DEVLOG 1 

As a group, we decided on making all six of our prototypes with the idea of each game having elements inspired by the Dark Souls franchise by FROMSOFTWARE. We did this in order to make coming up with game ideas more natural as both of us are familiar with the series.

For my (Ben) first of the 3 prototypes I designed a 2d "Souls-Like" game with an element of skill to attacking to fit with our given prompt of game control. The combat was designed to have the player use their arrow keys to play musical notes in order to attack, with basic attacks having easier inputs. The idea for the game is that you play as a lute player, who can cast magic from playing sheets of music, which will be found throughout the game. In the full game you would be tasked to travel a semi-linear 2d sidescroller world and defeat bosses to progress till the end.

In order to fit with our theme of making Souls inspired games, the game has a similar combat loop of getting in quick attacks and dodging away to avoid attacks. If we chose to develop this game more, I would like to add proper enemy ai, as well as expand the level and reward players for exploring alternate paths. I would also like to tie healing the player to playing notes as well and add checkpoints that function similar to the Dark Souls franchises bonfires.

For my (Jacob) first of the 3 prototypes I designed a 3D First-person game. This game is a shooter in a pirate themed setting. The gameplay consists of shooting smaller respawning pirates and one big pirate who is the games boss type enemy. The player is equipped with two flintlock pistols in each hand, these pistols fire independently to one another. The player regains health and ammo from barrels which drop from the small respawning enemies. The player also has a dash ability inspired by the dodge/roll from Dark Souls in order to fit with our theme of making Souls inspired games.

The prompt “control” is evident in the two independent weapons which both require separate inputs. If we choose to develop this game more, I would like to add a melee option to each hand, allowing the player to use two guns, two swords or one of each. I would also expand on the boss’s behaviour and arena while expanding upon the variants of respawning enemies. The games environment would also be expanded upon with the addition of checkpoints that function similar to the Dark Souls franchises bonfires.