thinking about making a pulp style jungle explorer.

well the safe zones are more like just hiding spots. Ducts and Lockers and such.  The real trouble I am having now is designing the monster. I need to figure out how it handles. Is it always there just running around. Is it summoned at specific intervals by you doing something.

I recently played Slender and really liked the way that worked. It was pretty much the idea I had for this game but in 3D. I want the enemy to not be a specific thing, but just this nameless unstoppable force. I also thought about doing it room based, and the only way to escape the monster is to just run like crazy. But once outside a room you may be safe. We will see what works best though.

no think of it like this. Pacman with one ghost and no power pellets, but there are sections the ghost cant go in. the game is more about hiding.

updated my demo reel and started looking for freelance work.

Demo Reel

So I just updated my Demo Reel to show a lot of the new animations I have done working on a variety of iOS games. Take a gander.

Demo Reel

Light will not harm the monster, but light would help the player see it better. I also thought of adding a sensor like in the old c64 Alien game. Where its volume and frequency is related to how close the monster is. for added player conflict I could make this sensor be turned on or off. On would of course drain your energy faster. Meaning the player can carry more energy back, but wont actually know the monsters location. Also recharging your suit will take time and it will not be in a safe area. meaning the player might get ambushed by the monster.

quick mockup.

you can just see the monster off to the right. It's much easier to see in motion though, I have tested it.

wasn't there a segment in the second one where you walked for like 20 minutes without being attacked. You were in these super small areas and there were tons of places to get attacked, but the proverbial axe ever fell. just hung over you for the 20 minutes and building.

I thought about adding One monster that wanders the hallways looking for the player. This is basically the Alien from Alien. The Player would not even really see it. It would be the same darkness as the background with highlights. Its out there in the shadows, and hunting for you. Its already killed everyone on the planet. The Player doesn't have anyway of fighting this monster, just places to hide. where the monster cant get to. This could also bring in the idea of using doors to change the level layout which costs you precious energy. There would also never be dead ends, The levels would have multiple routes. Think more a pacman level.

So I have been thinking and looking at how to get some good conflict. Basically I want the Players Long term goal and short term goal to be in opposition of each other. so I thought what about this.

Long Term Goal: Fix your ship
Short Term Goal: always have suit power.

so what if you are not fixing your ship but refueling it. You are using the Suits internal battery as a transport to get energy back to the ship. so you venture out, grab energy from a source and then run back to your ship, dumping as much energy as you can into your ship but still keeping enough to get back out there to get more. There will also be Batteries you can pick up to give your suit a Higher charge value and the Sources will be limited in the amount they have meaning you will need to venture further out. so exploring would help the player, but might waste energy.

@Paul: I don't get this referenece? its been a very long time since I have played gauntlet and then it was only the NES version.

@Lynx: I don't want to rely on monsters to much. I want the player to have a feeling that something is out there in the dark, but not actually see them. I think the moment you show monsters, they loose a lot of the horror. if I added monsters at all it would just be glimpses of shadow that ran away when the light touched them. The player would see movement or think they saw movement, but not be certain.

@Rek: I am not really worried about the controls, more worried about the puzzles. I don't think I could design really challenging puzzles for the player to figure out. I do agree that I need to nail down that central conflict which is "Managing the players energy" Now I just need to figure out how to use the players agency. perhaps looking at how the player recharges could be a better idea.

I could do something like the cord Idea, but with lights instead. The player would not have any lights on there person, but they need to explore and turn on lights so they can explore in certain areas. Maybe even add switches so only certain lights are on. I can add a bar like in metal gear games that show how dangerous a spot is.

Think the Movie Pitch Black

so I started thinking about making a game where you are a space guy exploring an abandoned mining station where everyone has vanished. The idea was that in the darkness are monsters, but they fear the light so the player is safe as long as they have energy in their suit. The problem is that the players energy is slowly draining so they must keep it up.

I wanted to make a basic survival horror game, where to survive you just need to keep your energy up, but the main problem I am having is actually turning this into a game. Originally it was a big world that the player needed to explore to get the 5 data discs that explained what happened. I made this but there was no challenge as the player was just walking around. I added Doors and stuff, but these required your suit energy to open. the problem was that there was no conflict for the player. they had to pay 5 energy to open this door, to bad if they don't have it. A couple ideas I had were.

1. the player needs energy to use stuff and there are Recharges lying around so they are constantly running back to refill. Broken Recharges can be found, but must be repaired to give off power and they always require a different amount of gears, which are found in the world. should you fix this generator for 3 gears? what if you can find one that only needs 1 gear?

2. player can not recharge but they can just go as far as possible. their next life they try to get farther. this would make sense as each new life is a different person the computer is sending out to get the stuff, with no regard for their safety. they just see it as must accomplish the mission.

