Game Concept
On The Way Home
(working title)
Concept statement
Show your strength! Play as an average office worker, who happens to be trained in hand-to-hand combat, charging your way through dangerous enemies who are trying to stop you from reaching your apartment On The Way Home from work...
Genre and Concept
The game will be a top-down Beat-Em-Up style game where enemies will run at and attack the player, while the player has to defeat them without losing all their health to progress. Once the player clears all the enemies, they can move to the next area of the level, and each level will have a few different simple sections. At the end of the level, there will be a stronger boss enemy. Don't let those thugs stop you on your way home!
Gameplay
The gameplay loop will have the player spawn in the level, then after a short delay some enemies will spawn and target the player, while the player will have to fight their way past them using close quarters melee combat and a dodge button to avoid incoming attacks. Once the player defeats all the enemies, they will move to the next area of the level to defeat more enemies in a modified environment. This process will repeat a few times before finally facing a single stronger boss-like enemy at the end. The boss-like enemy will have a health bar and be harder to defeat. If the player takes too much damage from any enemies, their health bar will reach 0 and it will be a game over.
Concept Creation
The inspiration comes from classic top-down shooting games such as Berzerk (1980), but with a melee spin to it. I wanted to create something that captures that style of gameplay while also implementing close-quarters fighting that rewards timing and positioning, while also remaining simple and fun. An example of a game that implements this style well is Hotline Miami (2012), but slower paced and more focused on hand-to-hand fighting instead of weapons (and of course, less violent). As a big fan of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, I thought a dangerous city setting would fit the style perfectly. Fighting games and beat-em-up games are classic genres in video gaming, and I wanted to put my own spin on a game like this. The idea of our player fighting past criminals while just trying to get home after a day of work felt like a simple but effective enough concept to justify the gameplay, while not requiring backstory reading or cutscenes.
Target Audience
The game should appeal to many casual players, as the mechanics will be simple to understand and learn, while still being satisfying to play. I want the gameplay to be reminiscent of classic beat-em-ups with fluid but enjoyable combat that the player doesn't need much prior gaming experience to understand. This means it could be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike - however, the game will likely appeal to people who enjoy the beat-em-up genre of games. While the game involves melee combat, the game won't have excessive violence, so players of any age could enjoy it. However, the target age group would probably be from teens to adults, particularly if older players have nostalgia for the arcade fighting game style.
Competitive Analysis
The game will have a scoreboard with a high score function, which will add a competitive nature and replayability, while also not making it more difficult for casual players who just want to try it. A simple scoreboard function will add incentive to keep playing and achieve a new high score, or beat the previous one, without adding complicated difficulty levels or making the base game too challenging, so having a score system would be a good middle ground between difficulty and replay incentive. The score system will likely revolve around a timer, awarding more points for how fast the player can beat the levels, although if that doesn't feel rewarding with the gameplay then there is the possibility to loop levels and see how long the player can last before eventually running out of health.
Key Features
A short list of features that I think would help sell the game to potential players
- Top down fighting combat in a simple city environment
- Melee combat that rewards timing and positioning, while being simple to learn and understand
- A quick-dodge feature to quickly move the player away from the enemies to quickly adjust positioning
- Quick 'pick up and put down' game that doesn't require too much time for a round
- Health bar and scoreboard, with a high score feature
- Boss enemies for a fun climax fight!
Visual Style and Concept Images
The visual style and setting will be set in a city , which might resemble something like the fictional city Kamurocho from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series or Night City from the Cyberpunk TTRPGs and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020). The tilemap will have a city-style pavement, with roads and obstacles like cars or signs to add variety to the level. Using animated tiles, I could also add flashing lights on the street, or neon lights to store signs to add some interesting visuals to the game. Both the player and enemies will have simple designs of regular looking people, but I want the player to be easy to distinguish from the enemies, likely using a lighter colour scheme. The boss enemies might be slightly larger than the regular enemy, to visually differentiate them from the standard enemy.
Some examples of the type of setting the game world would take place in:
Streets of Kamurocho (2020)
(from https://waytoomany.games/2020/10/18/review-streets-of-kamurocho/)
Yakuza 0 (2015)
(from https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/ojiukg/a_night_in_kamurocho_a_yaku...)
The game layout will likely look roughly like this:
Then, when the player has cleared the enemies, they will be prompted to move forward to the next area.