Wish Project is a curtain fire shmup designed around the idea of using strategy and planning to pass stages gracefully rather than completely focusing on dodging bullets. The game contains a cast of six playable characters, each of which play completely differently.
I'm looking to make an appealing shmup accessible to a wide range of player skill levels which offers constant room and encouragement for self-improvement. If you have any suggestions which can help make this goal become reality, please let me know!
Download Demo v1 here:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?ci ... CfxsT0I%24
Stage Design
Stages are designed such that there are absolutely no areas which require mindless tap-dodging to pass. Also, if an area is particularly difficult, there are generally several ways to make it easier, depending on how the player prioritizes targets.
Character Summaries
While the characters sound complex to use, all their basic attacks are forward facing. Understanding their nuances is not necessary for a beginner.
Radius – Bullets increase in power the farther they travel, being nearly worthless at close range. However, her alt-shot is a melee slash (with a short cooldown) strong enough to kill any non-boss enemy in one hit. She has increased speed allowing her to dart in and out quickly. Her bomb surrounds her in a shield, allowing her to slash enemies safely.
Eve - Bullets are slow, but relatively powerful. His alt-shot is a very slow, but very strong bullet which travels through enemies. Alt-shot stock refills over time (about 4 seconds), and has a maximum stock of 4. His bomb freezes enemies in place, making it trivial to land attacks.
Trigger - Fires a laser vertically. Instant travel and passes through targets. Alt-shot will drop the origin of the beam in place, allowing Trigger to move autonomously of the shot. Alt-shot again will drag the origin back to Trigger. Bomb drops a very powerful, temporary laser at the position it is activated.
Kettle - Bullet strength is not determined by power level, but rather by the number of bullets in her field (ie, near her). Increasing her power level increases the size of this field. She also has the ability to temporarily freeze bullets which are in her field. Her bomb protects her from the next (one) collision for about 10 seconds (clears bullets if hit), but partially refunds her spent bomb if she is not hit within that time.
Waltz - Two modes of fire. Alt-shot toggles between them. Mode 1: Forward facing. Mode 2: Spread; covers whole screen at max power. Her bomb damages everything and clears all bullets. Bomb is simple, but charges in 75% the time it takes other characters. Idea: target selection is important in Wish Project. A character with a spread shot often neglects careful target selection, so the slightly more spammable bomb makes up for the inevitable consequences.
L.C. - Shot strength doesn’t increase with power level. Instead, alt-shot spends one power level to shoot a strong, penetrating shot. Bomb shoots forward a bullet clearing shot that deals no damage. Both power and bomb charge extremely fast, and L.C.’s item collection radius is huge. The nature of his spammable bomb defines his playstyle.
Scoring System
Score item - 100 points
Enemy kill - 10 points
Bullet kill - 2 points
Non-score item - 1 point
Nearly all enemies drop score items. Enemies with more HP will drop more. Bosses drop a handful.
Kill an enemy to increase “Hit” by 1. Kill a squad/group of enemies to get a Hit bonus (a group of 4-6 enemies usually grants 4-6 bonus Hit). A boss grants more Hit the faster it is cleared (logarithmic curve: killing a boss with 50% time remaining grants about 6.5 out of a possible 10 Hit).
When a stage is cleared, Hit is calculated into a score bonus.
Stage score = (score earned on this stage) + (score earned on this stage x Hit / 100) + (Power Bonus x Power Level) + (Bomb Bonus x Bomb Stock) + (Life Bonus x Life Stock)
Intent:
- The more you kick butt, the better your score.
- If someone is really good at the game, but they do not know how the scoring mechanics work, they will still get a respectable score.
- If someone is explicitly playing for high score, they will do better than someone that is not playing for score, unless they are quite a weaker player.
- Playing for score is intuitive: there are few as possible “random mechanics” which must be “exploited” to get a good score.
- The more comfortable the player is with a stage, the more they are encouraged to take extra risks to push their score further (ie, going out of their way to grab those few extra items, or finish off the last couple enemies in that squad).
- There is strategy involved: when is it more efficient to focus on killing enemies versus collecting score items? It is not always possible to do both. Variations of this should define many possible stage routes.
Gameplay Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QOP5wXg4d4
Screenshots
