Current Project: Fall

You're the horizontal thing (he's flipping).

Today is the last day that I've dedicated to official prototyping of Project Fall. Which essentially means, that I will continue to prototype the game until it feels like I want it to feel, then move on to learning Unity so I can port it to that platform (if 2D is actually feasible there). It also means that I can like, release screenshots and concepts of the prototype because it's actually pretty fun now.

Obviously, the screenshot that you have become privy to in this post represents more of my legendary placeholder artwork, but it handles the job of emulating gameplay, and it does that job extremely well.

The Early Story

So far, a few things are different with how I approached this project as compared to City Across the Sky, and yet the game followed a pretty standard stream of changes and iteration. At first, I had an idea of a game where you would have a bunch of weapons (the prototype only has 10), murder enemies, and avoid falling objects from the sky. It was going to focus on paths of motion and tight controls but be executed around the notion of avoiding this falling objects. I started on the prototype, got wall-jumping the way I wanted it, added a weapon or two, created some enemies and everything was fine and dandy. I thought the game would work out exactly as I planned it. Then I added the falling objects and the game suddenly was some shit. I realized that my original vision just wouldn't work with what I had coded (motion of objects and controls) and with that, the vision in my head fell apart. However, I liked what I had created a lot, so I kept the enemies, weapons, and movement and later moved towards and idea which I called the "murder box".

The Fall

After the idea of "Fall" had failed me, I decided to keep the name (since I have another project called Spring [more on that later]) and work on the concept of a murder box arcade game. But, for awhile, I thought the idea was much too simple and reminded me a lot of Super Crate Box, a game by Vlambeer, a studio that I really like and would ideally, like to emulate, but not copy. I was at a complete loss for what to do with the game, and let it sit for about 5 or 6 days. I hadn't abandoned it, but I didn't have an idea for what to do with the game. The simplicity of the gameplay is inspired somewhat by Super Crate Box and to a lesser extent Super Meat Boy, but I'm working hard to make it feel like a different game entirely.

I believe that it's very important to come up with your own ideas, but at the same time, I don't think that borrowing ideas that work from other games to supplement your own individual visions is necessarily a bad thing. As long as you're not ripping off another game, I feel like similarities between games should only serve to honor the original inventor of the idea.

The Inspiration

For awhile, I had trouble finding something that could work as a goal for the gamer; one that didn't tread too closely to Super Crate Box or the notion of solely trying to acquire a higher score (but that would ultimately be the goal of course). In SCB, getting the crates and finding new weapons was the major goal. It served the purpose of randomizing gameplay and acted as the scoring mechanism which was a great design choice because it fostered simplicity. For a while, I wondered what I could use as my scoring mechanism. For a while, I couldn't think of anything.

But, I asked my girlfriend (who is by no means a gamer of any kind) to make a list of things she thought I could put into the game to make it better. She made a list of ten things, and initially, I thought the list was a pile of crap, so I was frustrated by her naivety within the discipline of game design. I was serious, and her suggestions were...well they were not serious. So at first I disregarded the list and stopped development for a day or two. But eventually I came back and looked at the list and something clicked with two entries on the list.

1. Triangles that spin and cut you.
2. Squares that shoot you.
3. Keep the basic shape thing you have.
4. If there is something good falling from the sky, give it a rainbow trail or something.
5. Zooming cars.
6. Raining guns that you have to avoid.
7. Mermaids.
8. Catch the gun and it kills everything on the screen. Call it the "Silver Star Gun".
9. Bubbles. Toxic bubbles or happy bubbles.
10. Sound effects.

Raining guns and the "Silver Star Gun". From these ideas, I created the Gunstar. 

The GUN STARRR.

A weapon that, if the player is doing very well for a certain period of time, will fall from the sky and offer you ultimate power for a short time span and allow you to murder the crap out of everything on the map (if you're skilled). This idea, spawned from a list of what I considered terrible ideas at first, inspired me to work on the game as a murder box and helped me move away from the idea that the game was too inspired by Super Crate Box.

What you should take from this is, ideas can come from ANYWHERE, not just yourself. Outside ideas are extremely important and even if you don't think that whoever is giving you the ideas is qualified to give you ideas (probably because you don't think they know about games or fun and you do because you're a "game designer" and they're a regular person). You have to remember--and I have learned to remember--that game designers aren't usually your target audience, just because they MIGHT be the most vocal audience or offer the most criticisms, you don't tailor your game to them, you tailor it to the people you want to play your game. In the case of Fall, it was casual gamers and the indie hardcore.

The Murder Box

So, by mixing ideas from other games and adding a few of my own, I've managed to make Fall feel more like an action-arcade game inspired by the elemets of Super Crate Box (spawning weapons to keep you on your toes), rather than a copy. By adding elements from Team Fortress 2 (rocket jumping), Cave Story (where certain weapons affect how you move), Galaga (power-ups which are not implemented into the prototype yet), Super Meat Boy (simple motion, but with my own arcade "feel") and my own design elements (usually inspired by friends and family) such as the Gunstar (a power-up) and the leveling (leading to bosses), difficulty (based on a tier system) and scoring mechanics (which encourage the player to beat their own high scores to encourage player improvement), I managed to make Fall a completely different game and in the end I hope others think so as well.

Concept Artwork

By Jacques Yeates. He thinks it's too cutesy. You can see how the Gunstar
 has influenced the theme of the game.

By Ryan Huggins. I thought the shades (reference to Gurren Lagann) made this
one of the greatest things ever.

Early Prototype Videos

Expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~