Game Concept (Week 7 Devlog)

1 year ago by Sunny

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Spearbound Legend (Working title)

Concept Statement:

Spearbound Legend is a arcade-style 2D platformer game where players are cursed to be bound to their trusty spear. As players progress through the game, they can discover and collect different power-ups to enhance their spear and make it more effective in combat. Fight against a cast of different enemies in multiple unique levels or compete with your friends to become the next Spearbound Legend!

Genre(s):

2D Platformer, physics based, fighting game.

Concept Development:

One of my all time favourite games is Rain World, a open world survival platformer developed by Videocult, with a unique simulated ecosystem. A huge part of the game is the survival aspect, where players are forced to use their environment to either escape death or fight for their lives. From my experience, overcoming death in combat using debris such as spears is the most self gratifying and fun mechanic of the gameplay, which is where my game concept came from.

Using the subtractive design philosophy, the game I wish to create will be purely focused on spear-based combat in a similar style to how Rain World handles it, with some key differences.

Impaling an enemy to a wall, Rain World, https://rainworld.miraheze.org/wiki/Combat

Spears deflecting off one another, Rain World, https://rainworld.miraheze.org/wiki/Spear

The main criticisms of Rain World was its difficulty was extremely difficult from the beginning, which suits the games core themes and ideas, but discourages and deters new players from combat in the early stages of gameplay. This is both due to limited access to weapons such as spears, limited actions such as only being able to throw left or right, and enemies being extremely difficult to defeat early on. I want to take a different approach with my game, which hopefully removes all of these established problems:

Providing the player access to a spear at all times, encouraging players to be more combat driven.
Giving the player the ability to throw their spear in more than 2 directions, giving players more opportunities in combat situations.
Making the game have a much more forgiving difficulty curve, with enemies being a lot easier to defeat earlier on.

From this original concept, I explored other games that shared the same or similar genres that could compliment my ideas. Superfighters was a game that came to mind, a multiplayer combat browser game that is an incredibly fun, fast-paced local multiplayer experience. Gameplay involves players spawning in a small arena filled with weapons and the last player standing was the winner of that round. A very basic concept but great execution that made for a great gameplay experience.

A 4 player cowboy match in a small portion of a level, Superfighters Deluxe, https://github.com/NearHuscarl/BotExtended

A mashup of these two core game ideas in theory would make for a great platformer fighting game, with spear power-ups to collect within levels and a faster paced, easy to learn combat system, as well as a local multiplayer party game element to it.

Audience:

The target audience I intend to cater towards with Spearbound Legend would be gamers who enjoy the 2D platforming genre, as well as fast-paced arcade/party games. Based on my inspirations for the game, I want to draw in people who enjoy playing games such as Rain World (specifically the arena game-mode), Superfighters, Rounds, Smash, and other combat platformers. The age demographic for this type of game would likely be ages 13 and above, as a faster-paced style game would typically be more suited to players who have some experience with video games, but I aim to also make it relatively easy to understand for newer players.

Competitive Analysis:

When comparing to other games in the genre, I believe that Spearbound Legend is both similar enough to draw in a similar audience as other party fighting games such as Superfighters, while still remaining to interest the player with the twist of spear-only combat that is more closely related to Rain World combat. Because of the unique twist of the otherwise more common 2D fighting game market, I believe that Spearbound Legend stands out as a unique and different product in comparison to competitors.

Game Treatment:

Concept

A 1-2 player experience where you must overcome a range of enemies while being bound to your trusty spear. Enter the dungeon and attempt to make your way through to the end by throwing and retrieving your spear from enemies. Collect power-ups to improve your spears abilities and power.

Mechanics

The control scheme will be relatively simple, with WASD/arrow keys to navigate the environment, (A/D walk left/right, W to jump etc.), hold down another key (E/left click) to aim the spear, release to throw and press once the spear has been thrown to retrieve the spear back to the player.

The game will contain multiple levels, with each level containing increasingly difficult enemies to defeat. To beat a level, the player must kill all the enemies without dying in the process. Enemies will range from basic melee enemies that will try to punch the player to death, to ranged enemies that may also throw debris at the player.

Concept Art:

I want to try and aim for pixel art graphics, as it gives the game an identity related to arcade games of the past. I want the game to have an arcade-y charm to it, so following the aesthetic may aid in that.