"Rat Park": Design notes 5 0

For my Kajam entry, I have decided to go with a top-down, twin-stick shooter. That should give me plenty of opportunities for finetuning the game feel and juicing up the action!

For my last MiniLD entry I tried the exercise of making a whole game design document before coding the game. Even if the actual game was quite small, it was fun writing the doc, and I think it helped keep the development focused and the end result consistent.

I won't do a full GDD this time but still, here's my notes on the upcoming entry:

Design notes

Theme/Art style

• Game set in a strange, futuristic place that feels like a maze made out of hundreds of similar rooms arranged as a grid, with straight corridors in-between them.
• Top-down view with either a pixel-art style (like Hotline Miami except simpler), or a smoother look with simplistic art like Prison Architect. In both cases it will be simple and in full 2D.
• Setting & atmosphere largely inspired by the Cube movie

Gameplay loop

1. Enter a room.
2. The room locks up and something happens randomly: you get loot, or robot enemies appear. Maybe both. Maybe nothing.
3. Kill the enemies until there is none.
4. The room unlocks.
5. (Optional) You see a clue about where the exit of the maze is.
6. You pick one of the 4 directions, enter a corridor to the next room.
7. Repeat.

The goal is to survive while finding the exit. I have a cool idea in mind for the ending, but I don't know if I'll have the time to implement it… If not I'll just make the difficulty ramp up until the player dies :)

Loot

• 1st room after the one you spawn in will always let you find a weapon dropped by a dead robot
• Health
• Maybe ammo (if so I should give the player a way to attack if out of ammo, e.g. by throwing his weapon)
• Maybe a 2nd weapon to have one in each hand
• Maybe maybe, some bonuses to improve the weapon