Well, we have decided to develop a FPS. That said, it might not be the craziest, most innovative idea ever, but it’s a safe bet, not only because of our short deadline (everything should be ready by early July, with at least one full playable level) but also to allow that some more people are willing to try the game, due to its somewhat familiar gameplay.
The key point of our concept resides within the heavy use of physical effects. We will rely on Nvidia PhysX and our imagination to push some limits and provide the player a new engaging experience. We’re at the early stages of level design, but already planned is a futuristic environment where most of the time the physical laws don’t apply, with both indoor and outdoor scenes.
So, let’s give away some ideas we’ve put together to form our game concept:
• The story (only intended to set up the gameplay): an experienced soldier wakes up and doesn’t remember the last few days. He’s in a strange place, eager to escape and about to experience some really strange things while he fights for a way out…
• Rooms with different environments (gravity, friction, etc.), which may even change in real time, through some kind of control.
• Main character with mutable physical attributes (strength, height, etc.), using some kind of chargeable device.
• Besides the usual fire arms, the player may use two special weapons:
o A gun loaded with raw material which is transformed, on the fly, into projectiles of the desired size, allowing the player to strategically manage its resources, considering the number and positions of the enemies it’s facing.
o A vortex shooting gun, which specs are a work in progress…
• Some of the enemies immune to one (or more) of the weapons.
• We’re currently exploring the possibility of integrating some autonomous agents and multi-agent systems knowledge into the AI, controlling enemy behavior. More news on that later.
And that’s about it for now. We’ll polish these ideas during the next few weeks and produce the first draft of the game design document which we’ll probably post here. Please feel free to tell us what you think and give some suggestions on how can improve our game.
