[prototype] FightOrFlight: a one button party play shooter (1-4 players)... or (1 as 1-4 players)...
or (2 as 1-2 players)... or, never mind you get the point.
This started out as a twinstick/mouse and keyboard top down shooter. Then it became a one stic shooter, and now it's a one button shooter. The game progresses like a rail shooter, but the player control mechanics are closer to a twinstickShooter.
The rules are simple:
Don't die. Unless you mean to.
Revive a fallen comrad by getting close enough to the spot they died at.
Stay in the red light to progress.
I aded two variables for you to fuck with. So please go ahead and fuckaround to your hearts content :D (or your computers limits)
Warning:
This might be the last nice version of the game. The next one could be awewfull.
Gameplay video where I end up playing with myself:
Pc build: bit.ly/1To2SlZ
Thanks for the crit so far guys!
Enjoy!
This started out as a twinstick/mouse and keyboard top down shooter. Then it became a one stic shooter, and now it's a one button shooter. The game progresses like a rail shooter, but the player control mechanics are closer to a twinstickShooter.
The rules are simple:
Don't die. Unless you mean to.
Revive a fallen comrad by getting close enough to the spot they died at.
Stay in the red light to progress.
I aded two variables for you to fuck with. So please go ahead and fuckaround to your hearts content :D (or your computers limits)
Warning:
This might be the last nice version of the game. The next one could be awewfull.
Gameplay video where I end up playing with myself:
Pc build: bit.ly/1To2SlZ
Thanks for the crit so far guys!
Enjoy!
Comments
What I'd like to suggest for trying is to have some obstacles that the enemies have to move around and/or the player can temporarily hide behind.
I'm glad you didn't find the game too difficult. Without slowing down time it's just plane impossible to use the guns to their full potential, so the slow time thing is there because of the funky gun aiming. The fact that time gets slower as you get closer to danger was totally inspired by @retroFuture with zX - Hyperblast. Love how that game forced you to take stupidly insane risks and then makes you feel like a bad ass for doing so.
Did you manage to get the hang of doing cool shit with the guns? I'm asking cause some people who tested the game so far made the mistake of running away, and then the guns just end up shooting in the opposite direction of your running and the aiming that way is slow and shitty. If you do it properly you can aim 360 with tiny movements around and over the little dot following you.
One thing that would add a bit more awesomeness to the game is when the time starts to slow down, make the camera zoom in a little closer so you can get a more epic feeling from close encounters.
I think the instinct is to run away... especially as it's not clear at the beginning that in a lot of situations you can just hold your ground and shoot if you can aim correctly. Although I usually had to move a bit with each wave.
I do actually enjoy running backwards and weaving through gaps, even though it usually means firing on enemies that aren't threatening you.
I think the red enemies are the least fun to play against. They aren't that hard, and they kind of feel like they dodge your bullets, or at least are less predictable, and so they provide fewer satisfying situations when you get to just mow a whole lot of enemies down.
At the moment this has a kind of Geometry Wars feel for me. It's got a nice amount of challenge, but it's beatable after a few tries (I tried about 10 times) even for someone like me who isn't that great at Geometry Wars. I prefer this to Geometry Wars, the time slow downs make it feel very fair and very badass at the same time.
I did start trying to leave stragglers alive so that I'd have the benefit of bullet time when the next wave comes... This technique appealed to my inner sadist... although I'm not sure it's what the game should be about.
Regarding doing cool shit with guns: I think the strategy of standing near your aiming spot and getting greater control isn't immediately obvious, and will likely be completely overlooked by many (the game isn't exactly easy, so players aren't likely to experiment too much in order to find optimal firing solutions). Maybe, if you take this game further, you could incentivise not moving much sometimes...
Like maybe there could be powerups, or checkpoints, that you have to stand on for 4 seconds to activate (so players accidentally learn the skill). Or maybe there is simply an achievement for killing 100 enemies without moving very far... Or maybe certain guns or perks give firing rate bonuses when not moving much that are lost as soon as you run.
What kind of direction are you thinking of taking this? You've mentioned exploration, but the patterns of enemies are quite fun as they are. Are you maybe thinking more Geometry Wars stuff (like different enemies and enemy mechanics) or Crimson Land stuff (like perks gained through surviving, and/or powerups that spawn)? Or maybe there's some other bullet dodging gunslinger mechanics that would suit this?
Assuming you're thinking of taking this further... and I really think you should.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky I added a zone the players have to try and stay in to progress, I think it works to get players doing cool shit with the guns. It also serves as a way of guiding players through the game and as a pacer for the whole experience.
