In a galaxy far far away in the year 2708… or something similar to that. I mean according to which species calendar are we even counting
anymore? The truth is that humanity has been colonizing other planets for a while now and most humans are not even sure if the original planet they keep
hearing in stories ever existed or still does. As expected humanity found out they are not alone and very quickly crossed paths with hundreds of other species. Even though communication was
established rather quickly one of the most serious problems was that cultures and habits were too strange for the different civilizations to explore each other in a bigger depth. One thing
everyone had in common though was a past of experimentation with sounds that was bound to evolve into music. So to honor their newly found relationships they agreed and organized
a new annual event where representatives from each civilization would fight in an arena that would come to life under the sounds of their music.
This year’s representative for humanity is the young Unity-chan. With a height of 1.70m, weight of 50 kg and packing a sword twice her size and thrice her weight she is ready to take
on everything that will walk out of the WubWub arena doors.
Milestone 1 - Game Idea Pitch
8 Kommentare
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga85rew) sagt:
Game Critique
I really like games that use sound/music to influence the design and flow of a game. So, I am really exited of how this will work in your game, especially with this interesting combination of music and an action oriented gameplay.
One feature that in my eyes could be not as much fun could be the selection of all the different skills because in the beginning the player does not really know anything about the skills and this could be in the end frustrating.
In other combat games like Tekken or Street Fighter you are normally having different characters where the skill set is already predefined and you have sometimes a rating of how difficult this player is to play.
One thing I would like in the end that the combat system is influenced by the music in some way. Maybe that you can trigger combo moves if you do certain actions fitting to the rhythm of the music. Or that you can use the gameworld that is changing in your strategy to defeat the enemies.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga38doq) sagt:
Game Critique
My favorite aspect of your game is the idea that the gameplay and the environment adapts to the music tracks that the player chooses. I personally really like listening to music while playing game and a game focussing on this combination of different media has great potential to get me hooked.
This one is kind of hard. If all the aspects work out as described them, I would pretty much like all of them. Where I see a pitfall however, is the action oriented gameplay with a large variety of skills. Especially since you mentioned that gameplay comes second in your game and because of the pretty strict time constraint, I think this approach is very ambitious. I would try to take out some of the complexity for example by strongly limiting the skills (or not even having special skills). After all, if the gameplay comes too short in the end, it might not improve the experience of listening to music.
I think it would be cool to have some static gameplay mechanics for the different arenas. Similar to Super Smash Bros where different things influence the gameplay depending on which arena you are in (eg. cars that are passing by and can hit you). This would serve 2 purposes: 1. It would make it more interesting to play the same track on different arenas and 2. it would guarantee some baseline gameplay that is independent of the track that the user has chosen. As an example in your game I could imagine a "basswave" in the Bassance Arena, that is triggerd periodically and damages you if you can't get behind an obstacle (possibly with enemies that have the ability to slow you down?).
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga46yaj) sagt:
I really like the idea of focusing on improving the music listening experience rather than having a very complex game with difficult mechanics. This way the player can focus on his favorite tracks and experience them in a very unique and new style.
The playthroughs of different songs really have to be unique and diverse, because otherwise it would become boring very quickly if there aren't much differences. So changing some lights, having 5 different particle effects and two different enemies spawning at different rates might not be enough.
A great feature would be the option of recording a playthrough and sharing it with other players or uploading it to youtube. By default every playthrough should be recorded and after completing it you get to choose to save it or not. The ones you save might be where you killed the boss when the beat dropped or some combos fit perfectly well with the rhythm. You could even build an ingame editor for recorded playthroughs that gives you the possibilities to control the camera or add different effects afterwards.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga67got) sagt:
I really like the idea of player attacks being based on music/rhythm. First of all it's fun to move to a certain tact. Secondly, this forces the player to time his attacks right. This means that a strategic players can plan ahead and gain more points than a straightforward player.
I dislike the idea the of complex enemy characters. Obviously, the time and effort from a game development perspective is quite high (designing, modeling, animating). In my opinion not only are the development costs quite high but also decreases the fun of the game. The reason if have for the last statement is the following: One of your statements is that the game comes second to the music. However, I picture the game as quite colorful with a lot of concurrent movement (of the player, enemies and the environment itself). Complex enemies characters will worsen the already convoluted player view. This may lead to confusion and increases the complexity of the game unnecessarily.
So ... I'm not exactly sure what you are planning for the music based combat/enemies. However, it could be fun to let the player attack on-beat while he/she has to dodge enemy attacks off-beat.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga34rul) sagt:
I really like that this idea because it is quite inventive.
2. What is your least favorite aspect? Why?
My least favorite part is that you are always at an area.
3. Which single change or addtion would you suggest to most improve the game?
A multiplayer mode would be funny so you can enjoy and play together with friends. There could
be musical scores popping out of the music box to attack you. The faster the music the faster they
spawn.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga76vok) sagt:
I like pretty much everything about your idea, but the feature I like the most is, that you can play the music you like and aren't constrained to a small number of songs someone else selected for you.
You mentioned several times, that gameplay comes second for you, but I think it is very important - especially in a music game - that the control feels on point, to get into the flow. So I hope, you don't forget that while implementing all the fancy visual effects.
The only thing I would change is the number of arenas. For the gameslab I would focus on one stage so that you have more time for other aspects of the game. If you want to continue to make the game afterwards I would add more arenas than the four you planned.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga34mek) sagt:
What is your favorite aspect of the proposed game? Why?
I like the aspect that music influences the game the most, because it is an original and fun idea which has great potential.
What is your least favorite aspect? Why?
I don´t like that the music doesn´t influences the actual gameplay enough, because of the lost potential. I think it would be great if the whole gameplay depends on the music, because the player would get much more immersed in the music and rythm.
Which single change or addition would you suggest to most improve the game?
Like i said above it would be great if the music or the genre influences one of the things like the game speed, the different skillsets that are available to the player, the different kind of enemies the player encounters or the different skills for enemies.
Unbekannter Benutzer (ga54xab) sagt:
When I saw the presentation about your game idea, i immediately had to think of one particular game: Rayman Legends. (i put some example here just in case you dont know it:)
And i really loved that game. Since it seems that you are trying to achieve something with similar features, I can only say: I love the idea of music manipulating the surroundings.
My "least favorite aspect" can also be derived from Rayman Legends somehow: That game is really dope, but it is already pretty complex without any specific skills for any character.
I don't have any least favorite aspect of your game, in my opinion you are simply a bit too overeager with your general idea and your feature vision (especially having in mind the versatile skill set you are planning to implement). Maybe you should iterate one more time over the feature layers to be sure this one works out. (which I really hope it does.)
There is one thing you should consider when doing this music/chord/beat-based game: Be sure to think of some ending for your levels.
What i would like to see in your game is that the levels have a time/song-constraint, meaning that the level should end, when the predefined number of songs are over.
Let's get back to Rayman: at the end of the song, you reach the end of the level with some kind of dramatic break through which always gives me goosebumps.
So please be sure to at least consider this option. Cheers!