(a preliminary title screen)
For my second group game, I’m redesigning my first group game, Relay. I started my redesign by imagining what Relay would look like if Tim Burton were to design the game, and came up with some some sketches:
Instead of the bad guys being circles, I changed them into black triangles with red eyes. The black and red colors of the triangles contrast with palette of my game, which is mostly grey and yellow. I decided that instead of simple black rectangles for goals, my goals would be lamps. The object of the game is to avoid the bad guys while keeping the lamps lit. The bad guys want to shoot globs of red at the lamps to put them out. If the bad guys manage to cover the lamps entirely in red, the player loses. After sketching, I created a simple interface:
As in Relay, the game starts without any bad guys on screen. But, each time you drag the lamp lighter, bad guys start to appear:
The lamp lighter’s eyes also glow when you drag it around. I really like the mechanic of adding bad guys each time the player is dragging, because that way the player has to constantly be engaged with the game. This also gives the player choice – they can choose to drop the lamp lighter, but that will increase the game’s difficulty by making the bad guys more powerful. I also added a behavior to the bad guy that wasn’t present in Relay – it shoots red globs at the lamp to try to put the lamp out:
I want the bad guys to cover the lamp red section by section, but I’m still working on writing that code. Right now, the globs are an array list within my bad guy class, and the bad guys are an array list in the main class. I might change the wrapping pattern of the bad guy so that they’re harder to avoid, or add a different bad guy that does something else, like shooting globs that freeze the player momentarily. I also want to add another lamp so that the player has to cross back and forth between the lamps while avoiding the bad guys.
I still have a lot to work on, but I’m confident that I can get the code written and design a more detailed interface. I’m working on drawing a different lamp lighter on my tablet, who looks more like this:
I also want to design a background that looks like a street in victorian London, and make a better title screen. I look forward to posting about my game when it’s all finished!