3. there are two characters and you must switch between the two of them to solve different puzzles. when they are together there suits link up and recharge so you need to separate to solve puzzles, but you don't want to go to far in case you run out of energy.

4. Hardest idea: the player has a cord attached to their ship , but it can only go so far. they must figure out how to traverse the area while staying connected to the ship. Opening shortcuts and alternate routes.

5. The other idea is the player has all the time in the world, but movement drains the battery, so they must figure out how to shorten their route to get away from the ship, which would recharge you.

I think 1 could work, and although 2 works thematically it might be pretty annoying. 3 works, but I think having someone with you diminishes the scary factor. 4 is cool, but I would need a simple way to complete it in code. I cant do physics. 5 is similar to 4 , but might seem a little silly.

So any ideas?

 

[Edit:]

I originally liked the Horror idea, but there was no real game to it. it didnt challenge a player skill wise. I thought about perhaps doing puzzles? but that even becomes complicated, because with the player only moving left and right the only puzzle was Open up this pathway.

The main problem with a metroidvania is usually players add abilities and then thats let you go further. but there are no abilities in this. the only thing the player can get are keycards, which the levels always seemed to have a lot of run to point A, now run to point B, now back to A, uh oh back to B. and it felt like just padding out the game. I do like the horror idea, I just don't know how to make an actual game out of it right now its not a game, just a hiking simulator. The main thing in a metroidvania is the wandering around and trying to find where to go, but the player had the slow energy drain so that caused a huge problem because the main part of a metroidvania has now effectively been made moot.

The real main problem was it was a lot of mechanics jammed together with no player conflict.  I just couldnt find a way to make the energy interesting. I have been trying to find ideas of games that used a similar mechanic but I cant really find anything. I think maybe going back to the drawing board and thinking about the energy and only the energy might be a good idea. I need to add that conflict in and removing doors, and bridges, and monsters and only adding them in if they fuel the conflict.

perhaps I will move over to talking in the design forum. seeing what I can come up with.

Edit: posted in the design forum here

yeah I decided to just use very small sentence fragments. there are two types of computers for the collectors some have small snippets and others have a star map showing where the colonists fled to.

My main concern at the moment is building the entire world. The main problem is though I think the game can be beaten in about 20 minutes. I dont know if that's because I know where everything is. Its mostly just moving back and forth at the moment, so I might have to go back to the drawing board and do some envriomental dangers like VVVVVV has to liven up the game a bit. Still on the fence.

The reason I worry so much is I was going to put it out on the appstore as the control scheme feels really good on the iphone. I want some sense of value there, but then again how long should a dollar last you.

The other main thing is I kind of let the game steer itself, and it feels like it might be better if I added monsters and moved away from the horror aspect. You wont be able to kill the monsters or anything, they will strictly be simple obstacles you need to dodge. This could drastically change the whole design though, but if it feels better going in that direction I might have to take it. The original Horror idea I had doesnt work and I have begun to think of this more as a puzzle platformer. of course I need to do a build and see how easy it is to actually manuever. if the controls suck then this idea gets tossed out.

well I cant type much text wise. the screen res is very small. but I can do much smaller things like "They Wait in the Darkness"

well my story wasn't really original. Space station overrun by monsters that stay out of the light. Its all just something to use the energy mechanic to keep the player alive. it Could just as easily e oxygen or something.

The original idea was the player could collect these entries from computers. I could replace them with another type of collectible though.

Hey guys. I was protyping this game where you roamed an abandoned space station looking around, and I wanted to add computers where you could access the system log and find out what happened. The main problem is that I cant do anything with text. Do you think as long as I know the story and i use that when designing the levels it might work? the player doesn't actually need to know what happens, they just need to know that something did happen.

Well I have been busy. Added a bunch of stuff including nailing down the story to tell. I started working with computers to give the player access to the story they would tell you what happened plus also give you hints about where stuff is located. there would also be other computers that showed maps.

Sadly I was not thinking and with the tiny screen of 60 x 40. I cant really fit any text on the screen. I really like the super zoomed in camera, so now I don't know what to do. I can cut out the main story or go for a zoomed out camera, but I am not sure how far out I will need to zoom the camera.

Edit: Also I updated the build. there is one computer to the left of the player , but not much else, there are not even batteries in the level so death is inevitable.

tiny 7Day game

i am still unsure about the forced door cost, but i must say the terminal idea is pretty good. i think adding stuff like that, power terminals to get information is great. i also thought about maybe using two different screen sizes. one zoomed out more then the other, making the game easier to navigate, but drains your battery faster.

I think that stuff gives a better conflict then the door idea, because you might not know if there is another path, and that other path might take longer then it does to open the door.