Original Game Outline

Codename Project Every-Mart

Rules of Editing

Edit this page as often as you like, no matter how big or small the modification might be. Let's keep it strictly additive for now unless you are making corrections or clarifications. In other words, don't remove additions made by other team members. Just add to it.

Introduction

For our first game, the idea is not only to produce something fun and interesting that we can be proud of as a team, it is also to give us something to build our skills, create a strong foundation to our company, grow closer as a team, and most of all to gain the experience and confidence needed to take it to the next level. We needed something modern that we can all relate to. We needed something that could be done in a 2D format and still be interesting and fun to gamers. We needed something fun but not too complex so that we are spending more time getting things done and less time getting frustrated with problems. We needed a quick start game where our imaginations could run wild without bringing development to a halt. Thus, Project Every-Mart was born.

Setting or Environment

The bulk of the game takes place inside of super shopping centers that are modeled after Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Shopko, and Target.

Maybe some missions or mini-games could take place on the streets or even in the parking lots.

The Hero

To make things interesting and to allow us to give the player some choices in strategy, let's say the hero of our game is a shape shifting agent for some secret agency. Maybe not even a government agency. Each shape allows the player a different set of skills to defeat obstacles.

  • One shape could be the muscle. A bulky guy that can move things, hit hard, take more abuse, throw stuff, can't be knocked down as easily, maybe boasts a certain level of intimidation. He pushes seemingly nice old ladies around.
  • One shape could be a little punk kid with a big coat full of gadgets. He might be able to climb to hard to reach areas, pick pockets, move in a stealth mode, use gadgets to get what he wants.
  • One shape might be an attractive character (female in most games) who is smooth in conversation. Maybe she could have some sort of charm factor to control other characters. Maybe she can pit enemies against each other. Maybe she could also have a shocker to stun enemies. How about throwing cell phones like daggers.

Story

Pretty wide open at this time, but the basic idea could be that the shopping center chain is run by an evil cult or aliens or demons from hell. Our hero has to investigate to gain access to employee only locations and defeat min-bosses. Some of the employees are in on it. Some of the employees could help our hero. I was thinking that the final boss could be this huge yellow ball with a smiley looking face. When it opens it's mouth you would see something like lost souls only they would be shoppers who were consumed be the demon.

Game Play

  • Shape shifting protagonist to allow players to solve problems in different ways
  • NPC's with conversation scripting to learn information and be sneaky or win by brute force. NPC's may also unlock parts of the store.
  • Mini-games (see the mini-game section of this write up)
  • Maybe have a suspicion level like the wanted level in GTA
  • Sandbox style (open-ended)

Game Mechanics

This would include things like health, equipment, upgrades, leveling and other stuff like that.

  • Hit points? Replenish over time?
  • Find equipment?
  • Buy stuff?
  • Upgrade equipment?

How about adding into the plot the how and why our character can shape shift and give a reason why the specific powers are available to them? It could be something as simple as defeating certain mini-bosses. Once defeated, our character gains mastery over what power the boss had. So "level-ups" happen naturally as the game progressed. This would also allow a non-linear play to take place as you don't have to fully restrict what order the powers are obtained in and if we planned it out carefully and made it beatable in a way as to not require specific powers to do any particular task(certain things just might make it a lot easier) you create quite a bit of replay value just on the fact that it would be a different game based on how the player worked their way through it. This would also lend itself to the sandbox game style of play.

Another one similar to the first, rather than having certain areas always defined as "boss-zones" have the bosses wander around the store as well seemingly doing their own tasks. Then you give them certain identifiable patterns the user can learn and recognize on how to find and face them. This keeps the the game a little more fresh and also allows you to build up characters a lot more realistically and in a way that would have a real impact on how the game was played(and if the way the boss has their power is that they have some kind of device/powerup that granted it to them, you can easily have them all look different and even change at times so the player has to do some added exploration and investigation to find out how to locate and defeat these kinds of mini-bosses) Not only do you hunt them, but if you cause to much of a ruckus, they come looking for you giving the player another reason to go and find them(make them strong enough and hard enough that they frustrate other objectives - at least until you have dominated them all and have pretty much taken over the ground level of the store)

A meter for how much mayhem you have caused(similar to wanted levels in gta) but have it look like a price tag with a nice yellow smiley face slashing down your "price" until you become such an attractive target that you can't get anywhere without having even the customers run you down(maybe in addition to a general manager awareness tracker - kind of a way for the AI to seem like it is plotting against you by getting the other wise innocent customers to turn against you)

Mini-Game Ideas

The sky is the limit with mini-games. If there is something that has always driven you crazy at super shopping centers, let's make a mini-game out of it and make gamers laugh out loud as they steal a motorized shopping cart from some enormously fat guy and then press some button to start up a timer where you are supposed to wreak as much havoc as you can by running people over and knocking over canned food sculptures.

  • Parking lot maze with shopping cart obstacles, speeding idiots, spread out groups of slow moving people
  • Shopping cart races
  • Try running the check out (burger time assembly style)
  • In the electronics section of the store, the demo consoles could be playable
    • an arcade re-mash would be pretty fun to do with this - so combine a tetris and a breakout game or maybe you're playing invaders in an asteroid like environment with full 360 degree aiming and waves of invaders start coming in at you - just take old classics and mash em up together into one.
  • We could use a mini-game to try out some simple 3D game programming
  • I've always wanted to do a remake of the old NES game Base Wars. We could call it Robot Death Ball or something
  • Doug wanted to do a remake of some Chess game with a combat system, he'll have to edit this part with more details
  • boss hunting(see above for some ideas) - provide rewards to players who take the time to go through and get the powerups from these - we could do it in "set-like" ways too - certain combinations would grant and/or deny other powers. It also might help in keeping things relatively balanced to limit how many they can posses at any time?
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