PORTFOLIO

Design Documentation:

 

           The game, “Flingers”, is a 2-4 player action game in the vein of Asteroids, in which each player controls a small spaceship and its accompanying tractor beam. The players, floating through an enclosed asteroid field, use their tractor beams to fling asteroids at the other players in hopes of damaging them. Differently sized asteroids are more or less easy to control, but also do varying amounts of damage. The graphics would be simple, bright, and cartoony, and it could be played on PC or common existing consoles. “Flingers” is a competitive 2D multiplayer beat-‘em-up game emphasizing asymmetrical and physics-based gameplay. The spaceship will serve as the object that each player controls. The spaceship will be able to fly, collect asteroids in a tractor beam, fly with a grappled asteroid, and fling grappled asteroids at other spaceships. Flung asteroids can also interact with drifting asteroids, colliding and deflecting off of them. Stationary asteroids impacted by flung asteroids would also alter course through the transferred momentum. When not flying (pressing a directional key), the spaceship will drift slightly with the momentum that it built; for example, if the player stops pressing left after going slowly, the spaceship will only drift slightly left. Each ship will start with a certain amount of health points, which will be depleted as the player takes damage until health reaches zero.

            As the current market trends would suggest, the audience for wacky casual games has created a great many success stories as of late. Games like I Am Bread, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, and Surgeon Simulator have paved the way for other physics-based games with a focus on fun and humor rather than exclusively puzzles that need timing and practice to complete, like Angry Birds and World of Goo. Flingers will attempt to move in on this market by adding its own brand of wacky fun into the mix, with players placed in the middle of a hazardous asteroid field, trying to throw those asteroids at high speeds toward their opponent, while also trying to dodge any incoming rocks being flung at them or bouncing inertially within the borders of the arena. Up to four players can compound this struggle, leading to even more debris and explosions to hectically evade.

            The people most often buying these zany concepts are young people, typically from early teens to mid- to late- twenties who are looking for less stressful ways to pass their time. In order to appeal to this audience, the game will have a simple and cartoony visual style, and will be accessible on PC and on common consoles, so as to reach the highest number of players. The appeal of the game is that it is simultaneously competitive, but still wacky and oddly-controlled, allowing kids and adults alike to play together and not have any one side be completely dominant.

            The marketing for the game would include low-budget online promotion, such as active pages on major social media websites and possible game reviews and deals with prominent online personalities (typically on YouTube) in order to get the word out. For the average consumer, a try-and-buy monetization method would be used, giving people a free version of the game with the most basic of the Flingers ships and a basic level to explore the mechanics and feel of the game before deciding to purchase it at a $7 price point. The lower pricing would help appeal to these younger people who might not have a lot of disposable income to purchase it, and also lessen parental hesitation when approached to make the purchase. Cosmetic-based micro-transactions within the game could possibly be implemented in order to appeal to people with unrelated hobbies: e.g. making one of the Flingers ships into the TARDIS or an X-Wing to add more visual appeal.

            The control scheme for Flingers would use the left analog stick to move around the X and Y axis while using the right analog stick to angle their tractor beam and asteroid cargo. The right and left lowermost shoulder buttons on the controller respectively would toggle their tractor beam on and off, as well as the player’s chosen ship’s secondary ability: Shield (conical damage negation), Shove (straight forward boost to asteroids), Secondary Beam (grapple two smaller asteroids), and Speed Boost (faster but releases larger asteroids when in use). For PC users, WASD would control the X and Y, IJKL would control the beam, and the abilities would be toggled by the space bar and Left Shift for Player One and the arrow keys and 5123 with Right Enter and 0 being the tractor beam and ability for Player Two. The controls would be re-bindable as the player sees fit; these controls would simply be the default.