Grind Craft: Digital Prototype Feature Treatment

If you were to design a digital game prototype for your GDW, what concerns do you have about the gameplay, aesthetics, kinaesthetic, or technology in your original concept? Of these concerns, which is the highest priority? Which will kill the game if they don’t work? Write it up in your blog and decide where to focus your efforts for your digital GDW prototype.

I am the Lead Programmer for Any Key Entertainment and the game what we are making this year is called Pisces. Pisces is an arcade style twin stick shooter, similar to the game Geometry Wars by Bizarre creations. The game features wave based enemies that increase in difficulty as the game progresses. This being a twin stick shooter game, we have full controller support built in. If you don't use the controller then you can use the keyboard but the game was built primary for the controller. When we started the game we had two goals in mind, fun arcade style game play, and controls that were tight and fluid.

Kinaesthetic:

Our number one goal for this game is Controls. Our game is based on how well the game feels when you are playing. We are aiming for controls that enable and help the player play the game, instead of an obstacle that they have to overcome. We want the controls to easy to understand and easy to pickup. We are hoping that anyone can pickup the game and start playing. Our gameplay is based on how well the player can use the controls and play the game. The feel of the controls is what will make or break our gameplay.

Aesthetics:

Along with good controls we are aiming to have a aesthetically pleasing game. We want the arcade style of the gameplay to reflect in the look of the game. The setting is in space with a dark background and stars in the distance. To contrast this we want our game entities to be bright and vibrant. This will bring the players focus the the player and enemies on the screen and create a defined line between the foreground and background. To make sure that we have a functioning game with gameplay for the end of the semester, we will be using temporary models and textures. These will not be the final assets but our focus is on making it work now. Once it works then we can polish the look of the game.

Gameplay:

Gameplay will be focused around waves, and the players ability to clear them. Waves will increase in difficulty as the number of waves increases. We are working on making sure that the game will have a fair difficulty curve to make the gameplay interesting. To add variety to the gameplay the are powerups that boost the players abilities for a short amount of time. As the levels get more and more difficult the use of powerups will be more and more important. 

Technology:

The game is running on an engine framework called TwoLoc, and uses Ogre for rendering and Havok for physics. The engine can do everything that we need for the game, and the only think that can hold us back is learning how to use it. As for key technology collision is the biggest thing. we have to make sure that all of our collision is handled properly and bullets kill enemies.