Anyway, here's what I want to do:
- Team-based coop. Players basically cannot wander apart, for reasons I've yet to
definedecidedisclose. - Non-linear, metroidvania-like game world. Mostly.
- Progression driven by equal parts equipment, skill, and story.
- Gameplay built for learning and discovery. For instance, expect to kill your teammates a lot... accidentally or otherwise.
- Gameplay designed to exercise all levels of the player's brain: From twitch gameplay and tactics to high level strategizing and cerebral problem solving.
- Emphasis on story is being rolled back from the previous incarnation, but it will still feature heavily (especially towards the end).
- EUD-free. Fuck that shit.
That's the gist of it. Under the hood, I think I've finally got an idea of what I want to do that I can be happy with:
- "Spell" system based on configurable auto targeting and standard hotkey activation. It's simple, proven, and there's still novel ways I can have fun with it (which you'll see in due time).
- Specialization by configuration. Each player is (and stays) physically identical throughout the game, but becomes defined by their configuration choices... and how well they exploit them. I guess I like this kind of homogenization for some reason.
- Typical active gameplay will revolve mostly around how equipment is used, and not simply what the player has available. I want to build this with the goal that you could plausibly (but not practically) confront end game challenges with the right use of start game abilities, and that end game abilities would not wholly eliminate start game challenges if you didn't know what you were doing.
- On that note, there's two concepts I want to shy away from in my design: "Grinding" and "Health". "Grinding" tends to turn gameplay into 'work'; no matter how fun you design the work to be, your higher brain functions aren't fooled, and some of the experience suffers. Similarly, using "health" with gameplay obstacles (e.g. enemies) also entails a kind of 'work', even if only local to each situation. The only reason I'd want to let the player do work at any point in the game is to compensate for lack of skill, which I'll only allow to go so far.
- An over-arching plan for the map is established, but I will implement it flexibly in progressive, sequential layers. That means things might change from my original plan as I go. Probably won't concern anyone else except myself in the slightest, though.
So that's the plan, sans elaboration.
Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jan 10 2012, 6:06 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.
None.
