Before the development session of fruit battle 2.0, I concluded seven major aspects I wanted to work on the game. They were:
1.procedure generated map
2.Two game modes (normal & infinite)
3.Sophisticated weapon system
4. Introducing drop items on the map
5. Boss fight
6. Background music, and visual effect update
7. Art style adjustment
After a short 7 weeks (70 hours) solo development session, the outcome turned out pretty well. All items mentioned above were achieved except boss fight due to the limited time frame. Another one needed to mention was that instead of a weapon system, I developed a unique skill system that player accumulate fruit skill points to cast skills.
Apple skill: give player movement speed and pass through obstacles (temporary for submission)
Mango skill: high damage laser beam (temporary for submission)
Kiwi skill: give player higher shooting speed (temporary for submission)
Player accumulates skill points via using the corresponding bullet, each point can be cast alone or combine with other skill points to cast other skills.
The project greatly improved the programming skill that I needed to reconstruct the former prototype Fruit Battle 1.0 which was an FPS game to a top-down shooting game with procedurally generated levels. The project also pushed my programming skill limit and creativity to a new level so that I could design and accomplish the unique skill system prototype. Other technical skills that I've learnt from the projects included:
1. Photoshop to produce suitable UI asset for the game
2. Post-processing features to make the game feel more visually satisfying
3. Doozy UI unity plugin to produce interactive UI elements
The project also boosted my creativity that I needed to redesign the three bullets concepts due to the playing experience of Fruit Battle 1.0 was not rewarding enough but rather punishing player too much when they made mistakes (wrong bullets gave enemy debuffs). Therefore, the new skill system based on the concept of three projectiles solved issues of Fruit Battle 1.0, the player was able to accumulate fruit skill points with their choice to cast skills.
Top-down style is wildly used in the game industry, on September 20th, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening published. The game sold 3.13 million copies worldwide (wiki, 2019), people were attracted by the remake of the classic game and the unique art style it was using. Fruit Battle 2.0 prototype was also inspired by the art style that the cute and soothing environment of the game could be suitable for more player from wider age groups. Based on the Australian Government, Department of Communications and the Arts (2019), The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was rated G in the age rating system. If Fruit Battle 2.0 is published in the future, the wider audience it attracted will generate more revenue based on this case.
Another reason why I chose top-down shooting game was that considering the solo development situation, the project could not be as complicated as RPG or adventure game under the given time-frame. When publishing the game, there are not many competitors on the platform such as Steam. According to Steamspy (2019), there is only 387 top-down shooting game on Steam. Which means there's a greater chance this game will get more attention since the market has limited options.
Apart from the market size perspective, procedure generation is a popular feature that attracts many players. Few typical examples are Moonlighter, Wizard of Legend. They both succeed in the indie game development industry. Moonlighter sold 0.5 million copies based on Steamspy(2019), and Wizard of Legend sold 1 million copies (Steamspy, 2019). These indicated players are interested in the concept of procedure generation. One reason why procedure generation is used in-game industry is to reduce authoring burden (Smith, 2015), procedure generation means using an algorithm to produce assets that are used to be human-generated (Wiki, 2019). Fruit Battle 2.0 utilised the fundamental aspects of procedure generation to generate levels which greatly reduced the time of development and future expansion of the game. Procedure generation also brings player unique game experience every time which solved the problem of lacking content or extra expenses spending on the future development session. (Smith, 2015)
Last but not least, the unique skill system Fruit Battle 2.0 is using is easy to learn and hard to master. Every player can choose their style and skill combination to survive the game as long as possible.
It fits a large audience from enjoying eliminating a large group of enemies to the master who can cast skills like a real witch. There are 19 unique skills that player can cast, some skills will interact with other skills, such as kiwi skill gives player higher shooting speed, the player can switch to other bullets while the effect is on so he/she can accumulate other skill points as quick as possible.
In conclusion, Fruit Battle 2.0 suits in the well-accepted top-down genre, attracts wider audiences with its cute and non-violent art style and procedure generation feature with its unique skill system, it is a unique approach to compete with 387 market size on Steam if published.
References
Classification.gov.au. (2019). Results | Australian Classification. [online] Available at: http://www.classification.gov.au/Pages/Results.aspx?q=moonlighter&t=lfc [Accessed 2 Nov. 2019].
En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Procedural generation. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation [Accessed 2 Nov. 2019].
Smith, Gillian (2015). An Analog History of Procedural Content Generation (PDF). Foundations of Digital Games 2015. Pacific Grove, California. Retrieved October 31, 2019.
Steamspy. (2019). Moonlighter. [online] Available at: https://steamspy.com/app/606150 [Accessed 2 Nov. 2019].
Steamspy. (2019). Wizard of Legend. [online] Available at: https://steamspy.com/app/445980 [Accessed 2 Nov. 2019].
SteamSpy. (2019). Top-Down-Shooter. [online] Available at: https://steamspy.com/tag/Top-Down+Shooter [Accessed 2 Nov. 2019].
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