Second Idea (Space Ship Game)

So, having again woken up an hour earlier than I needed to because I forgot that the Games Workshop lecture is ten o'clock rather than nine, I thought I'd try and bash another one of these out. Again, you'll have to do all the imagery in your head, but that shouldn't be too hard, right?


Space Ship Game (Working Title)


Setting - As all around the earth, huge, unimaginably powerful alien ships ravage and harvest the human race, they are suddenly struck down by the bane of all alien invasions, the foreign virus! (However did I create such an original idea?) You are the commander of one of these great ships, terminally infected by this hideous monkey illness, currently hooked up to a life support machine which should be able to keep you alive long enough to wreak your terrible revenge, but only if you can continue to feed it human organic matter.


Objective - The player controls the alien ship, floating along a good thirty feet above the ground. Either the game will continually scroll to the left or possibly it will be up to the player to steer left and right, collecting those pesky humans. Either way, the idea is that the humans must be first incapacitated with your subjugation ray before being taken on board the ship for turning into human ooze. The subjugation ray will fire out in front of the ship, at around a 45 degree angle, allowing for the ship to incapacitate humans and then suck them up with an abduction field that will be projected directly down from the hovering ship. As humans are taken, the ship's store of human matter increases, allowing the player to head to the upgrade screen and start upgrading the ship. But what is the most important upgrade? Life! Precious seconds that can be bought with human matter, refilling the clock that will begin ticking for every moment the player is flying the ship (Probably displayed in big, red, apocalyptic letters in the middle-top of the screen.


Reason to continue playing - As you play, the humans try ever more desperately to resist being reduced to a basic slime, as, of course, is their wont. So they will begin to hide inside cars, armoured vehicles, buildings and military bunkers. With each of these, the subjugation ray must become increasingly powerful, to crack the outer shell and get at the squishy human goodness within. And the only way to increase the power of the subjugation ray is to spend precious human matter on it (Perhaps to pay the RnD team, or maybe order it off of Space Amazon) and of course, you need that matter to pay for your life! Decisions, decisions...


Controls - I think just left and right should be sufficient for movement in this one, perhaps even only left (depending on how difficult either is) with two different keys assigned for the subjugation ray and the abduction field. A couple of HUD buttons for getting to the upgrade screen and the settings menu.


Glaring Problems - It seems to me that in this case, balancing the difficulty might be the most difficult task. Too easy, and people will have plenty of time to live all the time, too hard and people will never be able to get the fun upgrades. So this requires lots of thought, but obviously I'll have to actually build the game mechanic in order to do some testing.


So there it is, the second idea. With the Games Workshop in about an hour and ten minutes, I should get some idea of whether I'm totally barking up the wrong tree or not. Should be good!


Hopefully, I'll be posting again soon. Wish me luck!

Edit: In my ever fantastic judgement I've been taking some pictures of my notepad, and the notes and  sketches within, with my webcam, in order to display them on this blog. And may the lord have mercy on my soul.

This is a fantastic rendition of the game in action, showing the player flying about in his spaceship, zapping and incapacitating humans. It also shows the big timer in the middle, counting down the precious seconds of your life, and some hud buttons in the top right, possibly for activating upgrades...or something.

This is a little bit of postulation as to the look of the shop screen, with amounts of extra time to be bought lining the left side and upgrades to your weapons on the left. Also a few notes on the fact that, as the beam fires at an angle, if the player is to be allowed to move both left and right the 'front' of the ship will need to be made obvious.