Hi This is a game idea I had for a game; I’m from Spain so please take in consideration that I’m not a native speaker of English. BTW I suck at photoshop so I made the pictures with MS paint, so please dont laugh at me. xD This is what I have so far, let me know what do you think about it. Title: Dawn on Mars. What it is? A 2D side scrolling action/adventure game (metroid style) mixed with some survival horror elements. Targeted platform: Digital download ( Xbox live arcade). Story: Well I have one but I think it doesn’t matter for this post and I’m not posting it here, so let’s just say you are a security agent trapped in a terraforming station on Mars with many different types of creatures and you have to escape and go back to earth. (I know it sounds pretty cliché but the complete story has its twists). Game world: The game world is divided in three main areas: The first one its the terraforming station, the second one its the caves under the terraforming station and the last one its the orbital station. Gameplay description. Like I said the game it’s much like metroid but with some twists, in metroid you usually need to acquire different abilities and gadgets to unlock different areas and advance in the game but in this game you need objects to unlock new areas in the style of some old school survival horror games like resident evil or silent hill, also it uses a inventory system similar to those games. You may also need a special suit to survive on the surface of mars; this suit uses oxygen so you need to charge it every time you run out of oxygen, obviously if you run out of oxygen on the surface of mars you die. You also use two weapons the main weapon (a pistol) and a secondary weapon (Shotgun, machine gun or grenade launcher), you can switch from the main weapon to the secondary weapon by pressing the RB button. There´s also a melee attack you can use by pressing the B button, if you get close enough to the enemy and press the B button repeatedly you can perform a combo. In some parts of the game you may also use vehicles, in those parts the vehicles will handle like in a classic 2D shot´em up game. Button scheme. Here is a picture of the button scheme. Inventory system. Here we have a picture with a description of the inventory. The A button it’s to confirm and the B button to cancel. The player can only equip one secondary weapon and item at a time. The amount of inventory space it’s yet to be decided, I don’t know if it will unlimited or limited to a certain amounts of item´s slots. Here is a picture of the drop down menu that appears when you select an Item (by pressing the A button over the item), in this menu you can Use, equip or combine Items. You can cancel the selection by pressing the B button, if you press the B button outside the drop down menu you will go back to the game. How to save: To save in the game you need to find a Save Station, then press Y to go to the save menu; here is a picture of it. HUD: The HUD its made of three areas, the player´s status (health´s bar) in the top left cornner, the Items equipped (weapons and Items) in the low left cornner and the text box (an empty area reserved for in game dialogs and text). Here is a picture of it. Minigames: The mini games serve as a bridge between the three different areas of the game, the mini games are the no-turning points, and it means that once you get into one of these mini games you can’t go back to the previous area of the game. There are two minigames in the game: In the first one you are on the top of a subterranean train going deeper into the terraforming station (to the caves). During this minigame you can´t move, just aim and shot. And in the second one you are piloting a space ship in your way to the orbital station of Mars. In this minigame you handle a space ship like in a vertical shot´em up. List of usable Items (incomplete) Health pack 1 (recovers the 10% of the player’s health) Health pack 2 (recovers the 30% of the player´s health) Health pack 3 (recovers the 100% of the player´s health) Portable oxygen charge (charges player´s oxygen) Special Suit List of weapons Pistol (main weapon) Shotgun (secondary weapon) Machine gun (Secondary weapon) Grenade launcher (secondary weapon) List of enemies (not done yet) ... List of key Items (not done yet) ... NOTE I´m planning to in expand it, so if you like the idea check this post from time to time. Thank you for you time. Kind regards. Rayco Santana. [Edited by - Rayco on May 5, 2010 12:47:41 AM]

After posting I noticed that I made a typo in the images (several times) I wrote "equiped" and is "Equipped" and in the inventory picture I wrote "Items in invenroty" instead of "Items in inventory", Im sorry, please remember im not a native speaker of english.

Quote:Original post by Atrix256
I would play it (:

I love the castlevania / metroid side scrollers.

