This summer I made a Game Design Document for a strategy game staring adorably backward humans who must compete for resources against highly advanced and bureaucratic futuristic civilizations. The document ran well over 100 pages, but it is far from complete. I have been rethinking the basic strategic elements since playing Pixel People, and took some time today to reaffirm the pillars of this game and overhaul the concept before working on the document again.

There are five pillars, which may be excessive, but that will stand until the game loops are more established. The first pillar is humour. The second and third pillars are the inspiration for this game: the enemy is playing a european style game where players do not influence others actions directly and the player is the only one playing that acts with a zero sum game mindset. The fourth pillar is repurposing tools, an idea in the original concept that was not as developed as it could be in the original document. The fifth pillar is a collection of game theory concepts that I want to develop in the repurposing mini-game and the world domination meta-game. Respectively, they are mapping, ordering, and nesting, versus allocation, growth, specialization, cybernetics, and system dynamics. In order to achieve the second and third pillars, the enemy AI may have to be designed using complex adaptive systems as well. Stated simply, the fifth pillar is to keep these concepts in mind while continuing to design the game so that it can avoid becoming as convoluted or shallow as previous iterations.

I have been reading the Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, which inspired me to make the Starship Arya an integral character to the both the plot and an important NPC that assign missions to the player. So far, I have been working on a puzzle design chart for a tutorial challenge. A lot of the details are vague because 1) they have been covered in previous iterations and 2) they may need to be updated once the concept is developed more fully. Here are the basic steps:

1. You found an bike frame in a trash heap and you need to make it run again to make your UnderNauts able to move faster.
2. You ask the Starship Arya for a recipe to make the bike frame work and must complete one of several objectives to unlock a unique recipe that corresponds to the individual mission you completed. You will not be able to stumble upon locked recipes through experimentation until you level up the Science skill tree, so for now you must unlock them one at a time.
3. Salvage and combine parts to form any components that the recipe requires.
4. Attach these components to the frame as well as additional parts that are needed.
5. Solder these parts in an acceptable order to link them together and create a working bike.

Also, I want to move away from grungy and dirty, worn-out graphic design plans and towards a pre-school pastel and incorrectly assembled, misshapen style. This means revising HUD and menus, but I think it will benefit the game's aesthetic. The Prince of Thorns trilogy by Mark Lawrence has been another source of inspiration, but to explicitly say why would be a massive spoiler for those who number among the far too many that have not read these books.

More to come. Until then Happy Holidays!

So far only Jesse B's mechsuit character has made it into the game but I decided to make prototypes to start defining the spectrum of behaviours for our characters when they all get put in. I made one orange "heavy" mechsuit that has big hits, moves slowly, and charges his finisher quickly. I also made a blue "light" mechsuit that has smaller hits, faster movement, and charges his finisher slowly. Big hits also means further knockback, which makes it easier to knock opponents off the level without finishers - we are currently discussing whether or not players will get points for killing without using their finisher. The fallen player always loses points when they die. I played some Playstation All-Stars to get inspired so my personal feeling is to emulate their scoring system until we start heavy playtesting. This would mean you get two point for every kill using your special - perhaps knocking the player off would give one point though?

Ben has also started my character who is a capoeirista! I am super excited to see the final sprites because it looks awesome now.