Design Brief
An old GameJam game where we settled on the art style before we learned the prompt for the jam, the mechanics we made for the jam weren’t very appealing or transparent so the project was sidelined, but I was quite keen for it’s notebook and doodles style art.
Instead we’ve lent on the art style to inspire the mechanics of actively drawing on the scene and being able to move the new object about using the primary mechanic of a SHMUP: Shooting!
The player is able to draw a squiggle of line that will absorb player and enemy bullets, Also you can move the shape around by firing bullets into it and it will do damage to enemies when it runs into them.
Themes and Tone
Straight forward themes of overcoming adversity though adding new rules
Design Inspirations
Inspired visually by margin doodles in high school notebooks.
Mechanically, this project is inspired by Gradius/Parogus style horizontal scrolling SHMUPS and the Drawn to Life series.
Core Mechanics
The player has 8 way movement and access to an autofire, they shoot bullets right from their current position.
The player hitbox is just the head of the character they’re playing as, with the primary location for their bullets slightly below and infront of that due to the character’s pose.
When defeating any enemy the player will fill up a bar of drawing power, which they can use to pause the screen and draw an object starting from their current location.
Objects the player draws can be pushed with player and enemy bullets, enemies pushed offscreen are instantly defeated.
Scope Hope
Add enemies that can draw elements onto the screen also.
Make sure you can encapsulate an enemy in drawing and when they shoot it pushes the object, and thus itself, off screen
Various styles of lines that have extra effects, like a prism that doesn’t move when shot but repeats shots fired into it, or a firewall that does a lot more contact damage to enemies.
Visual Design
Leaning into various sketchy designs and hand drawn styles.
Current prototypes has the background of a scanned scrunched up bit of lines paper and all enemy elements were drawn on paper and then scanned in.