I'm working on-again, off-again on a project that can basically be described as "Metroid, but with melee combat". The protagonist has a power suit with bladed limbs, jetpacks, and a minor gun strapped to one arm. The limbs allow for vaguely plausible melee combat against enemies made out of metal (does it ever bother anyone else that your random fantasy hero's sword works just as well against a mech as it does against a biological horror?); the jetpacks allow for jumping more than three feet into the air; the gun allows for keeping your distance when needed, though it isn't really adequate to defeating heavier monsters. What I'm looking for now is powerups that are both useful for expanded mobility (i.e. granting access to new areas) and for general gameplay (i.e. combat and discovering secrets). As recently noted in the "hated features" thread (though I've also noted this myself from time to time), many times in Metroid-style games, you get access to abilities that really aren't anything more than just keys, since they aren't useful except for bypassing barriers in the game. These include particularly things like being able to push heavy blocks, being able to deal a special kind of damage that only a handful of enemies are vulnerable to, being able to slide through narrow gaps, and so on. One thought I've had is that the jetpack has a limited battery supply; thus, when you start out, it's only good for one "blast" to let you take off and can't be used again until you land. Later you could find more battery packs that would let you perform multi-jumps in air, so that at the end of the game, you might be able to jump upwards of four or five times before landing. Battery packs like this could also be used to unlock extra combat techniques (e.g. jump into the air, curl up, fire jets -> instant Metroid-style screw attack). However, I dislike the idea of having the extra battery packs being required for further game progress, since most "barriers" that they'd let you bypass would be composed of ever-larger big empty spaces, which doesn't sound very interesting to me. Naturally, there's always ballistic weaponry; Metroid-style rockets are useful for added damage and you can always toss in some kind of terrain that resists non-ballistic weaponry. A bit derivative, but it works. I'm wondering if aerial bombs would be helpful as well - when dropped, they'd descend, exploding on contact with an enemy or the ground (and destroying a different kind of terrain than rockets would). I suspect that the utility of such a weapon would depend on how heavily the game relies on aerial combat, which is something I haven't decided yet. Another possibility I thought of is a low-level shielding unit. It'd protect you from any mild-damage attack, but would let anything else through. Thus, if you got it late-game, it'd let you completely ignore early-game enemies (which would be totally unable to damage you), but you'd still have to deal with other foes. The only way I can think of to make this also useful for mobility would be having rooms that are flooded with spores or something, to the extent that the player couldn't pass through normally due to continuous damage (or alternatively due to continuous flinching from taking damage). However, after that, I'm pretty much drawing a blank. Part of my problem is that I have so much experience playing Metroid games, which did some really very creative things early on (the morph ball is genius; Metroid's also the first game I know of to let you freeze enemies and stand on them), that I have trouble thinking of possible upgrades that aren't already done in a Metroid game and yet are still interesting. I'm interested in your feedback, everyone. Any ideas? Ideally, an upgrade would: 1) Be in-theme. The player is wearing a powered armor suit; things like nanites, bio-armor, and the like don't make sense. 2) Be useful in normal gameplay. Not necessarily in all conditions, but sufficiently regularly that the player feels like he's "getting his money's worth" when he finds the thing. 3) Be useful for unlocking more content in the game, by making it physically possible to bypass some barrier, or by making new passages more evident, etc. Fortunately item (1) can generally be dealt with; pretty much any powerup you can think of can be adapted into some sci-fi version that does the same thing. So, any ideas?

- Rocket jumping: just like the FPS staple, a rocket launcher would double as a jump boost by catching yourself in the blast.

- Ability to swap gravity for your player. So you can, at any time, switch to walking on the ceiling. Or even better, be able to flip the whole world instead, which "technically" means the same thing but the player won't be as disoriented because the bottom of the screen is still "down".

- Space Inversion. The player can enter a wall at certain points and enter "negative space", where what once were "walls" are now navigable space, and what was previously navigable is now a wall.

Edit:

- Possession (screw being "in-theme"... make things that are fun to do). The player can fuse with an enemy and take control of it, then at any time he can "break" out. Possessing a flying enemy could get you up to a ledge, then break out and land on the ledge. Etc.

