University Projects: Snakes

I’ve lately been working in this awesome group of people from the university with a Shoot’m up and the more we build of it the more we understand that we are getting closer to something that will become awesome.

Looking at it objectively though the game is simply a top-down game, where you are playing as a person lost in different areas, trying to find coverage with your cellphone so you can call for help, while doing so you are attacked by snakes. This sounds pretty interesting as it turns into a survival exploration game with things such as dodging mechanics as primary survival method.

Game Concept

Looking at your character and the environment the game will feature 2 different values for the player, battery and antidote. The battery is always draining but can be refilled by finding other sources of energy, while antidote is a HP system. During gameplay there will be two gameplay modes that the player will encounter, the running around in the desert, rain-forest, jungle, forest terrains, dodging snakes and trying to find reception and picking up your cellphone to activate a lamp (to combat night environments), start a GPS or read about different snakes that have either been encountered or is on the current screen/map.

The first gameplay mode is our primary gameplay mode and the player is finished when they get full reception, exploring the levels and avoiding to be bitten by using moves such as sprints and rolls. While our secondary gameplay mode will be a screen where you can press different apps to get different effects.

The levels will be randomly generetad everytime you start the game. If you die during a level it will not be reset and you will just be allowed to play again with no downsides to dying. If your battery runs out you cannot use your cellphone in anyway before you can recharge it (thus, you can’t win the game)

Thoughts

I like how the entire idea is being shaped, the phone feels relevent to gameplay also does the snakes as our mission was to design a game based around telephones and snakes. We have some back-up plans if we find out that this doesn’t work or something is to extensive to create in 10 weeks of time. But our lead programmer is telling us it looks smooth so I put my faith in him.

The team I’m working with is still going strong and I think we all like the game we are creating, the paper prototype looked really promising so it is just to hope for the best!