Have you heard of or played shadow complex? It's a side scroller done in 3d with the unreal engine and i think it sold quite a few units, so i think people definitely would play your game if it was done well (:

If it matters to you, one of the things i really like about these kinds of games is the exploration aspect. I love finding new places and seeing what i can find.

I also love how you might come across something like a glowing blue door and you cant get in, but later on you get the item to let you get in there.

I also like how in these games you grow stronger over time so when you have to wander through old areas you just rip apart the enemies there.

And lastly i guess one of my majorly favorite things about these kinds of games (specifically shadow complex and castlevania symphony of the night) is when different areas have really different atmosphere.

Like in SOTN the music and art style really varied from place to place and that made it a lot more fun for some reason.

good luck man, i think you could make a great game from this idea!

Oh thanks!

I love those games too and like you I love the exploration aspect (also I hate linear games) of these games, especially finding secret areas & Items.

I had this idea long time ago, I thought that a game like this would work as a digital downloadable title on Xbox live arcade but I didn’t wrote it down until a few days ago.

I need to write a lot more, like how you charge the oxygen of the suit, how you save, the enemies and so on.

Kind regards
Rayco Santana

[Edited by - Rayco on May 4, 2010 10:52:26 PM]

I find the presentation very well done.

The most thought provoking concept in your idea, to me at least, is the need for oxygen. Feels very Rogue "I can't find any friggin' food!". Armor/suit gets punctured? Slap a quick cement glue on it to patch the hole. Can't patch the hole? Decompression. Splatter. No oxygen anywhere? Inject yourself with a shot of nano-oxygen to buy yourself some time. Take too long? Suffocation.

Quote:Original post by Silvermyst
I find the presentation very well done.

The most thought provoking concept in your idea, to me at least, is the need for oxygen. Feels very Rogue "I can't find any friggin' food!". Armor/suit gets punctured? Slap a quick cement glue on it to patch the hole. Can't patch the hole? Decompression. Splatter. No oxygen anywhere? Inject yourself with a shot of nano-oxygen to buy yourself some time. Take too long? Suffocation.

Thanks!
Those are great ideas, I like especialy the decompression thing, in order to make that work I would need to add a status bar for the suit or a system to make that happen, like if you take too much hits your suit gets punctured or if your life bar gets lower than a certain amount of health (lets say below 10% or 20%) your suit gets punctured and you have to fix it.

Quote:Original post by Katie
Looks good so far -- I think you should design a couple of the levels next; just sketch maps. It will help you work out where the puzzles go, and what 'technology' you'd need to implement to make the levels work and let you work out the "flow" of the game -- how often the player will encounter puzzles/battles etc.

The design currently feels a little like a "graphic adventure" from the 8/16-bit days. They were often side-on, the puzzles were oriented around object management and navigating between the puzzle locations involved shooting/jumping elements. You might look up games of that genre for inspiration. Titles such as "Frost Byte" on the C64/CPC, "StrangeLoop" on the C64/Spectrum, "Equinox" on C64/Spec/CPC and so on. Possibly also the "Dizzy" games, although they didn't have shooting. The maps and solutions for those sorts of games are available online and might give you ideas for how to distribute the puzzles.

Thank you, I´ll definitely check those games!




Also I found a big problem with my design:

In survival horror/adventure games you check the place/item, the game gives you a description/state of the object and then you place the correct object there to solve the puzzle.

In Example: in a survival horror game you see an elevator, you press the X button and it says "the elevator has no power, there’s a slot for a battery near the elevator", then you select the battery in the inventory, place the battery in the elevator and the elevator works. Without checking the elevator you would never figure out how to solve the puzzle.


but my game doesn’t have a button for "checking".

I have a few solutions for that:

Place the "checking" button on the triggers.

Change the buttons scheme and place any of the other functions on the triggers.

Or use the "text box" to display the description/message, something similar to what I did with the save feature. Check out this picture:



The third solution is what I like the most, what do you think?