Genre: first person shooter
Backstory: the year is 2300. Artificial intelligence has advanced beyond human intelligence, and now robots are the dominant species, and the humans live in exile. You play as the leader of the human resistance force and you are infiltrating the main robot base to take down their control hub and restore humanity back to its former glory. You must use your laser gun to defend yourself from the robot guards that patrol the facility.
Gameplay:
You must explore the sprawling robot facility, defeating all the robots in each room with your laser gun. Your gun runs on batteries, so after a short duration it will run out of power, and you must keep collecting batteries to power it up again. The robots drop batteries when they die, and there are battery pickups scattered throughout the facility. You can also perform a melee attack regardless of whether your gun has power, so you’re not just stuck if you run out of power sources.
There will be a few different types of enemy robots: a robot that fires laser projectiles out of its eyes, a robot that has a melee attack, and a final boss robot with multiple different attacks. If I have time, there will also be other enemies like a flying robot and a turret that cannot move.
The artstyle will be cartoony and stylized, and the mood will be somewhat comedic (it’s 3 centuries in the future and guns still need AA batteries!) to contrast with the dark apocalyptic premise. The setting will be a brightly lit, well-maintained industrial facility, so all the walls and floors will be metal tiles and there will be blinking control panels and computer screens everywhere (which the robots use to spy on and control humanity).
My target audience is people who are fans of robot apocalypse movies like Terminator and fast-paced shooters like Doom and Quake. The player character will have a fast movement speed and the enemies’ attacks will all be dodge-able (projectiles rather than hitscan) to encourage the player to constantly be moving rather than hiding behind cover. The limited battery time further encourages the player to move fast and kill enemies fast.
The color palette of the environment will be mostly whites and grays, emphasizing how cold and unfeeling the robots are, while the robots themselves will have glowing red eyes and each enemy type will be a different primary color so that the player can easily distinguish between them at a glance.
Concept art:
References:
I really like this light-hearted, more comedic spin on a robot apocalypse/dystopia. The battery mechanic is fun and silly to think about, and I also like that the robots will fire projectiles to allow for players to feel more in control when dodging. With faster movement and an emphasis on dodging, how challenging are you hoping this game will be for players?
This seems like a really cool game, I love the idea of the robots being cartoony and stylized and kinda goofy looking. My question is are you planning on 3D modeling all the robots or will they be 2D sprites?
The game visual looks very futuristic and somewhat funny and cartoony at the same time. I really like the mix between them.
As the laser gun would probably shoot out a laser beam, there will be a lot of VFX involved in this project. Do you have any plans for making VFX for the game?
Very interesting concept. I like how you are going for a first-person perspective. Going for a cartoony look will definitely help with the comedy but, also action aspect of this game. My question is what is the main objective of this game? Will the objective be killing all the robots and collecting all the batteries or is there another main objective?
Sounds like it’s going to be a fun game! I love the style of the gun — not sure this is an accurate comparison, but it reminds me of the guns on the buzz lightyear ride in disney!
I had a question about the robots: will they be able to talk? curious as to whether they can interact with the player verbally