The Statement
To create a solid, cleanly finished, simple game.
The Premise
Amy's Kingdom will be a light hearted, casual multiplayer game set in a platformer world.
Unique Selling Points
- Platformer meets MMORPG
- Cutesy but not patronising or stereotyping
- High level of world interactivity
Graphics and Aesthetics
I intend to use RM2K3 graphics, highly edited to my purposes. I've always thought they would make good graphics for a platform game.
As far as aesthetics will go, everything will be 3-Up 16x16. That means a lot of menus and things are going to have to be reformed.
Menus themselves are going to be Super Simple. By that I mean there will be absolutely no unnecessary clutter. Just plain boxes with things in.
So there'll be careful control of assets to ensure they use only the 256 colour palette, the 3-up pixel size, and so on.
Enemies and such will be simple too.
Enemies
So you kind of get the idea I'm going for here.
As it's a platformer, there won't be such varied stats as other RPG games. So each enemy will have its own unique feature. Such as ghosts being able to go through things, dragons being able to fly, others spawning magic objects and other nodes, and so on. There will be few different enemies but they'll all have their own design and features.
Controls
Controls will be as simple as possible:
ASDF: Move
Space: Jump
Enter: Interact, Slash
Mobile:
Touch left or right of hero: Move
Double-tap: Jump
Touch an event: Interact, Slash
Nodes
The world will be a simple, flat world, and then on top of it, nodes will be added. So anything like trees, buildings, etc, will all be floating nodes.
This means most things can be interacted with. Trees will be able to be cut down for wood, for example, but if you do that you can't then jump on them to get to higher places. Rocks will be able to be mined for minerals but again, you might need them to jump higher.
These will be basic ingredients like "wood", "metal", etc.
Multiplayer Elements
Using tried and tested things I've done for Afar:
- Chat
- In-game forum, but super simplified
- Secondhand store
- Possibly user-to-user trading
- Player profiles
- Multi-user bosses
- Possibly live players
I'm going for a Neopets kind of vibe where multiplayer is concerned.
The World
The world will be completely seperate from Afar, I think. It will be quite extensive though eventually.
You'll start off in the starter town and basically will be able to walk on top of buildings, enter them, etc.
While the world will be mostly 2D, you will be able to move upwards which enters new perpendicular maps, giving the world a kind of faux 3D shape to it and there will be mazes based on this.
Death
Not sure what happens when you die. There won't be LEVELS as such, just one open world; there will probably be respawn points every now and then. You certainly won't lose items when you die, this isn't that sort of game.
I haven't thought this through much yet
As you can probably tell.
It needs much
Planning.
The Base System
At the moment I am playing around with a script some Japanese person has made which includes a platform world and very simple ABS combat system. Found here: http://hikimoki.sakura.ne.jp/plugin/jump_action.html
http://afar.ws/TEST
It seems alright so far. Needs a LOT of work however.
Controls for this TEST are arrow keys, X to jump, Z to attack, and various other controls that will probably be removed. Shows a few nodes such as jumping, climbing, sliding, etc. You can jump on top of the castle and walk around, that sort of thing. Water traps, respawns, etc.