[Edited by - JBourrie on May 15, 2007 9:41:08 PM]

Rocket jumping: I am trying to work out some inventive way to "fly" (or at least to super-jump) that the skilled player could use to skip supposedly-required powerups (if I can, I'd like sequence breaking to be an intentional part of the game design). The Metroid series features morphball bomb jumping and walljumping for this purpose, for example. Rocket jumping of some kind would probably work, but if I do go that route, it wouldn't be an official powerup; instead, you'd just get the normal rockets/missiles and they'd have this "hidden" feature.

Negative space is certainly inventive, as is the gravity switch, but I feel that they'd be better-suited to having entire games built around them (that is, they'd be fundamental abilities and integral in all parts of the game design). By contrast, I plan to have hidden passageways in the walls, and I'm considering Brickman's ceiling-cling as well.

One other recommendation I received elsewhere was a hover/delayed-fall ability. This is actually making me consider possibly moving the game towards more aerial combat, as opposed to just having mostly ground-based enemies and a character that has good aerial mobility. I don't think I've seen a game that featured both strong aerial movement and melee-oriented combat.

A exploration basied platformer with an emphesis on melee over shooting sounds a whole lot more like Castlevania then Metroid...might try useing those games as inspiration?

Or better yet...

Have a look-see at the Treasure classics Alien Soldier and Gunstar Heros...neither really depends much on power-ups, and both are great games.


...But I'm from the "powerups are such a cliche that have become lazy game design" school of thought...no offense intended.

[Edited by - MSW on May 15, 2007 10:16:28 PM]

I'm well aware of the Castlevania series and have played most of them. However, in my opinion they have a fairly terrible record with powerups, as most of them are basically useless outside of their use as glorified keys. I'm paying attention to them more for their enemy design than for their level/character design (Metroid enemies are made to be shot; Castlevania enemies are made to be stabbed/sliced).

This sounds very interesting...

I particularly like the hover/delayed fall idea, and wanted to expand upon it a little. (I don't know how much of this you might have in mind already - if I'm merely describing what you had in mind already, then I apologise.)

The manifestation of this ability in my mind acts as though the player had a player-only platform below them (albeit perhaps with a "standing" animation that more resembled hovering than standing on a solid surface), but which would require some form of energy cost (the type depending on what resources our player has available - perhaps jetpack cells, or central armour power.

Activation would be in mid-air, at the press of a button, and result in the player "standing" in a particular spot in mid-air on his invisible platform.

However, I would like to suggest that the player also be able to perform certain movements while in mid-air. These might be jumping and darting forward or back a short distance, probably just using the standard movement keys, with another activation of the main ability to take a new stationary position (and without which the player would fall again to the ground.

Thus a play might jump, hover, engage an opponent, dash back to avoid an attack, dash forwards to make one of his own, jump and take a new position higher up in order to attack from above, and finally jump back and down to return to the ground, using something like the following sequence:

<jump key>, <hover key>, [various combat keys], <left arrow key>, <hover key>, <right arrow key>, <hover key>, <jump key> + <left arrow key>, <hover key> [various combat keys], <jump key> + <left arrow key>

Presuming that the enemy is on the player's right, and that standard movement to the left and right are bound to the respective arrow keys. Energy would be consumed by each press of the hover key, and perhaps, depending on your system, by combat keys.

I would also suggest that, in addition to having flying enemies, you give some enemies, perhaps including certain bosses, similar abilities for the player to duel against.

Of course, this also helps with mobility and the accessing of otherwise difficult-to-reach areas - but only if the player has the energy reserves to make it that far.

(This idea, I'll admit, draws some of its inspiration from Dragonball Z's aerial fights, and yes, I am mildly ashamed to admit that. ^^; )

Thanks for the link, Brickman. Sadly, I'm using a Mac, so it looks like I can't play it. :\

Thaumaturge - sounds good to me! I definitely think that controlled flight is a very liberating concept for the player. Things like the Space Jump in the Metroid series were great fun, and they had comparatively terrible controls. This would also make expansion of the jetpack's energy supply much more useful (as previously I could only think of it being used to do multi-jumps). Instead of having the jetpack draw energy when you turn on hover and when you attack, though, I'd probably have it do a continual drain as long as you have hover engaged (though certain techniques would drain it faster, e.g. using the jetpack to perform a midair jump). Figuring out the controls is going to be tricky. Ideally I'd like the game to be conceptually playable with at most as many buttons as the SNES had.

I already have planned at least one enemy that should be able to match the player's capabilities. And the suggestion of a hover/delayed fall had me instantly thinking of duelling the Flying Pirates (from Metroid Prime) on their own turf, so to speak. Should be fun!