Assignment 2

The Working Title: ESCAPE UP

Concept

The concept of the game is about a player falling down an elevator shaft and while falling the player sees fire rising from the bottom of the elevator shaft at a high speed. If the player reaches the bottom, the player will die. While falling the player sees metal flat surfaces attached to the elevator shaft, in order to survive the player have to jump one metal surface to another in the upward direction to reach the top. If the player misses the jump to the nearby metal surface, the player will fall into the fire and will die. The score of the player is calculated based of the distance covered while going up.

Category of the game

Arcade, entertainment, offline and casual.

Concept creation process

When I got a chance to create a small game, I always wanted to create a game which is quite similar to the Mario game. Then I remembered playing a small arcade game called whirlybird, this is a game I used to play when I was a kid. This game is quite similar to the Mario game and was entertaining, but the game was too simple in graphics with a plain white background. So, I decided to create a game similar to the game whirlybird with some level of graphic which makes the player excited. The game has normal controls like the Mario game which is moving left, right and jump and the whirlybird game only had the controls moving left and right and no jump because the player is falling the sky and has to land on small pads to go up. When the player comes in contact with a pad, the player bounces this makes the game quite simple. So, in my game the controls and the concept are the combination of both the Mario game and whirlybird game. In the game the player falls and has to jump from one pad to another in the upward direction, to jump is a separate control. The graphic will be an image of an elevator shaft with fire in the bottom. The game is a continuous loop were the speed of the game increases at regular intervals. The score is calculated based on the distance covered while going upward direction.

Audience and competitive analysis

Audience analysis

This game fits into the classic old scrolling platform games like Super Mario, Donkey Kong etc. This game can attract audience due to the popularity of web PC games, most of which are 2D games like ours. Our target of age group is below the age of 20, this game can also attract people of the average age of 30 were most of them are old 2D game lovers. These types of game may sometimes be violent but has the potential to attract game loving people of the age group between 10 to 30. This game attracts to people who love casual, arcade and retro games especially for people who wants a game for time pass. But this game will not attract people who likes violent combat games.

Competitive analysis

The competitors for this kind of games will be Nintendo, who ae still famous for making new and popular versions of Super Mario, Donkey Kong etc. Now they have started making games which feature 3D graphics which will be a huge development and competition. Even Xbox and PlayStation have high developed 2D games with better concept and graphics, and these games has been largely downloaded by people. The main web-based competition will be 2DPlay and MoFunZone, these are hosting so many online games and are publicly available for users to play. There are so many good scrolling games and keeping an eye on these competitions is key for our development, but this game market won’t be too tough to overcome because it is widely appeal to the users

Game treatment and concept art

As I mentioned before this game is the combination of ideas of the Super Mario game and whirlybird game. The game treatment is a player falling down and lands on a metal pad and sees below fire rising at a high speed, in order to survive the player has to jump from one metal pad to another towards the upward direction to escape. The game is a up scrolling game as the player moves up the game camera will also move up. The player will die if it fails to land on the nearby metal pad, the player score is the total distance travelled in the upward direction. The game starts with a menu with its game name and a button to start the game. Once the game starts the player character lands on the nearby metal pad and has to jump from one pad to another with the game controls. The game controls are simple, which consist of three keys which are for moving left, moving right and jumping. As the player moves upwards the pads the player had already jumped will be destroyed as it leaves the camera view, so when the player fails to land on the nearby metal pad there won’t be any pads below the camera scene which makes the player falling down and dies. After a certain amount of time if the player is still alive, the game speed will be increased to make the game more difficult. This continuous for a regular interval of time and will stop when the player has died. After the player is dead a new scene will be shown with saying “Game Over” and below it will show the player score, which is the total distance travelled in upward direction, at the bottom it will also display two buttons. The first button is “Play Again” button were after it is clicked the game is loaded again from the start with a score staring from 0, the second button is “Quit Game” button were after it is clicked it will quit the game application and returns to the game site.

The art concept of this game is a cartoon style art which has been popular for many years in the past. In the recent years many games have been successful in creating more detailed graphics and environment and an example is “Angry Birds”.  Even though these types of games are aimed towards casual young players, I think it suits our game as well because our game is quite silly. I decided to make the game based on the foundation of the game “Super Mario” because it is one of the best and most memorable simple 2D game in the gaming history. One of the ideas used from the “super Mario” game is the old retro looks of the player and the background.

References:

Reevo-lution Game, audience and competitor analysis final, viewed on 28^th August 2020, <http://reevo-lution.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/0/14105769/gameaudienceandcompetitoranalysisfinal.pdf>