Re: The Nearly Dead Community Game
Here's a repost of the very general rundown of the game design thus far more or less. I'm still 100% open to ideas if you guys want to repost stuff I missed from the tentacle haven forum that you think might be interesting, or want to suggest new things to do. I'm starting on the game again today, spring break being the perfect time for such things, and I'll let you know how it goes.
Summary: The as-of-yet unnamed Community Game is a side-scrolling action shooter staring Abigail Moore, a recent graduate of the local police academy being assigned to her first station in a sleepy (also unnamed thus far) desert town. However, due to its remote location a nearby abandoned gold rush era mansion has been commissioned as scientific excavation and experimentation facility, buried in the desert beneath the ruins.
While digging, scientists at this facility uncovered a uniquie, statue-like artifact in the shape of a nude human, and extracted it for study. However, the statue carried upon it the dormant remains of an undetectable alien virus that at once begins to spread throughout the compound. This virus transmits through sexual contact, and rapidly evolves its new hosts to make them horribly efficient at this task. Without warning the virus breaks out upon the small town, infecting every male creature almost instantly. The males set out to hunt for females to either transform in to creatures themselves, or to capture and use for breeding for future generations of monsters. So, you play as Abigail Moore, fighting your way through the city toward the source of the disaster in order to shut down the original host and hopefully reverse the plague assaulting the city.
Levels:
Street - Starting level. Classic horror fare. Mutants/Zombies (not dead zombies for you who squirm at necrophilia Razz), twisted animals (wolves for now), small slime blobs, and things that are hopefully going to work like Alien-ish face-huggers except on all entrances.
Sewer - Heavy on the slime and gas critters that can cause effects that reverse keys (confusion) slow reaction times or even paralyze the heroine. Boss battle against "Snuggles", a huge blue tentacle monster.
Military Base - Fight your way past hulking humanoid creatures with huge muscularity, dogs, maybe some others if I can think of any. Boss battle against a captured and tansformed amazonian-ish, now shemale, captain of the base.
Haunted House - Fairies, tentacles, zombie/mutants, ghosts, spiders possibly, anything haunted-houseish. Also introducing traps to capture, weary, and immobilize the heroine.
Lab - Final level. Robots, electrical traps, transformed scientists, and "The Big Trap" with several entrances which will forcibly strip, and process the heroine before delivering her to the hive queen (for lack of a better name). Final boss battle against the Queen.
Gameplay - The goal is to go for a sidescrolling-ish type of Resident Evil 4, slower paced, deliberate, with ebbs and flows in difficulty. Ammo will be plentiful but still limited, more limited at hard difficulties, and the further you get in the level (1/4, 1/2, etc) will get you extra CGs for that level. So, if you lose to a zombie you might get one of three random zombie CGs, then depending on how far you got you'd get a certain number of special CGs for that level before the final shot of Abigail being dragged to the mansion with the classic "Game Over".
In general, suggestions are the best help you guys can offer. I might start another background-maknig competition some time soon, we'll have to see. If you want to contribute though this is an open project. It's our project, not mine, and your input is very much appreciated and will be throughly considered. If you have any questions just ask, or just shoot me a PM or e-mail. My IM is open too when I'm on, which isn't often Razz
P.S. The game is being done in Python programming language using the Pygame SDL wrapper for anyone who might care to know. Right now the resolution is at 800x600, and I'll probably add a toggled/fullscreen option.