Reminds me of a shareware project of mine I worked on years ago (16 or 17 years maybe) that was similarly archery-themed. We had a playable demo and some early art done, but you're already much further ahead than we were (though ours was built from scratch rather than using a pre-existing engine... which didn't exist back then).
Since it's unlikely we'll ever come back to the project, here's a few notes / details that you can use if you like.
NameYou have an archery theme and are going for a dark / depressing / lonely feel. Archers were very rarely strong fighters (at least when it came to close quarters) nor were they ever solitary fighters (usually arranged in large formation). This means your character is already starting off on the wrong foot, as it were, and has every right to be afraid.
My archery-themed game was called "
Quiver", and that may be more appropriate for you. You're free to use it if you like. There is both the archery connotation (the player has a large quiver of different arrow types to use) and the alternative definition;
shaking or moving with a slight trembling motion.There was a game called "Quiver", but it was a space-themed first person shooter in the mid 90s. Both companies that worked on it are non-existent at this point so I think you're more than safe to use it. It might be more descriptive without being so blatant.
BowsIn addition to multiple arrows, our concept also featured different types of bows. The short bow the player started off with had a slow missile speed and a short firing distance. Later upgrades increased the missile speed and distance, as well as the rate of fire. Several bows also upgraded certain arrow types, and this might be a good way to work in the multiple arrow upgrade you mention without rendering certain arrow types obsolete. It also allowed the player to conserve certain types of arrows (we had limited ammo for special arrow types).
For example, the "Infernal Bow" added magical fire (it was blue) to any regular shot you made, mimicking the flaming arrow type without actually consuming flame arrow ammo AND they wouldn't burn/melt the materials that flame arrows normally would. That allowed you to get the benefit of fire arrows (damaging enemies over time and causing the fire to spread to other enemies if they panicked) in places you might not want them setting things alight (wooden structures, rooms full of explosive kegs, etc.)
However, when the Infernal Bow fired a Flame Arrow, it combined to create an explosive arrow that could destroy certain walls, cause massive area-of-effect damage, and set multiple enemies ablaze in an instant.
We had repeating crossbows as well, but the only benefit to those was that you could 'drain the clip' instantly to fire off 5 or 6 bolts quickly as a sort of 'special move'.
Arrows:You actually have most of the same arrows we had; Fire, Seeking, Ice and Rope arrows. We didn't have acid though, that's a nice touch (I think we probably considered it, but decided it was too similar in function to the explosive fire/inferal bow combo).
Here's a few we had that aren't on your list;
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"Black Arrow" or "Death Arrow", was basically an instant-kill against certain enemy types. We had character 'levels' in a very basic sense; you didn't earn XP or anything like that, but as your character grew more confident (usually after a boss fight), large groups of enemies would instead level DOWN and become fodder. So the wolf that was a tough fight at the start of the game at the start becomes a single-shot kill later.
Enemies basically were grouped into "Fodder" "Standard" "Tough" and "Boss". Black Arrows would essentially affect a target as if they were one lower level than they were (i.e. Standard becomes Fodder, Tough becomes Standard, etc). Bosses were excluded, of course.
Black Arrows were rare and were designed for dire situations. As it turns out, we kind of had a 'survival horror' thing going on before there really was a survival horror genre.
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Poison Arrows, which caused enemies to slowly lose health over time. Some boss characters would also reveal their weak spot when they were afflicted, so poison arrows were especially handy for taking down tougher fights.
Poison Arrows weren't an ammo you actually found, but were arrows you recovered from poisonous enemies; you'd shoot a Manticore or whatever and when they died they'd leave behind a green-tinted arrow you could pick up.
We got the idea from the old Hercules TV series (so that dates the project pretty well, I guess), where the blood of the Golden Hind was the only poison able to slay a god. We actually planned to have super-rare little forest critter that you might stumble across that would award a special arrow usable on a hidden boss. Something you might want to slip in for fun.
