Gameplay and Game Systems – Week 6

In this blog post I will be discussing the progression with my gameplay and gameplay systems for my game.

The initial idea I had for this game was a stylish platformer set in a theme park. I was then encouraged to make a second idea which revolved around a Tower Defense game also set in a theme park, which became the dominant idea for this project.

Initial Concept

The initial idea I had for the game was a, admittedly rather vague idea of the player being in a rollercoaster and the idea being a platformer. The main focus on this idea at the time was that it would be a stylish platformer, taking art inspiration from a TV cartoon called Mixels. However, the project wasn’t coming together, and I was advised by Vanissa to create a second idea. This was my initial idea that I used for the first few weeks as the basis for my game. The story concept was that there was a hidden treasure in the theme park that the player must go and retrieve.

Second Idea (1)

The second idea took the form of a Tower Defense game set in a theme park, where the player needs to destroy zombie robots by placing down towers (rides in this case), that the enemies enter into. The rides are deadly versions of the ones that you would typically find in an amusement park. For example, in something like a water slide, instead of the boat coming down and splashing the participants in water, the boat would fall apart, causing the participants (the robots in this case) to sink to the bottom.

Revisions of Second Idea

However, once again I was struggling with this idea. At this point, I started requesting feedback from course friends, and, in this example, general friends, one of whom gave me this suggestion.

So I decided to make the game act more like that, where the robots don’t enter into rides but where the rides damage the robots on the path.

Gameplay Loop

One of the things I did for the project was a sketch of a gameplay loop, I got the idea to do this by Parker, who suggested doing “a flowchart of your game loop.”

I also made a simplified version of this loop:

I asked several classmates and friends for feedback on the project, and Anna included this within her suggestions:

my last suggestion is I think that having drawn-out sketches and diagrams is really good for development and ideation but when it comes to the full GDD or the one page one, you could try to remake the diagrams on miro or visio because itll look cleaner and easier to understand, at least i found that it was better for my one anyway. I hope it helps, thank you for sharing 🙂

I had used Miro before for previous projects, mainly for game jam games, but I had not used Visio yet. With my student Microsoft 365 account, I could access a web version but not the desktop version, but it didn’t matter anyway since Microsoft Visio doesn’t support macOS, which was my main platform for this project.

So, I started learning how to use Visio.

I started by placing down shapes, including the boxes representing the gameplay loop (and the Converse logo for kicks and giggles). I learned how to place down arrows and to manipulate them so I could move them around.

Humans

Initially, I had the idea of having the theme park to just contain robots and no humans, then I met up with a committee for a chat/meeting. I mentioned this idea to him and he suggested adding humans into the game. What this would entail is managing both humans and robots in 1 theme park. I suggested this to another friend who thought that it would be a good idea too, so I modified my gameplay loop to accommodate the human elements.

The idea I had to accommodate this was be that I would make a map that has 2 routes and sets of rides, one for robots and the other for humans, and the goal would be to manage those routes so that the robots don’t end up in the human route and into the friendly friends, and the opposite, for the humans to not end up into the robot path and therefore into the deadly rides.

No Humans

However, a short while later, I was discussing the games map with the same friend who suggested that I turn the game into a Bloons-like game, and the conversation went to the human aspect of the game.

She suggested that what I had with my game, the robots and the humans, didn’t make much sense narrative wise.

I suggested that I would need to find a way to make the robots and humans part make sense in the narrative.

And that was when she suggested getting rid of the humans part.

So in the end, I decided to remove the humans aspect from the game. Keeping humans in would have been an interesting challenge, but it would have added a lot more work to the game, trying to make it work narrative-wise but also for the art (as in character creation) and design (as in designing mechanics for the humans).

Gameplay

So, what would be the typical gameplay session of my game? At the start of each level, the player would be given a small budget that they can use to buy rides. This will be enough in the beginning to buy a few rides but not many. Then the player presses the “SEND WAVE” button and the next wave of robots spawn.

If the player survives the wave without the robots invading the base, than the game goes back to the planning phase, but now the player will also have gained XP from the previous wave, which they can use to upgrade robots. XP and money are not tied together so if the player has enough of both, they can build and also upgrade rides in 1 go.

The game ends if the player successfully gets to the last wave without the robots invading, or loses if the robots invade at any point before then.

Gameplay Systems

The main system in place is the economy, that being the player’s budget, and XP. As stated above, the player gets a small budget at the start of each level. The player gains money to add to their budget if they successfully destroy a robot, and also gains XP, which can be used for upgrading existing robots.

In terms of character systems, the robots would have 2, which is the speed in which they move, and their health, how much damage does it take to destroy that robot. For the rides, they would have the speed in which they move or rotate, and their attack rate, how much damage would they apply to robots when the 2 collide. The further along the player goes, the faster the robots that spawn in will move. There will also be more types of robots, for example, a robot that requires 2x the amount of hits to kill as a typical robot, or a robot that requires specific types of rides to damage.