Isolated

Working Title:
Isolated

Concept Statement:
Uncover the secrets of an abandoned town and journey below as you discover your full potential in this 2D Isometric adventure.

Genre:
RPG, Rogue-like

Concept Creation:
Game design involves many decisions and the best source of ideas can come from the inspiration created by other games, whether those are in the same genre or a different type of game all together. To create a game that I will both enjoy designing and playing I am taking inspiration from some of my favourite games.

The Diablo series is a huge influence on the isometric RPG style that I am going for. While a 2D isometric horror/gothic game was definitely a choice, I have decided that taking the path of using a bit more colour and possibly not saturating the hell out of the game might be a bit more appropriate for this project.

While class design is fantastic in games and really immerses the player in a fantasy specific to their starting choice, Isolated will be based on progression through finding stronger weapons and unlocking the ability to perform different attacks. Upgrades based on a score or currency system to spend after defeating bosses and the ability to focus on one combat style making attacks faster and/or do more damage would be a key gameplay concept.

Gameplay consists of starting in an abandoned town, the player explores the town finding a locked graveyard by a church. The player finds a key to enter to graveyard and stumbles upon a crypt. The crypt is an "endless" dungeon with various enemies, challenges and the ability to learn other attacks. Defeating bosses will allow the use of spending score for upgrades.

The roguelike 'Risk of Rain 2' has many looting elements that provide fun and interactive gameplay. I like the loot idea of enemies dropping powerups on death for the player to pick up, and the ability to spend gold to buy specific powerups. The player being able to customise their experience every time they try the game and take a new path keeps the player coming back.

Death is permanent as the player only gets 1 life. Meaning that the player might have to try different loadouts and combat styles to progress further in the game.

Audience and competitive analysis:
Isolated is a game for those that enjoy watching themself improve, or try to at least. This game will feature harder dungeons as the player progresses further and each level inspires new tactics. The game will start of fairly slow but will ramp up quite a lot with the player needing to dodge and maneuver themself throughout the dungeon to not get cornered by enemies.

My inspiration for this kind of game comes from a lot of flash games in the early 2000s where you get minimal lives and its fast paced enough to where you just want to keep trying to get to that next level. This game could attract an audience of many genres but I think will be most enjoyed by those that like ARPGs, roguelikes and possibly even shooters.

I love the endless gameplay that Risk of Rain 2 inspires but many of the games can go on for hours as the player aquires so many powerups they are unable to killed and do insane amounts of damage. I really enjoy the powering up of a character but I think that the enemies should always be able to scale up faster so that the player skill is a bigger factor than just getting an overpowered set of powerups to endlessly stay alive.

Isolated will feature graphics inspired by pixel art as I enjoy the techniques and results produced by such a simple yet defined method to an art style.

Game treatment and concept art:
I really enjoy the isometric design of the Diablo series and games like Age of Empires. After doing a bit of research and seeing that unity now supports isometric styles and has a large range of tutorials on the topic I have been converted to try this design style. Originally a 2D top-down design would have been a solid starting point from the tutorials already done in class and the ability to modify and

After having many ideas flowing around and trying some pixel art for character design (very poorly) I have decided that changing from a walking character wielding weapons to a levitating playable character that uses enchanted weapons that you control is a better choice.

Level design is done using an isometric grid in unity and the ability to set tile heights to create the illusion of depth for a 2d game is amazing. A tileset was made using 32x32 pixels and allows for a lot of customisation within an editor to then push to level design in unity.

To create gameplay I began to think about what would be fun to the player and at the same time easy to implement while still having a big impact. The idea of the player levitating and using enchanted weapons lets me bring different combat styles to the encounter while remaining fast paced and keeping it simple. By having the weapons be in front of the player it means there will be less time implementing animations for character sprite movement and more time working on gameplay.


The player would have a bow and sword floating in front of them while the fireball would potentially grow in size and then be released.
Basic animations would be used such as an arrow flying from the player or a single swipe from the sword. The sword animation could also be reversed allowing for more engaging gameplay.

The game will involve completing floors of a dungeon and descending them, each floor will progressively get harder as the monsters gain health, multiply in numbers and gain more damage. Basic monsters would include skeletons and zombies, with the addition of skeleton archers and mages, they would fire similar projectiles as the player to cut down on production time. The player would get score when killing an enemy and every 5 levels the player would encounter a boss fight which after defeating them would allow the player to spend score to buy upgrades to improve movement speed, attack speed, and damage. The player can also spend points to buy the ability to use a sword and/or a bow. Each attack style would have their benefits and allow for different gameplay.

The player has to progress in the dungeon as there would be no returning to previous levels and only one life.

Thanks for reading.