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'Elongated' Arrows. These were special reed arrows you could climb on since the basic arrows were too small and brittle. We didn't use the 'climb up arrows' mechanic quite so frequently as you seem to be; it was more of a puzzle element than a method of travel.
- Net Arrows. There were a couple enemy types we had planned to be too dangerous to defeat. If you slew them, their spirits would linger and become a huge pain in the arse. The only way to avoid this was to capture them safely (or use the "Holy Bow" you found later in the game). This was only in one 'dungeon' (we had 6 themed 'towers' you had to journey to), but they were usable throughout the game if you just wanted to stop an enemy from moving. The Net Arrows also allowed you to use the snared enemy as a platform for good measure.
- Protection Arrows These were kind of an oddity. You'd shoot them and they'd create a bubble of protection that the player could shoot through but enemies couldn't. It didn't affect movement at all. You'd shoot them at certain traps to contain their projectiles and we had wanted to use them to 'bounce' projectiles around. For example, shooting a Protection Arrow so an enemy shot would ricochet off and hit a distant switch or something. It was only a very rough idea, but it might give you some ideas.
Limited VisionYou have a pretty dark world and are going for an isolated feel. To add to that sense of danger, you might consider uncentering the camera (when it scrolls) from the player character and shift it to a point several tiles ahead of them. This will favor your gameplay in two ways; you can see further when trying to shoot something, but (more importantly) the area
behind the player is smaller. This means things can sneak up on you easier, traps you may spring behind you may only be audible, etc.
This wasn't in our original design, but it's something I came up with for a 'reboot' of Simon's Quest that a LOT of ideas from Quiver made it into. You can read that here:
Level 1 Game Designer: Reinvention: Simon's QuestHealing System / ArmorIn fact, while you're there, you might want to look over the
Healing System and
Armor Types because those were both aspects of Quiver as well that I carried over to that little project as well.
In Quiver, the armor basically just gave you a longer health bar, by the way.
Limited ammo typesAs I said above, there wasn't really a 'survival horror' genre when we were working on it, but we had lots of ideas that kind of figure into that genre's themes. One was limited ammo; you always had your default arrow, but you could quickly run out of the other types if you were careless with them. Each arrow type had a specific method for getting more (i.e. the poison arrows above), so you didn't have to farm enemies or anything to get them by chance (though certain enemies did drop certain ammo types). That was one reason we had multiple bow types, so players could still shoot 'pseudo-fire' arrows to damage enemies without actually consuming fire arrows themselves.
We didn't have a restriction on how many arrows you could carry though, that was completely unlimited. But certain arrow types, we wanted to feel rare and unique. A lot of special arrow types also were given away in areas that required them (i.e Rope Arrows in the Sky-themed Tower, etc.)
Other stuff:Really, that's about it. We did have plans for magic spell-type system planned, but all it really did was add either a full-screen attack (Think Ninjitsu Attacks from Shinobi) or summon a special helper.
The helpers had limited life, but hung around and attacked stuff to heal you. One was an Angel that shot light arrows and the other was a demon with 'vampire arrows'. Both basically did the same thing (heal you when they hit an enemy), but had different behavior. The Angel was less aggressive, healed for more, and was deadly accurate. The Demon was much more aggressive, healed for slightly less, but fired so much he often missed.
We wanted to add a sort of 'hidden ending' thing based on how many times you used one or the other, but we never implemented them before we scrapped the project.
Everyone who worked on the project (that is, myself, my programmer and an artist we recruited to do some early test work) was a huge fan of Castlevania, so a lot of the early tiles that I drew had things like stained glass windows, statues, crumbling ruins, etc.
The basic stage design was an open hub world (ala Simon's Quest) that linked to 6 themed Towers and the final boss' Tower. There was a linear order through the towers, but looking back I wish we had taken a more open-ended approach and let the player find the tools needed to progress through each in the Hub world rather than at the end of each tower. Oh well, it was a long time ago and we were just starting off.
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Anyways, hope some of this is useful. Send me a PM if you have any questions or want to toss some ideas back and forth. I'm definitely looking forward to giving this game a try.