This is just a side project for now, so I havn't gotten around to adding the powerups, but I'm thinking of having different playable character classes or characters since it's now a multiplayer focused game. If you have any advice or warning flags when it comes to multiplayer and unique characters please go ahead. I'm guessing ballancing becomes a big issue if say want up to 4 unique characters with cooperative strategies between the characters.
Thanks
I'll include a bit of story in the next build. I'm thinking of setting the players up to be epic heroic assholes, kinda like Death Spank (definatly one of my faviroute game characters of all time). For instance I want to create an atmosphere of uber teamwork and buddyness between the players, and then throw in scenarios where the players are tempted to turn on one another to get some reward. I've allready found a situation like that; At the tunnel, it's at Score:36.23, you can do the old I'm right behind you trick and pull out at the last second to let your buddy get swarmed, and hopefully killed just ahead. He then serves as a buffer, attracting all the enemies and making it really easy for you to get arround the kinky corners in undesturbed. It's not so tempting right now, since the score is only based on how much time you spend in the red light, but I want to set up scores for each player, and compeating for individual score will make these situations more tempting and meaningful for both players.
The revival mechanic is inspired, just have revenge on the enemy that killed your partner to revive them. That's a really clever idea.
I might try this in co-op a bit later.
I like how our cominuty is such an effective testing ground for prototyping.
At firs it was really fun, and my friends got the hang of it really easily, a bit confused at first (I didn't tell them anything about how the controlls work beforehand), but after 10 min we were all imersed.
But at the 30 min mark it sudenly became boring and seemed a kinda pointless game to play, kinda like it's just playing by itself. I'd appreciate if anyone can report on their experience with regard to to game feeling pointless after you got the hang of playing it.
I've played nuclear throne and I think I understand what you mean; it has more mechanics introduced throughtout the game to create progression and keep things fresh. But it doesn't answer my question.
I'll try explain it a bit better:
My game only has a core mechanic at the moment, and a pretty simple one at this stage, and I don't really give the player that much to play with either. So I was wondering if the core mechanic of my game is perhaps pointless, and for some reason I couldn't see it untill I was playing it with some friends and we ended up in a prety lengthy discussion about an unrelated topic while still kicking a fair amount of square ass.
Kinda like how in Tekken a noob can button mash himself with a bit of luck to a victory against the AI. But it's much harder to do pull that shit in street fighter. So I think my game is pretty close to ground measure (Bowl of Indignation makegamessa.com/discussion/3247/bowl-of-indignation-a-game-about-a-murderous-toilet), since you can play the game with your eyes closed.[Edit]My game, not Bowl of Indignation. You want to keep your eyes open that shit.
That's obviously a gross oversimplification of how games and human minds interact. Here's maybe a more detailed explanation (although the author uses confusing terms) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1524/the_chemistry_of_game_design.php
I bring this up, because evaluating a core mechanic is difficult. Broforce was quite complicated by the point we really tested it with players. Some games need to be complicated to work, some games can be very simple (like Super Hexagon).
So I guess I'm saying that if players spend 30 minutes playing before getting bored, that could be evidence of a great core mechanic, or a shit one. And there's loads of ways to turn 30 minutes of fun into 4 hours of fun (which is why I brought up the mastery theory, even though that's just one aspect of why players keep playing).
All of that said... Yes you kind of can play this without watching it. I played with two characters at once.
What I think is fascinating as a player is the indirect input. My brain is trying to master the game system, but my link between the behavior of the character is less direct than in a conventional top down shooter (like Nuclear Throne). As a result I spend a much longer figuring out how to play, and how to optimize my input to reach better results.
At the same time the indirect control reduces a lot of strategic depth. I can't seek to lure enemies away, or kite them, or shoot them from advantageous angles, or hide behind walls and pop out for quick kills. So once having sort of mastered the input scheme the game has less for me to figure out than more conventional top down shooters.
This doesn't mean the core mechanic is bad though, not necessarily. This might mean that you need to find some ways to give players things to solve after figuring out the optimal controls.
Being able to play with your eyes closed is almost certainly bad though. That means there's no decisions the player has to make based on the game world, which means there's no challenges after figuring out what to press. That probably does need to be changed.
I guess my feeling about action games is that the core of the game should be a bit fun, but a really good core should make adding new challenges for players really easy for designers.
If that makes sense. Not sure if I've answered your questions though.
Thank you
It's trivial to kill enemies in the game, since it's set up to basically auto aim at the closest enemy. The tricky part is finding an effective way to move to a specific location. And if I set up the score to be higher if you kill less things then the challenge might come from moving around while killing as few things as possible.
Then I might be able to do simple things like make all the creatures nutral or even friendly toward you and they only start getting hostile when you... well, murder them.
I'll post an updated build as soon as it's ready.
Thanks for the feedback sofar, I doubt I would have concidered trying to pull the game in a different direction without it.