Overview

Concept Statement / Working Title

Fight your way out through the deserted lands of Forsaken Colony: Last Survivors whilst battling hordes of enemies with a unique set of weapons, spells and abilities.

Genres

Action-Roguelike

Fast paced combat, perma-death and meta-progression define the main genre for this game. There will be Roguelite as well as Roguelike elements.

Bullet-Heaven / Survivors-like

As an emerging subgenre of classical Shoot'em ups/Bullet Hell type of games the survivors-like genre is defined by the fact that the player is shooting an increasingly larger number of projectiles on waves of enemies throughout the progress of each level.

Concept Development

As most of the games I have been playing in recent times are all some sort of roguelike the idea for creating one myself was not far fetched. As this genre itself is a relatively broad one, the main consideration I had to make at the beginning on what type of Roguelike-game i wanted to focus on. Due to the recent rise of popularity of "Survivors-Like" Roguelikes and their hooking gameplay loop I decided to set this as my main game concept.

The two games which I mainly derived my ideas from are Vampire Survivors [1] and Halls of Torment [2]. Both have some key gameplay elements which are in detail:

• Each stage has a clear end goal, (in these games decreasing timers) which you need to accomplish in order to beat the stage
• Different unlockable characters with unique starting weapons/spells
• Different stages with new enemy types and increasing difficulty
• Different bosses throughout the stages
• Character levels up throughout the stages, increasing its stats and temporarily unlocks new spells/weapons
• Meta-Progression:
  • Upgrade base-stats of your characters outside the stages
    
  • Permanently unlock new spells/weapons/characters/etc. by completing achievements

Implementing these gameplay elements in some form is essential for this genre, as it ensures a feeling of progress throughout the gameplay loop and significantly improves replayability. However, there were still some issues here and there that should be avoided and which I aim to improve in my game:

• Some spells/stats are significantly stronger than others, which leads to a limited freedom of choice, even if there would be countless options available.
• Some bosses lack difficulty and are rather grindy than challenging
• Characters lack uniqueness (VS)

Target Audience and Competitive Analysis

The target audience for this games are teens and above with some prior experience in playing video games, especially people who enjoy playing roguelike games. With an easy to understand base concept and relatively flat learning curve and some more challenging boss fights later in each stage it is suitable for casual gamers as well as hardcore gamers. As the average duration of one gameplay loop is somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes, players can go for a round or two whenever they have some spare time to kill and don't necessarily have to commit a whole evening to a gameplay session.

The competition in this genre is quite high with new games being released almost every day and some well established games already present; However, the general popularity and big player base of this genre right now show us there is still place for new games. In combination with proper character/weapon/spell balancing and new unique gameplay elements Forsaken Colony: Last Survivors should be able to reach its target audience and, just as important, get them to engage in the game.

Game Treatment

Setting

You start as one of the last survivors of an abandoned colony and fight your way back to civilisation by battling hordes of enemies and defeating almighty bosses. While progressing through the stages you can find new companions, become a master in wielding your weapon and learn new magic spells that will assist you in crumbling the enemy lines.

Main Gameplay Loop

You start by picking a character and the stage you want to play. Upon entering a stage, enemies start spawning and trying to attack you. Killed enemies drop experience crystals which need to be collected. Once enough experience crystals have been collected, you level up; You can then select a base-stats upgrade or unlock/upgrade a spell. As the stage progresses you get more powerful; At the same time an increasing number of harder enemies starts spawning. If you can make it past a certain time in the stage, a final boss will appear and normal enemy spawning stops. Defeating the final boss means beating the stage and unlocking the next one. While playing the individual stages and slaying the hordes of enemies you collect their blood, which is used as in-game currency and can be spent on permanent upgrades in the menu.

Key Features

Character

Unique starting weapon

The starting weapon will be the characters main source of damage throughout the run. Different starting weapons have different styles of attacking and therefore either more single target damage or more area of effect damage. Each character has unique weapon progression, meaning the characters start with weapon class D and through playing the game and unlocking achievements they can progress all the way to weapon class S (D,C,B,A,S). Weapon class upgrades unlock new attack patterns for each weapon. 

