Rune Warrior
Game type
Top-down shooter game/ roguelike-lite
Player number
Single
DESCRIPTION
‘Rune warrior’ is a top-down shooter game in which involving a lot of strategy element, the combination of a variety of weapons and runes allows players to create their own game style. In ‘rune warrior’ player will be fighting against a robot army in an ancient temple, collect runes during the battle to continuously strengthen yourself and prepare for stronger enemies.
Inspiration
Uncertainty is one of the most important mechanic in roguelike games, but this mechanic has two sides. Players will feel happy when they get a powerful weapon, On the contrary, if the weapon is not what they expected, they will feel disappointed. To reduce the downside from randomness of the game, in Hades designer introduced synergy to solve the problem. Every time player wins a fight in hades, player can choose an ability from three, maybe the options are not strong ability on its own but combining with the existing ability can achieve better results. For example, player’s existing ability is chance to weaken enemy with attack, based on this ability player can choose ability that can make crit damage to enemy. Compared with get item that can increase health bar or damage synergy gave player more choice, player can make decision based on the current situation , this allows players to gain some control in random situations. Player will feel more fulfilled when wins the game, because they made the plans that lead to succeed.
I really enjoy playing Hades, Risk of rain, Notia and Slay the spire these kind of roguelike games with a lot of synergy involved in, in these game player focus not only on the game skill, plan and strategy are involved too. I was really inspired by these games, so I decided to make a shooting game that have a certain degree of skill requirement and but focus more on the Strategic side.
Game mechanics
Bullet order
The main mechanic of the game is guns will shoot different bullet in order, after shot all six rounds then the gun will reload and restart the shooting order. Before engaging with the enemies, player can observe the map to find the location and the attribute of the enemy, based on the enemy’s information player can plan the order of the bullet against the enemy.
Bullet order
The main mechanic of the game is guns will shoot different bullet in order, after shot all six rounds then the gun will reload and restart the shooting order. Before engaging with the enemies, player can observe the map to find the location and the attribute of the enemy, based on the enemy’s information player can plan the order of the bullet against the enemy.
Bullet order
The main mechanic of the game is guns will shoot different bullet in order, after shot all six rounds then the gun will reload and restart the shooting order. Before engaging with the enemies, player can observe the map to find the location and the attribute of the enemy, based on the enemy’s information player can plan the order of the bullet against the enemy.
Attributes
There are four types of enemies in this game each have different attributes which are fire, air, earth and water, same with the enemy, bullet also have these attributes. Each attributes have a counter attributes, only the attributes with counter relation can deal 50 health damage, if they are not counter relation than the damage will be reduced to 25, also if the bullet’s attribute is countered by the enemy’s attribute than it will heal the enemy 50 health.
Rune
In the game, players can obtain runes by opening treasure chests or killing enemies. After the runes are equipped, players will get a new passive effect. Passives can be divided into three categories. The first is the melee rune, which requires melee weapons to attack the enemy to trigger the passive, the second is the long-range rune that needs to be triggered by the long-range weapon, and the last is the buff rune that can provide permanent enhance. For example, one of the melee rune’s passive is to mark the enemy after the attack, and one of the buff rune has the passive that causes critical damage to the marked enemy, with the synergy effect these two runes can achieve unexpected outcome. This mechanism can increase the playability of the game by allowing players to continuously explore and try, discover new combinations and create their own routine.
Literation
Version 1
Bullet& attribute system
In the first version I added in the bullet and attribute system to test the playability of the game. The result turns out in a positive way, these systems add strategy elements in a shooting game and increased difficulty.
Problem of v1
During the game play I found out every shot is vital, if player misses a shot, then the order of the bullet will be disrupted. For example, there are two enemies with different attributes. Currently, the player’s bullet sequence is to use two bullets to attack the first enemy and two to attack the second enemy, but if the bullet misses the first enemy when attacking，then the bullet planned against second enemy will be used against the first enemy.
Version 2
Top-down shooter
In order to reduce the difficulty of aiming I decides to change the game from third person shooting game to tow-sown shooting game. In top-down view player don’t need to worry about Y and Z axis, which makes aiming difficulty drop dramatically.
Version 3
Reload cooldown& Melee weapon
I found that the game was lack of tension after reducing the aiming difficulty. In order to increase the tension, I increased the reload time. In the previous version, when the player’s bullet order was disrupted, the player can quickly use the rest of the bullets to adjust the order to the correct order, because of the short reload time this method will not cause a big loss, but after increasing the reload time the player will lose more health during this period. By increasing the penalty for mistakes, players will be more cautious even if aiming is easier. In order to prevent the mistake from becoming a forced health loss, and to give the player a chance I added in the melee weapon to the game. During the reload time player can use melee weapon to attack enemy just like the knife in COD, and melee weapon doesn’t interfere with the bullet system. However, melee weapon has less damage and force player to near the enemy, which is very risky, when using melee weapon player need to be more focused in order not to loss health.
Level design
Tutorial level
When designing levels, I set a goal for each level to achieve a good interest curve. The first level is the tutorial map, followed by an intermediate level, the goal for this map is to let player get familiar with the mechanics learned in tutorial map, and in this level player will encounter more enemies and in the end a loot will be given to the player as the reward. In third map, the goal is to remind player melee weapon can be critical in some moments, to do so I added four enemies with four different kinds of attribute to force player use melee weapon, this can be a challenge map for player. For the fourth map, to reach the peak of the interest curve I added large amount of enemies, this creates an atmosphere of game has become very difficult, but there will only be two types of enemies, which means it's not as challenging as it looks like. Doing so can give the player the illusion of becoming stronger and gain a sense of accomplishment. Map 5 is to let the player relax from the tension, and it will be an easy level. Each five levels will make up a cycle, therefore the similar interest curve will repeat in the next five maps, and so on.
Programming
Attack combo
Equipment slot
Equipment system
Ai shoot player
Demo
