Elements we should include:
Title
Self explanatory – make it punchy, attractive and appropriate for the genre.
The Forgotten Rome (TFR)
Overview
This should include a few sentences that ‘sells’ the game – the language need not
be formal here.
The reader should gain an understanding about what the game will be like. The
Gamasutra article (see below), gives a good example:
"Man or Machine is a first-person shooter for the PC that uses the proven Quake II
engine to thrust players into the role of an android space marine caught up in the
epic saga of the interstellar techno-wars of the thirty-seventh century."
You should identify the genre and platform here too.
You should provide an indication of what games are similar to yours. Mentioning
this can help the reader get an idea of the form of the game. You should also
provide an extended list of the key features of the game, including any that
identify differences from related games (‘USPs’).
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
- Third person platform game
- For PC/the web
- Uses Unity engine
- Similar games are Crash Bandicoot,
- Based in a Snowy Rome now an Arctic world surrounded by mountains and survived leftovers of the ancient roman architecture
- Player follows a straight path having to avoid certain traps by jumping and ducking
- Character is a human female, enemies are various animals that live in freezing temperatures
Story
In a few paragraphs (but not greater than about 300 words) you should describe
the storyline of your game. This is likely to include establishing the setting, or
‘world’ within which the game will be played. It will establish the principal
characters, the ‘journey’ the player will need to undertake, the main goals and
adversities.
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
- Stranded in a dangerous, freezing and white world, were Rome is now covered by snowy mountains that tower over you only the strongest can survive this wasteland. You play as a female character named Charlotte, she has lost her memory in the world of snow and doesn't know how she ended up in this dangerous area were buildings and ruins are covered by harsh blizzards and snow. The habitat has changed now that Rome is now a frozen ice world.
Gray wolfs have appeared, Penguins, Polar bears, Seals and Eagles also have come to this Snowy area were they find there prey. Charlotte will have to survive and find her way through this chaotic, freezing world and get to a safe place. On your travels, Charlotte will be a prey to the animals meaning you will be hunted down and eaten by the predators who survive and live in these freezing cold temperatures, to survive you will have to keep on running, jumping and dodging. There will even be traps lying ahead waiting for you to make a mistake make sure you are on your toes or Charlotte will be a frozen corpse.
-
She has a poor background, her family have little to eat and no jobs, torn clothes, illnesses and very weak
-
Characters
This will extend the descriptions given in the ‘Story’ section. You should provide
details of the appearance, age, gender, personality and background of the main
characters, both player and non-player characters. This should be textual, but you
should also include some initial visual sketches. Referring to characters in other
games may be helpful – but make sure you identify what makes your characters
unique.
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
- Female
-We choose a female character named Charlotte she is 19 years old and lost her memory Charlotte doesn't know what happen to her but all she knows is to survive, Charlotte has long black hair that goes down to her neck, which she ties back when she goes into the dream (She doesn't know it's a dream). Blue eyes, pale white skin, a scar on her cheek but she doesn't know where or how she got it from. She starts off with a summer dress, but then finds a letter in her pocket from this unknown person that guides her to find a container with appropriate clothing for the weather. She now wears a jacket with a scarf around her neck, fingerless gloves, boots with grips and base layer trousers.
Majority of the games that are out, mostly male characters or just animals, we wanted the audience to experience something different and have more of a different emotional connection to the player, especially if it's the actual person playing the game is a female. Which will hopefully send positivity in AAA games to choose female characters as a role model for a game. She fell unconscious and went into dream.
There are some games that have female characters as the main character, examples are Tomb Raider, Alien Isolation, but most of these games are based on films which had to follow the movie. This will make our character more unique because it's a made up character it's not a character from a film.
-
Level Design
Provide an overview of the levels, ‘stages’ or key episodes of the game, and relate
these to the story.
You should provide a brief textual description of each, but focus on providing a more detailed graphical and textual description of one key level [ …that you will
partially realise in the next phase of the workshop]
In your selected key level you should provide (as appropriate):
● An annotated map, taking care to identify the features that influence
game-play.
● Entrance and exit points.
● Sketch/Visualisation of an example player view.
● Describe how the particular ‘atmosphere’ of the level will be produced. For
the purposes of your future work, details such things as textures and
lighting.
● Triggers, NPC, interactive objects.
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
 |
| The Player View (in-game) |
- Interactive Objects –The collectables such as
the crystals
-
Ditches
- Traps (Icicles)
- Pillars in which Charlotte has to jump over
to get to the end of the level
- Dodge falling ruins
Textures
& Lighting: Stone Textures will be used on all
our modular assets such as the buildings, ruins etc for the level’s
environment.
Particle effects will be added to the enemies
to let the player know that they have defeated that particular enemy.
Level Map:
Gameplay
This should describe how the player achieves goals and tasks. In practice, this
section is highly specified, involving a detailed account of ‘Game Mechanics’ – the
precise rules of gameplay describing numeric calculations relating to scoring,
randomness, health, combat, asset accumulation etc.. . Developing this, is a
complex process (often involving ‘paper’ realisations of the game) – at it’s heart
lies the goal of achieving a ‘balance’ between the goals being too easy and too
hard.
You will not be expected to provide this detailed account (although you may wish
to have a go!), but you should identify the core elements and how they interact.
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
- On your journey, the player will be collecting crystals, the more you collect the higher your score will be at the end of the level, when the player go towards a crystal (collectables), it will despair. Once you have collected the crystals (Maximum crystals you can collect is 30), you will have a scoreboard that will pop at the end of the level to show how many crystals you have collected. However if the enemy interacts with the character, the player will have to restart the whole level again, also the player will loose all of the crystals they collected. Pits are an automatic death zone, player has to jump over them to get across to the other side otherwise player will have to restart from the beginning with none of the collected crystals that the player had before.
Respawn system will restart the whole level again, meaning all enemies and collectables will respawn back to were they originally was. When character respawns, they will be flashing to tell player that they have died and starting again, when character is flashing this also means that the player has three seconds of invisibility and cannot dies from enemies. However can instantly die by the pits which will respawn you back the beginning of the level.
- Respawn System
User Interface and Game Controls
This should describe, textually and visually, how the player interacts with your
system.
What HUD elements will be included? What keys/buttons will be used for
specific actions?
Make sure you provide reasons for your design decisions.
-
HUD elements:
- Collectables score count
- Pause Menu (Resume / Settings / Quit)
- Main Menu (To maybe be added later to
introduce our game)
Key Buttons:
- Jump – SPACE
- Directional Buttons for the character's movement – KEYBOARD (up, down, left, right)
- Additional buttons could be
implemented once the character development on Charlotte is finalised
 |
| Pause menu similar to this one |
Sound and Music
-The music that will be used in the game will
complement the speed of the characters movement. (So very fast up-tempo music)
- As it’s based in a snowed over Rome, we want the soundtrack to really
make the gamers feel like they are in Rome.
- Solid Sound effects to really bring the game to life: environment
sounds such as the snow and wind could be over enhanced just to let the player
know that something is about to happen.
- Very good examples of this aspect are in the
Tomb Raider series.
- Links to sources of music, which would complement the theme of our
game:
- Ryse Son of Rome Soundtrack: Mad Nero -
-Total War: Rome 2 OST- Engineering An Empire
- Sounds for collecting the in-game collectables
- The main character – death sound for Charlotte when she falls into a pit
or gets hit by an enemy
- Enemies (sounds for defeating an enemy)