Unique starting ability

Each character has one starting ability, which provides additional utility in the main gameplay loop. The starting ability is some form of: movement (dash, blink), healing, knockback, etc; The starting ability stays the same throughout the entire run and can not be changed or upgraded.

Spells

Spells can be found in the stages and are additional damage sources. These are not limited to one character or stage and can be projectiles, area effects, orbitals, etc. The player can get spells at certain level-ups (most likely every 10 levels) throughout the run and can upgrade them in order to have a larger area of effect, deal more damage, last for a longer duration or something different depending on which spell it is.

Controls

The player has a simple 8-directional movement (WASD) with one additional key for the character's ability (Space, Shift). The player's main attack is looping and always fires in the direction of the mouse. Spells are looping as well (depending on the nature of the spell) but are not influenced by the mouse direction.

Enemies

Different enemy types occur while progressing through a stage; However, each of the basic enemy types will just have one attack pattern as the gameplay would get to complex otherwise. This can be moving towards the player and trying to stab him in melee range, shooting projectiles at the player from further away or charging at the player inside a certain distance.

Bosses that spawn at the end of the stage will have more complex movement and several attack patterns. Learning the attack patterns of the boss and beating it should be a real challenge; However, only to a degree where it does not lead to frustration.

Achievements

Achievements are the cornerstone of unlocking new characters, upgrading your weapon class, unlocking new spells, unlocking new spell upgrades and gathering in-game currency for increasing your characters base-stats. Basic achievements can be of type: "Deal X amount of damage with weapon Y", "Kill X amount of enemies of type Y", "Kill X amount of enemies with one attack of weapon Y" which grant some extent of in-game currency. There will also be advanced and hidden achievements which reward you with significantly better benefits such as new spells, new spell upgrades, etc.

Art Style and Concept Art

The game will feature a basic pixel-art style heavily relying on assets in the style of the LiberatedPixelCup (LPC) [3] available on OpenGameArt, combined with the theme of "Medieval Fantasy". This is due to the fact that the implementation of the game mechanics will already consume a lot of time; Therefore, there will not be enough time left for me to create a whole set of pixel-art assets myself as well. Enemies and Players both will only have two animated directions (same as in Vampire Survivors), as this reduces the required spritesheets compared to 8-directional or even more-directional animated movement (as in Halls of Torment) dramatically.

The features mentioned in the section above should be implemented in menus and scenes in the game as shown in Figure 1 below. From the main menu you can directly access Upgrades, Achievements, Compendium (shows details about enemy types, spells, etc.) and Settings. On clicking the start button you get to the character selection, which shows the base-stats for each character as well as your current weapon class. After choosing a character for the run you get to the stage selection and upon confirming your selection the game starts. In the game scene you can see your current health, collected blood, time remaining, cooldown of your ability, etc.

The video shows what animations of the swordsman character and goblin enemy as well as an attack of the swordsman character could look like. Assets used are all part of the LPC collection.

The video shows the different experience crystals [4] which are spawned upon an enemy's death. Size and color indicate the amount of experience each crystal holds (grey frames are due to uploading compression loss).

References

[1] poncle (2022, Oct. 21). Vampire Survivors on Steam [Online]. Available: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/Vampire_Survivors/ (visited on 2023-08-22)

[2] Chasing Carrots (2023, May 25). Halls of Torment on Steam [Online]. Available: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/ (visited on 2023-08-22)

[3] Free Software Foundation, Creative Commons, Mozilla, OpenGameArt.org (2012, July). The Liberated Pixel Cup [Online]. Available: https://lpc.opengameart.org/ (visited on 2023-08-22)

[4] qubodup (2012, June 22). Rotating Crystal Animation (8-Bit) [Online]. Available: https://opengameart.org/content/rotating-crystal-animation-8-step (visited on 2023-08-22)