Devblog Week 1: (11/10/2021)

Starting work on our final year college assignment to make a game, we’ve spent the last week or so working on our game concept and have come up with a concept we’re super excited about. Let's fill you all in.

High Concept:

We settled on a high concept after much deliberation and discussion. It's quite difficult to come up with an interesting game concept when you're just told to "Make anything". I know that sounds backwards but limitations really make things interesting and force you to think outside the box. With all our other games throughout the years in college there was always a twist, a requirement or a challenge that forced out of the box thinking on us but just not this one. It's really made us stop and scratch our heads. We went back and forth and the other popular idea was a game about a possessed child goin on a killing spree in a super cutesie environment. We really wanted to have a concept that we were all excited by and interested in that way we can take our passion and interest in the game through and truly love what we make. After some talks about the passion for the concept we decided to change the concept and the concept we decided to go with and are really excited for is a top down bullet hell game taking place in a steampunk setting where clockwork constructs have gone rogue.

As a construction worker your day is thrown into turmoil as constructs begin to go rogue. Using steam to power your tools you must find your family and battle your way through the city while uncovering what caused the constructs to go rogue and if it can be stopped.

Unique Selling Point:

The player’s guns and abilities are powered by steam which the player has a finite amount of and acts like MP or PP in many traditional games. However Steam does not replenish naturally or with items but must be regained in the world through steam vents or perhaps through defeating constructs, currently all of this is subject to change but nevertheless we're getting pumped for things to fall into place. 

We think that this concept will be quite unique as bullet hell games generally have ammo that's separate for different guns or gun types and abilities usually just have cooldowns. In our game however everything runs off of steam and that opens up the game to newer players as it's more simple but may make the game more difficult for more experienced bullet hell players.

Our progress and goals for next week:

So far we’re just getting started, having just settled on our concept and doing some concept art and prototyping for the next week of production. We’ll spend the next week refining our designs and forming a mood board for art, for programming basic movement and combat systems will be focused on and the most complex mechanic to program will be identified. Sprint breakdowns will be done up and a timeline constructed for development to aim for a vertical slice at the beginning of december. The GDD will begin to be drawn up to help with design questions and changes. We're eager to get to work and start designing the game