A Slice of Time: Baseline Game Design Ideas

Alright! So the next task coming up on that course is to make some sort of a "Breakout" or "Araknoid" clone (block breaker games i.e.). Thinking up ideas about the genre led me to Mark Nelson's wonderful and extremely informative article on Gamasutra. Reading it, I realized that in its 40+ years tenure, the genre has seen an extremely huge number of variations, and since it is an easier game for novice/learning programmers to make, there are seemingly infinite clones popping up. And because of the sheer number of it, almost every possible variation within the constraints of the genre has been tried. Also, the novelty of the original(-ish games) has (understandably) faded.

But all this doesn't mean that this isn't a fun opportunity to flex my own design muscles. So here's the plan:

Step 1: I will follow the tutorial (course) and make something very similar to what they will be making. This way, I get to go through the basic process of making a simple block breaker. 

Step 2: This will be happening adjacent to step 1 though, that I will use this post here to share all the ideas I come up with for my own version. 

Step 3: Make my version (which will be my second go at programming a block breaking game).

9th September, 2021:

The IP I'm trying to build is not set in one cross-section of time. The idea is to change some core facts of human genealogy, psychology and biology (plus, there's also magic, for it is fantasy after all) and then try to think how our cultures and societies would've turned out. That is why the stories I'm trying to tell now are based on every early slices of time, just to have the changes and the rules clear and visible to all. But whatever form the culture takes (according to our projection) for our current era, or for the future, we can pick it up and tell a story in that setting. 

That being said, the block breaker idea I have, as of now, is themed around a cruise traveling through a "wormhole" in spacetime. The "paddle" is the cruise. the "ball" is the energy supply for that cruise, and the "blocks" are the asteroids or some dense energy clusters from which the ball harvests.

Player verbs:

    1. Slide the cruise (mobile tilt)
    2. Capture the ball (tap and hold, changes it into a circle)
    3. Deflect the ball - no added speed (deflect it off of the outside of the circle)
    4. Bounce the ball - added speed (deflect it from the paddle/bat shape)
    5. Destroy energy clusters (by bringing them between the ball and the cruise, there is a visible link)
    6. Bounce off of the wormhole edges (sides of the screen)

Rules:

    1. The ball, once released, will keep travelling in that upwards indefinitely unless it hits something.
    2. There is a maximum distance allowed between the cruise and the ball. Once that is achieved, the cruise starts following the ball (create parallax to build the illusion of motion through space, but not on screen)
    3. This travelling will reveal randomly generated blocks (energy clusters) that will be falling towards the cruise.
    4. Energy clusters do not destroy the cruise, but they render it intangible for a brief moment if hit head on. This also consumes some of the available energy reserve for the cruise. 
    5. The ball has its own energy reserve that it can build up by hitting blocks.
    6. The cruise, when low on energy, can recharge, by draining balls energy after capturing it.
    7. The surplus left (after charging cruise to its max capacity) will be translated into ball speed. This makes it a small management feat for the players to decide when to capture and not let the ball gather too much surplus.
    8. The "blocks" are asteroid shaped so the post-hit trajectory of the ball is not entirely predictable.
    9. If you run out of energy, you lose.
    10. If you lose the ball, you lose.
    11. Your goal is to travel a certain distance through the wormhole.
    12. The reward at the end is a slideshow/exposition of the time you landed in. This can be the basis of our mission structure, and it can become a fun way to navigate the timeline in a playful way.
    13. There is an infinite mode as well in which, after traveling an absurdly long distance, the player just might end up at the beginning of time (insert random existential questions here).

Now, I'll be off to start working on the base version first. Will share it on the blog when done. Afterall, that is the point of this diary anyways :)