Meeting #4

We have a game idea … again ;-) In the process of refining our idea from last meeting, we pretty dramatically changed course.

We spent most of the meeting debating one key mechanic – the rail system. In the end we decided to cut it and go in a different direction, to achieve a more fluid navigation and control system. With that decision made, we adjusted and modified a few of our ideas to better fit the new direction. We did this by creating some rules that our game will follow. Here are those rules:

1. The game is a shooter. The focus is on shooting enemies to achieve a high score.
2. The game is played in a tube that has both an inner and outer surface.
3. The player has the ability to switch from the inside to the outside of the tube and vice versa at will.
4. Speed is not controlled by the player (he just controls left/right movement).
5. Its a level based game, which has a difficulty progression. Levels are completed by killing a certain number of enemies.
6. A binary color scheme is used to denote the inside and outside of the tube (all enemies inside are one color, all enemies outside are a different color; the energy strip also follows the binary color scheme).
7. There is a special meter that is filled by driving over the energy strip. Each time the special meter is filled, your points multiplier for kills will increase.
8. At predetermined point thresholds, the player will be awarded extra men and bomb power-ups.
9. There is no co-op or multiplayer.
10. There are environmental obstacles, such as walls.

As you can see it’s going to be a pretty crazy shooter game. The player will be continuously racing down a tube, while shooting enemies, collecting “energy”, and avoiding obstacles; all while “jumping” between the inside and outside of the tube.