Character/Controller/Camera

• Character: inertia in the moves and weight to make the aiming satisfying for the player.
  Cancellable actions to keep the agility of the character.

• Camera: Medium focus – Goal is too keep a good visibility on the enemies while
  having the focus the character and its projectiles.

• Controller: “Pick up and play gameplay” – all mechanics are unlocked, it’s up to the player
  to master them and discover their subtleties. The controls have 5 buttons.

   Finding the cool factor

A lot of time has been spent in finding the right gameplay. Our aproach consisted in iterating as many mechanics as possible that would fit our core pillars.

Many core mechanics staid:
– Shoot: Attacks enemies with an 8-direction aim
– Parry: Reloads shooting balls + Avoids and defends from parriable attacks
– Special: Loaded by shooting and parrying balls. Helps player to escape an overwhelming situation
– Jump: Provides aerial combat opportunities
– Slide: Avoids non parriable attacks and offers mobility moves

 

Some of them got avorted:
– Crouching: it made the jump + ↘️ attack hard to use. Also, it didn’t feel so linked to the fantasy to see a tennis player crouching for shooting a ball.
– Wall Jump: It was designed for connecting level design elements, but it felt too much to introduce in the first level regarding the gameplay complexity.
– Speedboost Level 2 and 3: the speedboost is a very subsidiary mechanic, adding too many layers made it too complicated to understand.
– Ultimate Attack: the gameplay is already long to master, the Ultimate attack felt a “too much” addition for the player to take into account.

   Adding the depth

Then came the sub mechanics which provide a deeper mastering of the core gameplay.

   Adding the details

Knowing that the game is gameplay-focused, I put extra efforts in the gameplay details to make a smooth experience for the player.
I believe that a good playable character will make 50% of the game success for this type of game.

Here’s a video with a few details I made.

   Clarify vs. Style

Our art and animation style implied lots of tweaking in various fields.

• 2DFX: make sure the efffects are satisfying, but keep the game readability. Design-wise, it requires very simple shapes to match the art style. In terms of tweaking, these three parameters were the most important : Alpha opacity, Scale transform, Layer.

 

• Background art: with the Art director we chose a simpler art style (geometric shapes, like TMNT Shredder’s revenge) over a more detailed style (illustrated, like Streets of Rage 4) to keep readability in mind and faster background iterations.

 

• Character Animation: aiming a great animation quality coupled with smooth controls is important to enhance the gamefeel. Sometimes the animations might have too many frames or deformations so it needs to be integrated and designed in a proper way in engine. For instance, while the animation can look cool as a gif, deformations are hard to track with a frame-per-frame style so it makes the gameplay less precise.

   AI Design

The prototype being focused on the game introduction, I went for very simple enemy patterns that would challenge the player and their mechanics. Successful run n’ guns come with diversity, especially regarding the enemies. Player has to understand their behavior quickly and find the way to defeat them as fast as possible.

Red color: non parriable projectiles
Blue color: parriable projectiles

• Standard: Close combat to the player and throws curves grenades
• Bazooka: Shoots projectiles
• Tank: Shoots projectiles
• Helico: Shoots projectiles dividing into small projectiles
• Catcher: Sends player’s projectiles back – player has to parry to defeat him
• Turret: Shoots projectiles parryable one out of two times

   Power-ups: designing new balls

One of the funniest part of this game was to define the projectiles for the player to shoot.

• Pingpong: I wanted something powerful, easy to use, surprising but still respecting the run n’ guns legacy. On this way, I went for a kind of “Heavy Machinegun” that would please Metal Slug fans and adapted it to a Pingpong feeling.

 

• Discoball (Cancelled): this one was designed before I want power-ups related to sports. The goal was to create a chaotic ball shooting at everyone with sounds. While the idea sounded cool in my head, it made the player very passive. So after that I decided to design power-ups related to sports, I cancelled this one and created the Bowlingball.

 

• Bowlingball: replacer of the discoball. Designed to make lots of damages along the ground. While it’s very powerful, it also puts the player in danger from the air attacks above them. Contrary to the Discoball, The Bowlingball fantasy works well here and the player is active in the use of the mechanic.