Sup guys, here's an idea for a game that I have been thinking about.
I want to make a space exploration rogue-like game.
Story
You are a hired space-bounty hunter. Your goal is to defeat different species of alien races throughout the galaxy. The thing is that you are poor, literally poor. You are only equiped with a lazer gun and shovel. Your spaceship is flying metal junk that moves slow.
Objective
The goal of the game is to travel across space to reach the alien colony to destroy the leader. As you travel through space, you can make stops at different small planets to dig for resources, power-ups, ship-upgrades, money, and etc to make you stronger for the fight at the end. The problem with this is that the longer you take to reach the alien colony, the more advance and stronger the alien race becomes.
Game Design
Essentially I picture this game being done in the style of Spelunky. The game will consist of three parts, space-traveling, resource gathering, and fighting.
The space-traveling sequence will be done in the style of 2D airplane shooting except running from left to right instead of up to down. In the space traveling events you can go through boost gates to make your ship travel fast. You also have the option to skip planets in order to get to the alien colony as fast as you can.
The resource gathering is done on the pit-stop planets where you dig into the ground to mine for power-ups/resources. You are limited by how far you can dig by a pipe attached to the player which provides oxygen. However, you can choose to break the line and dig further, but you will have to use up your oxygen tank that you need to reserve when you reach the alien colony. The further you dig down, the better the resources and power-ups will be.
The last part is the fighting at the alien colony. I imagine it as being one big giant Spelunky level, where you start at the surface of the colony and have to travel deep down to reach the alien leader.
Game Elements
The space bounty hunter will have a health bar and oxygen bar. Your spaceship with also have a separate health meter. If your either health bars reaches zero at anytime, your character will die. If you oxygen bar becomes zero, your character's health will slowly drain. Keep in mind that your oxygen can only go down if you detach yourself from the ship's oxygen pipe, while digging for resources and when you reach the alien colony. There will also be a map to show how far you are in space from the alien planet and also a different map when you are at the alien colony.
The alien colony is rather very big, so if you have the oxygen and supplies, you can explore the colony to discover new weapons, health, oxygen, and etc.
Keep in mind that all the elements in this game are randomly generated, from the levels to the power-ups/resources you find. Perma-death is also present in this game as well.
This is all I have so far for my game. Let me know what you guys think about it.
It might be interesting to make the space-traveling part as if you are inside a moving spaceship with varying levels (you can platform around inside your ship to reach different weapons and repair locations) Kind of taking the idea of FTL and Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time. So the combat would be a mix of platforming, positioning of your ship, and firing of correct types of weapons at varying enemy types.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of a boss growing stronger is pretty awesome. I always felt that in games, the final boss is just chilling in his throne and not giving a fuck so the sense of urgency suffers a bit.
I really like this idea actually. The game mechanics are sound, I like the Sci-Fi take on a traditionally fantasy genre (roguelikes), and I think there is a lot of narrative potential in this.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone's read Ender's Game, Forever War, or watched the old Gunbuster anime the classic old-school Sci-Fi narrative would be perfect for this. The idea of the further you distance yourself from your Homeworld the weaker you get while your enemy gets stronger as you approach their homeworld. There's a lonely aspect to it that makes sense in a roguelike where you are alone without a party. The concept where, if the character's ship moves at light speed, 4 minutes at lightspeed (gameplay time) could result in centuries relative Earth time and possibly Alien Colony time for them to advance technologically.
There's also the potential for One Piece style rhetoric like their use of Lock Posts and the necessity to move from island to island and not go directly to the "goal". The ship's technology is limited so you can only make lightspeed "jumps" between planets and can't instantly get to the Alien Colony without running the risk of crashing into Suns or getting lost in Black Holes. Hell it's a roguelike so giving the player the option to TRY to make a jump all the way to the Alien Boss at a 1% success or something might be fun. Even if they make the jump they probably couldn't beat it without mining for items with only their shovel and laser pistol.
In terms of gameplay there isn't much I can critique without hearing more. I'm still unsure how the game would flow from the beginning until you reach the "goal" of the Alien Boss. Is it like...the boss is at the 100th level of the dungeon where each level is randomly generated? Expect in this case there would be 100 planets of increasing difficulty (which can be skipped) and the last planet is the Boss? That makes sense to me and is a good idea, but it may not be what you're thinking. Also without knowing what the "power ups" do and how they affect gameplay is hard to tell how the game will feel. Just saying things need more elaboration.
As a side note I like the game having different parts. I think roguelikes get sort of tedious with the same thing over and over. I think breaking up space-traveling and power-up mining may be a good idea. Anyways, I liked this idea a lot and liked to see this worked on some more actually.