redeem them at the end of the level, this adds to the feeling of mortality: dying means everything you collected on the current level is gone.
visual
The visuals play an important part in the play experience, but unfortunately the visual style is still to be determined. I have ideas floating around my head, but nothing's really clicked yet.
schedule
week 01 // 2009-09-22
- concept presentation, with videos of everyday shooter and spelunky
- little player running around a baren landscape
week 02 // 2009-09-29
- make schedule
- basic basic environment being generated, with collision and stuff
- basic resource entity, it follows you around. maybe you are 'saving' it?
week 03 // 2009-10-06
- revision control
- make follow entity feel better, right now it feels like crap
week 04 // 2009-10-13
- better procedural environment, but still fixed room sizes
week 05 // 2009-10-20
- clumsy followers
- followers emote
- mid-term presentation
week 06 // 2009-10-27
- group rooms into areas, implement area-area transitions
- start making it look nice!
- prototype more entities
- experiment with interactions between the entities, playtest
- enemies can absorb pyxes for energy, destroy them to let them escape
week 07 // 2009-11-03
- more entity prototyping, playtesting
- add simple sounds
- look into finding some music
- more work on graphics
- more interesting room shapes
- areas should become harder as you go farther
week 08 // 2009-11-10
- more entity prototyping, playtesting
- more work on graphics
- scoring system, gain score at the end of the level
week 09 // 2009-11-17
- implement main menu and game over as game areas
- more entity prototyping, playtesting
- start work on website
- more work on graphics
week 10 // 2009-11-24
- progress report
- more entity work, playtesting
- more work on graphics
- polish!
week 11 // 2009-12-01
- online high scores!?
- polish!
week 12 // 2009-12-??
- polish!
- distribution
- publicity
resources
- shmup
- Shoot 'em up - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Spelunky
- Home page: Spelunky World
- Youtube - Spelunky
- Everyday Shooter
- Home page: Everyday Shooter by Jonathan Mak
- Youtube - Everyday Shooter Trailer
- procedural level generation
- Maze generation algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Kruskal's algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Think Labyrinth: Maze Algorithms
scratch box
Random ideas go here until they can be moved to a better place
visual: steampunk, robots emit steam when they move around or have many pyxes, also could be interesting to look at how pyxes affect the lighting of the steam.
visual: dark, light, pyxes become a source of light as well as a resource