It’s time to say something more about our game. As I said in previous post it’s going to be a platformer with bouncing from walls and roguelite elements. Player’s goal is to defeat all enemy waves in one room in order to advance to the next one. Players have variety of ranged weapons and passive items at their disposal. Defeated enemies can drop keys that can be used to open chests. They contain two types of gear: weapons and items. Player can only have two weapons at given time. Items are permanent and they will give player passive effects, like more health, chance to poison enemies additional effects for bullets, etc.
Mechanics
Character is automatically running forward, when it hits a wall his direction is changed (for example from left to right). Player can jump and shoot. This kind of constraints exist because touch input is annoying for this kind of game. I wanted to reduce number of buttons to minimum. Additionally player can switch between weapons and reload them by clicking on their icons. Below is a screenshot from prototype version. All the basic systems are working.
Weapons and items
They will be grouped based on their rarity: common, rare, epic and legendary. They will be chosen randomly from the pool based on some probability – the better the rarity the lower chance for it to drop. I want common weapons to be an image of real weapons like: pistols, rifles, or even crossbows. Rare weapons should be modified versions of common weapons, for example, rifle that freezes the enemies. Epic weapons should be, kind of “not from this world”, what I mean is, they should be kind of unique, for example: fireball thrower. There is no legendary weapon created yet but I want them to have uniqueness of the epic weapons and some kind of passive ability that can’t be obtained from items. Additionally I don’t want the power creep to happen – the rarity should influence the diversity, not the power.
I don’t know if rarity should influence the power of the item, I think rarity should affect the way how much given item changes the gameplay. Common items should give small bonuses like more health, faster reloading, more ammo in clips, etc.
Rifle
Ice Rifle
Fireball Thrower
Currencies
There will be three currencies: keys, gold and cash. Keys, obviously, let the player open the chests that contain weapons and items. Gold will allow the player to buy new items and weapons, restore ammo and health in the shops that he finds find between levels. Player will receive cash for killing bosses. It can be spend to unlock new items and weapons that will appear during the game.
Levels
Diversity of levels will be based on platform placement. It will be chosen from previously created pool of placements. Enemy spawning areas will be based on level design, for example, on the first level the enemies are coming out from the pipes placed on ceiling and wall.
What’s next
Now we want to create one playable level. It will have three different rooms with regular enemies, a boss room and shop between two random levels. We are also going to add more items and weapons.
See you next week!
KD & DD
KJDDGames 