Brainstorming about Bubbles (Part 3)

As I mentioned in my previous post, this post will be about the goals and how to accomplish those of the "Burstin' Bubbles" game.

Step 8. Defining the goals for the player

There should be an overall goal for our player, a goal that will make the player want to play the game and to make clear why the player has to do missions and perform certain actions. To achieve this goal, the player has to achieve a certain goal for each level. So, we need a main goal and goals per level.

End goal

The end goal of the game will be to prevent the collapse of a bubble. The player is hired by an extremely over-valued multinational in the future to find out why the bubbles of the past collapsed and how they could've prevented the bursts. The player will be mislead, thinking his goals are noble, but it's all about the money. The player will eventually find out that he is helping the wrong side and will use his knowledge of bubbles to burst the bubble while it's impact is still small. That is the final mission. The player will slowly find out he is helping the wrong side and by the time he is at the last level, he will know the terrible truth.

Before I define what the goals of the levels will be, I need a list of what levels I will use. As I wrote in part 1 of the "Brainstorming about Bubbles", I found a link with a short list of bubbles of the past. 

Levels

1. The Tulipmania
2. The Stock Market Boom
3. The Dotcom Boom
4. Back to the Future

1. The Tulipmania

The main goal of this level is to find out how a bubble is formed. The increasing demand on a certain product can influence prices to an extreme level, mostly in case of a monopoly. The actual value of a product isn't important, it's what people are willing to pay for it. If the difference between those are becoming too big, it creates agitation. If an economy is based upon overpaying and overrating for products, it can be called a bubble. 

3. The Stock Market Boom

The goal the employer will give to the player is to investigate how people get confident enough to buy stocks and how to keep that at an all-time high level. This level will be about inflating the bubble.

4. The Dotcom Boom

This level will be about the bursting of a bubble, also know as a boom. The player will investigate how and at what type of moment a bubble bursts. At the end of this mission, the player will know how evil the corporation he works for is.

5. Back to the Future

The goal of the final level is to use the new knowledge to stop the company that hired the player from inflating their bubble and harm the public. I have no idea how the player will accomplish this yet.

Step 9. Achieving those goals

Now that I know what the player's goals are, I can start thinking about how the player will achieve those goals. What weapons, upgrades, possibilities and actual gameplay will the game have?

I am beginning to have doubts about the perspective I chose. I chose a 3rd person perspective, but that will give me a lot of restrictions in movement and the artwork will stack up really fast. If I make the game top-down viewed, I can simply rotate a sprite instead of having an animation for every walking direction with every weapon. Making it top-down will make it a lot easier for me, so from now on the game will be top-down viewed! I can also make it more Shoot 'm Up-ish now.

The actual gameplay

When the player isn't in a level, the player is in the Future HUD and can buy upgrades, (re)play a level, adjust difficulty and quit the game. 

When the player is in a level, he has an objective, seen in-game, and has to fight off everyone who delays you in completing it. The gameplay should have a slightly less intensive feel than Hotline Miami. That game is awesome and I hope I can achieve something that feels like this, only a bit slower and with other goals.

The weapons

The player will get a weapon loadout for every level he enters. There are additional weapons in the level itself. The weapons that can be found in the default loadout are;

• Bat - the melee weapon for your every day needs.
• Dual Pistols - why shoot just one way if you can shoot the opposite way as well?
• Machine gun - spray dem' thugs down!
• Shotgun - excellent for maintaining your personal space.

I have no idea in what type of art-style these weapons will appear, but it's about the function of the weapons, not the looks (at least for this part of the post). The weapons that can be picked up in the levels are still unknown as I will design that when I am working on the code.

The upgrades

I was thinking about the basic upgrades here; extrra weapon damage, extra fire rate, extra walk speed, maybe an extra skill? 

Status

The base for the design of Burstin' Bubbles is set now. In the next post, I will think of the classes used in the code and how the HUD's will look.