JS13K Games 2019 Day 1

Finally, the competition has started!  This year's theme: Back.  Wait...what?!?  Back?!?  I was hoping for something a little more...specific.  Something like Cyberpunk, Medieval Fantasy, Space, or something besides a random word from the dictionary.

So I sat down and thought about the word "back" and what it could mean.  Back could mean to physically move backwards, a throwback to a different era, to go back in time, to undo a step taken, the body part or the spine, to backup or reinforce, or to return where you began.  Then I looked at the definition of back that was posted, and it said pretty much what I thought of and more.  That was a pretty good waste of my time!

Now that I had this big list of what "back" could mean, what should my game be about?  How should what is the game play?  In the words of Yahtzee Croshaw, what is my game's primary loop?

Well, I don't want to make my game about time traveling.  I have this weird feeling that most of the games are going to be about time traveling, and the 20 Experts will probably be pretty sick of seeing yet another game about time traveling.  I really had to push myself to come up with something original.  However, I think I managed to do just that...

I thought about an old game I never finished called Zero's Arena, or something like that.  It basically was the character Zero from Mega Man Zero, fighting a lot of enemies in a one room arena.  I think I was in my early teens, building this game out using Game Maker.  There was no enemies to fight and I had just managed to get Zero's collisions down so that he wouldn't sink into the floor, before I gave up on the project.  It was probably due to me getting a new computer or my dad got his laptop wiped clean, and I ended up losing the source code for it.  However, I want to build something like that, but with a new gimmick and with my own original characters (of course).

I'll call my game "Shield Bearer" for now.  I was thinking about calling it "Cyber Shield" or "Secure-a-Shield", but my mind eventually rested on just naming my game about what is actually in the game.  Like how the game "Centipede" contains a big centipede.  Call it a classic arcade throwback.  Okay, now that I got the game named, you're probably wondering how it is played.  That's pretty simple...

Blocking Projectiles - Main Loop

Basically, just like the name of the game, you'll run around as a person carrying a big shield.  Enemies will be be jumping into the arena, and they'll be trying to fire at you.  If you block their projectiles with your shield, you'll be fine.  However, if you slip up and fail to block the projectile, you'll be hurt or killed.  I'll have to figure out which will happen when I'm trying to balance the game.  The main thing is that your weak point is your backside!

Laser Cannon

I also want the player to have a Laser Cannon (hopefully, I'll find a better name for it).  That way the player can shoot down Enemies and stop them from firing at the player.  However, I don't want them blindly firing the cannon all the time.  It will have infinite ammo, but the projectiles that the player launches can bounce off the walls and become hazardous to the player.  Just like with Enemy projectiles, they too will do damage to the player if they hit the player's backside.  I think it would also be cool to have the shield drop for a second while the player fires the cannon.  That way the player might end up hurt if they decide to fire in front of a fire fight.  This should force the player to play with a little bit of strategy, instead of blindly firing the hand cannon the whole time.

I'm thinking, with the 13 KB zipped file size restriction, I'll have to make this a classic arcade game.  No story line, no multiple stages, and no need for a save game.  You die, the game is over.  I'll use the scoring system similar to Orion's Revenge: it will keep a score, the score increases as you defeat Enemies, the goal is to get the highest score (duh), and the score will be used to ramp up the difficulty.  As the score gets higher, new Enemy Types will be introduced, old Enemy Types gain new abilities, and both will become harder to destroy.

I'll try to come up with a design for the Shield Bearer Player Character, so they seem Gender-Neutral just in case one of the Experts care about such things.  I'm thinking about going so 80's Retro-Future Aesthetic; I've been listening to a lot of RetroWave or Outrun music lately.  I'm going to have to see what I can do with that 13 KB file size limitation, though.

Wow!  Today, was productive!  I'm feeling confident, and like I can do this!  Well...we'll see once I actually start coding this bad boy.