Hello and welcome to the first news post for our game Project Komodo and to start things off, here's a
short explanation about the game and why you should check back on its progress.
What was the inspiration for this game?
After watching and playing some shmup games, the one thing that dawned upon me was with bullet-hell gameplay (so called because there are huge numbers of bullets on screen at once) was an exhilarating incredibly intense way of keeping your player locked-into the action on a game screen. However, one of the problems with bullet hell shooters I found is that they don't tend to put much emphasis on the multi-player aspect of gameplay.
Thus, at a very basic level, Project Komodo was born.
What's so good about this game?
Shmup fans love the intensity of a bullet dodging and powering up and so it was important for me when designing this game to keep that bullet-dodging / powering up focus. However, in order to tease in players who aren't familiar with the shmup genre, I added some new cool mechanics to the shmup.
- Every level is sub-divided 'gem checkpoints' each with a time limit
- Players can choose the order of the stages they play
- Land - Air gameplay
- Players can slash bullets back at enemies
- Secret routes for every level
- 4 player co-op multiplayer
Borrowing from arcade-racers and Yuji Naka's love letter to the Sega Saturn, Nights Into Dreams, PK gives players a constant battle against the clock for gems. This allowed me to turn PK into something from 'bullet hell' to 'bullet hard' meaning that newcomers to shmups don't get confused by swarms of bullets in swirling formations and instead focus on refining their core shmup skills of evasion and attack in order to collect enough gems to get to the next checkpoint.
Put simply choosing the order of stages is one of the best thing you can do sometimes with a game. By letting the players choose the orders of the stages they play you can stop a player from getting overly frustrated with a level and still have an opportunity to progress, then when they get back to the level they were stuck on, they rewarding feeling of success they get is doubled!
I have designed some awesome land - air gameplay which I cant wait to build. Basically I'm playing on the fact the dragons you play as are young and their wings get tired but there's much more to it than that. The people who played the PK prototype demo at London Anime Con should hopefully remember that you are constantly falling (think Kirby) the land-air gameplay plays with that concept.
Although not a brand new invention, slashing bullets back at enemies has been cool since the 70s, (Star Wars anyone) players can also use the slash as an attack in itself (as shown in the video below).
Secret routes through levels make life so much more interesting. What makes life even more amazing is when you're playing and you discover a secret area without even intending to find one! So secret routes are an essential part of PK.
Lastly we've seen the retro-revival with the golden age of indie games, now I'm bringing back 4 player multi-player OFFLINE and maybe online too (if I can get help with the netcode). Get yourselves four Xbox360 controllers!
Here's a very early video
Development objectives [remaining]
- Pre-rendered HD 3D environments (5 awesome levels)
- Sprite animation characters
- Dubstep-drum n bass fusion soundtrack
- Windows Phone 7 port
