Homework 8 - Group Game Analysis

The Tetrad

Technology

Our game will be created with Unreal Engine. We will be targeting personal computers as our only platform. The game is designed to be played with a gamepad, but players will also be able to use a keyboard.

Story

It’s been 100 years since the Malterra gained sentience, overwhelming the earth, poisoning the air, polluting the waters, spreading disease and decimating the population of life on the planet. Mother Nature, as a last hope for saving the earth, has given the world her last child, Gaya. As Gaya you must master the four elements, traverse the lands to fight the Malterra, defeat their rulers that abuse the individual elements, and restore balance to the world before there is nothing left to save.

Mechanics

Since we know that our game will be a 3D beat-em-up, some mechanics will be obvious from the start. Players will control a single character who can move around in 3D space and perform basic platforming actions. The player character can attack enemies by using either basic attack combos or special moves. If an enemy attack hits the player, some of the player's health will be lost; the player loses if this health is fully depleted.

Our main "hook" is the ability of the player to switch between four different stances that are based on the four elements. These stances will give the player access to different attacks and mobility options. There will be obstacles that can only be overcome by utilizing the abilities of certain stances.

At the end of each level, the player will encounter a boss. Bosses are significantly tougher than normal enemies and they will offer puzzle-like fights that require the player to make good use of the different stances.

Aesthetics

Visually, it is highly likely that our game will feature a semi-realistic fantasy aesthetic. None of our team members has much experience with visual art, so most of our graphical assets will come from outside sources. While this limits our control over our game's appearance, we feel that our time will be better spent working on other facets of the game.

Balance

Challenge vs. Success

Our game will become more difficult overall as the player progresses through it, each level being more difficult than the last. Additionally, each level will exhibit an upwards difficulty curve; more difficult enemies will appear as the level goes by, culminating in a boss battle.

Once a player learns how to efficiently control the protagonist, that player will be able to complete levels more quickly than before by cutting down on the time spent battling, solving puzzles, and navigating through the world. In this way, skilled players will spend less time playing easy levels than inexperienced players will, allowing the more difficult challenges to be accessed without unnecessary delays.

Skill vs. Chance

Very little will be left to chance in our game. It is possible that the most significant element of randomness will come from enemies deciding which of their attacks to use on the player. Apart from that, our game will be one that players can reliably practice and perfect; the geometry of a level will be the same every time it is played, the locations of enemies and obstacles will not change, and attacks will not deal random amounts of damage.

Head vs. Hands

As a beat-em-up, our game will suffer no shortage of "hands" activity--the player will be moving around, dodging attacks, and inputting strings of attack commands. However, we aren't looking to create an experience that encourages players to be mindless. Obstacles included in our levels will require players to think logically. In particular, bosses will be designed in such a way that they cannot be defeated by the simple strategies that work on the game's most basic enemies.

Emergent Properties

The main source of emergent properties in our game will be the existence of the four stances. From a combat perspective, each stance will have unique sets of actions and properties that can be mixed and matched through judicious use of stance switching. Even outside of combat, the abilities of the different stances can be used to navigate levels in varied ways.

Interest Curves

Each level should generate a fairly effective interest curve; fights with enemies will form the high points of the curve, the low points will come from the platforming and puzzle-solving in between fights, and the gradual increase in difficulty will cause a gradual increase in interest. On a larger scale, the overall difficulty will increase as the player completes more levels, resulting in a curve that trends upwards.

My Opinion

Our game will not be the first beat-em-up to offer players multiple fighting styles that can be switched between on the fly, but my hope is that, by making each style readily accessible and uniquely useful, we can create something novel.