So I was having a shower, getting all soapy and stuff (true story) when it hit me.
Snails... yes snails! There will be snails!
What is all this about snails? I'm glad you asked!
Disclaimer
Long story short (Edit: ok not so short), I'm taking a very organic approach to this hobby project. That means so far there is no game design document. I can almost hear the collective groan of the more experienced game developers out there. For the record, I understand game design documents are an essential part of game development. However this is a hobby project and a great deal of my time is being invested in learning. That means I'm not sure where I will end up and ultimately don't want to get stuck heading down a path that I'm not ready for. So I'm getting some learning under my belt and seeing where this project takes me in a very organic way. This is one of the advantages of this being a 1 man hobby project.
Resume blog
Ok, so back to snails! To date I didn't have an antagonist, or quintessential "bad guy" or "bad critters" for this platform game. That was until I was getting all soapy in the shower a good 10 minutes ago and was thinking about CuteRobo jumping over, on and shooting snails.. omg SNAILS!
The whole snails thing lead me me onto two important questions;
- Why would CuteRobo be versus snails?
- Where would he be for this to happen?
I wanted the game to be set inside a spaceship or factory, or some similar internal constructed environment that would give me an excuse as to why the levels worlds are not huge etc. This is a good and reasonable way to limit the scope of the game world.
So to combine snails with internal environments, I thought about having the game set in an aeroponics garden on a spaceship, or a agrodome on some distant planet, however "Snails on a spaceship" does have a certain ring to it.
Anyway so, shower + snails + spaceships + gardens + cuterobo.
So far so good. But I didn't want to have a meta concept of, robot versus nature = good. I like nature and stuff and its kind of important to the survival of the human race.
The next step was to overcome the whole robot versus nature thing, and I decided that the snails would be half robot half animal "cybersnails".
These "cybersnails" would be manufactured by some central fabrication robot that is normally in charge of building (soil, water, storage crates and stuff) and supporting things for our new found space-garden. To explain how the central fabrication robot went from ally to antagonist, I could have got some sort of alien computer virus infect it and caused it to turn against the garden. This leaves no other than our lowly maintenance bot AKA CuteRobo to save the day!
Anyway, so now we have shower + snails + spaceships + gardens + corrupted maintenance system + Cuterobo and replaced Robot versus Nature = good, with Robot saves Nature = good.
So there we have it. Hooray!
The Plot Summary is born
CuteRobo will be a lowly maintenance bot on a quest to save the aeroponics garden against the corrupted fabrication unit and its horde of cybersnail minions.
The space-garden is key to the survival of the human crew on board the spaceship.
These human crew are the last of their kind in the universe, having narrowly escaped planet Earth just before the "Great Catastrophe". The Space Arc is destined for a distant habital planet many light years away,
Its up to no other than our hero CuteRobo to save the day!
Save the garden, save the world humans!
A Level idea is born
Both Snails and Plants love rain, however too much of a good thing can flood and damage plants.
Its a fight against time as the level fills up with water.
The central fabrication unit has turned on all the water supply systems (sprinklers etc) which threatens to flood the agroponics garden and kill all the plants. Cuterobo must proceed through the platform level and re-calibrate the water supply systems via terminals placed throughout the level before the whole level fills up with water and drowns the plants and CuteRobo with them!
Hope you enjoyed being taken along on the creative world building experience above.
Today I made progress.
