Tract: A Game Of Obese Proportions

Gameplay

Controls
Space - jump
Z- dunno
X- dunno
C- attack (after rattle powerup)
V- hold to crawl (after baby steps powerup)

Basics
Tract is a fairly standard Metroidvania platform/action/adventure game, but with a twist in which you start out with practically no basic abilities; powerups, rather than consisting of things you take for granted in metroidvania games like weapons and grappling hooks and pew pew lasers, consist of basic baby things like baby steps (ability to walk and jump higher), a rattle to attack enemies with, and the ability to eat food (you start the game with no way to recover health). Of course, later on in the game, you will get some "cool" abilities. But i'm not sure what those are yet.

Environment
Tract takes place in an over-exaggerated cartoony organ system of an incredibly obese lady. This means that most traps and enemies are body-themed, although with a definite hint of weirdness to it (example: one of the first bosses is a giant foot that protrudes from the intestinal wall). Most of the game takes place in the digestive tracts, although some levels branch out into other areas of the body such as the lungs, appendix, and heart.

Bosses
There, of course, will be bosses. However, due to Smithy's lack of abilities, you'll usually have to find creative, puzzley ways to defeat bosses (example: You Have To Burn The Rope except not snarky and annoying). Other than that I don't really know much about the bosses except two of them: one being the aforementioned foot, and one being an appendix monster that you fight later on in the game.

Powerups (in order)
-Baby Steps: walk faster and jump higher but increase damage taken while not holding the crawl button
-Teething: eat food to regain health
-Rattle: attack enemies with your rattle. you can get rattle powerups later on.
I'll need some more help with this, but that's where you guys come in.

Backstory Synopsis
A baby, Smithy, is sitting in a car. His mother is outside filling up a gas tank and smoking. The car explodes, killing everything around it but Smithy, who lands on the ground a few feet in front of the car. The nearby gas station attendant runs out of the gas station building, and picks up the baby. An incredibly obese lady sees the poor, helpless baby, and through a series of "dialogue" (sims-esque gibberish and picture bubbles) she buys the baby from the gas attendant and promptly swallows it whole. This sets the stage for Smithy's digestive adventure.

Characters
Aside from Smithy, the game's baby protagonist, there aren't really many reoccuring characters in the game. The unnamed obese lady is only there for plot/setting purposes, and the gas station attendant is a throwaway cutscene character.

Graphics/Music/Sound
I'm aiming for a retro aesthetic here. The game's native resolution will be 320x180, upscaled to 640x360. Here's an example of the character art I'm aiming for:

Music will be made in PXtone, sounds will be with SFXR.

That's about it for the design doc for now. Now it's your turn to figure out where it goes next.

BUGLIST AND LATEST REVISION AT GOOGLE CODE: http://code.google.com/p/tractgame/

PLAY LATEST REVISION IN BROWSER OR ON WII: http://tract.isamedia.org/

DOWNLOAD SOURCE VIA SVN:

Code:

svn checkout http://tractgame.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ tractgame-read-only

Are you a Flash coder? Want full SVN read/write access? Sign up for a Google Account and contact me with your account email via PM.