ChromAssault (Concept Test)
Hi, I had a bit of a random idea and was wondering how well the concept would carry over into a game.
Instructions
Easy - One colour at a time.
Medium - Two colours at a time.
Hard - Three colours at a time.
You need to hit the enemies with bullets from the same colour.
Keys
Q - Red
W - Green
E - Blue
Left mouse button - fire
1 - Cannon
2 - Missile
3 - Laser
Easy - Enemies appear in Red, Green and Blue.
Medium - Enemies appear in Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan and Purple
Hard - Enemies appear in Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan, and Purple, as well as inverse colours (tanks that appear white, red and white tanks need to be hit by the opposite colour, Cyan)
You have to hold both Q and W to mix Red and Green to make Yellow projectiles.
The game ends when you finally lose all your health. You then get to save your name to a high score table.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41026968/Chromassault-Default-1.1.0.0.exe
Instructions
Easy - One colour at a time.
Medium - Two colours at a time.
Hard - Three colours at a time.
You need to hit the enemies with bullets from the same colour.
Keys
Q - Red
W - Green
E - Blue
Left mouse button - fire
1 - Cannon
2 - Missile
3 - Laser
Easy - Enemies appear in Red, Green and Blue.
Medium - Enemies appear in Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan and Purple
Hard - Enemies appear in Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan, and Purple, as well as inverse colours (tanks that appear white, red and white tanks need to be hit by the opposite colour, Cyan)
You have to hold both Q and W to mix Red and Green to make Yellow projectiles.
The game ends when you finally lose all your health. You then get to save your name to a high score table.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41026968/Chromassault-Default-1.1.0.0.exe
Comments
It's an interesting concept, except its a little bit difficult for me. I'm colourblind, so for me it takes me a while longer to associate what colours I need to mix. I don't think I'd fit in with your target market, but thats just my 2 cents worth :P
I have uploaded an example image where I replaced Red with straight, Green with diagonal, and Blue with circles.
With this I could also make certain symbols "combine" to create other symbols kinda like Magicka's element system.
I think the problem with replacing the colours with symbols is that you lose that natural connection between 'R' meaning Red, 'G' meaning Green and 'B' meaning Blue. it would become an entirely abstract link between the bullet types and the key letters :).
I had an idea playing this: instead of making new colours with combinations of letters -which might get confusing and complex- perhaps you could have enemy types that are destroyed by any colour bullet, but leave behind a splotch of paint in the colour of the bullet and enemy colour type mixed together. (So red bullet + green enemy = yellow splotch). The splotches will then destroy enemies of that colour that collide with it :).
PS: Yay for Gamemaker usage! :D.
I also thought of a way to make the colour combinations easier on hard while still increasing the challenge. Hard introduces two more keys for light and dark.
I am going to stick to colours, but I may add symbols for colour blind people as an option. I am also going to work on adding more complexities to the game like different enemy types. Will have a new prototype soon :-)
Please let me know which interface you think was better? The press to build combos, or the hold to shoot with a combination of what is being held.
Next, I have made the difficulties affect the enemies per wave and the enemies' speed. Enemies will also no longer overlap, and a game over has been implemented.
There are three enemy types and three weapon types each suited to a specific enemy.
Cannons deal a large amount of damage.
Rockets fly over enemies to hit where you clicked.
Laser hits targets instantly, but has a charge and does very little damage
Scouts are fast and turn a lot, lasers are best against these as they are weak, but agile.
Tanks are your normal enemies, lasers have trouble against them, cannon is your ideal.
Artillery move onto the field, stop, and then fire shells. They are immune to damage from the cannon and laser due to their shield, the rockets can take them out.
The keys have changed to:
q - red
w - green
e - blue
1 - cannon
2 - rocket
3 - laser
Should I keep the three weapons, or should I try and make it that you can select one weapon type from the start?
If I make it that you select weapons from the start, they will be more balanced to deal wit the various enemies.
Could also make it standard cannon and you can upgrade to laser or missiles.
1. Menus look much better
2. Like the new background
3. New enemy types are nice
4. Like the "TRON - like" circuitry that flashes over your unit.
5. New weapon system is much cleaner than the old upgrade tree
6. Button layout much improved
The negatives (positive disagreements)
1. Waiting time between waves is too long.
2. Lazer is underpowered compared to bullets and missiles.
3. resolution on my screen was weird (meant that the exit button was unreachable)
4. Easy mode is too easy.
5. Bars at the top of the screen needs Labels (not sure what they are - think health and lazer temp?)
But all and all it is a great improvement over previous builds. Nice.
The control system of holding down to choose and mix colours is great - much more intuitive. It still takes a while to mentally map a colour to a key, but that's something that one learns after playing for a while.
Seconding most what @FanieG said too, especially about the wait time between waves being too long. I also feel that maybe the bullets could move faster, and you could play with the balance between fire rate and movement speed. Sometimes it feels a little difficult to target some of the faster moving enemy types, and once I've finally nabbed one, there's a bunch of them closing in. It does create a nice experience though, because in other games you could just return to the next target and fire, but here you have to think quickly and pick the right colour, which creates some really tense moments.
Other minor suggestions:
1) Improve the contrast between the ground and bullets. Either make the ground a little less detailed so it doesn't dominate, and/or gives the bullets a glow or something
2) Have some weapon selection icons, to show what's currently selected
Great stuff, I'd like to see more of this.
Lazer has been given a boost.
Game is set to full screen (The end product will be a Windows 8 game, so it will be full screen anyway.)
Easy mode has been kept as easy as it is.
Bars at the top have been labled, and the interface has been cleaned up a bit. Bullet speeds move a bit faster.
The bullets will be redone when I add special effects.
Weapon selection buttons added.
I have also added some C0 sound effects, created a pause feature "press escape".
Next, I will look at adding a High Score table, adding special effects. Maybe add some music.
I totally second dislekcia's idea, which will also be a nice solution for the easy being too easy and for the next wave wait time.
Still needs some balancing.
I've made the spawning of special enemies a bit more spread out.
I've drastically reduced the post wave timer. I'm not adding a summon next wave button as there's nothing happening in the game during the wave completed. I may reduce the timeout even further. I've added a bit more information on the new enemies to the wave completed screen. Scouts now appear in Wave 2, Artillery in wave 3, and colour inverse units appear in wave 5 on hard difficulty only.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41026968/Chromassault-Default-1.0.0.7.exe
I've added a high-score and credits.
Since you are saying that the game is content complete, what are your further plans with it? Or are you working on something new? Check out my Cool Guy Chess prototype when you get a chance.
For now the game is locked down until the results for the game competition comes out. It's reception in the Windows Store is so far quite poor. I'm going to reclass the game as a standard windows game and fix it up a bit. If it does well from there I may work on a sequel that's focused to either the mobile platform or the desktop platform.
For now I'm working on AcOS: Origins again. Getting back into my cheesy art for that game is proving to be difficult, but I'd like to get it done sometime soon. I may also look at a game for the Two Button competition if I can get a handle on Blender.