Chaos. That’s the theme of the contest. I was pretty excited to participate in it, the last game jam was so much fun but too short to really make a game from start to finish.

I’m not into action games and, at first, chaos suggests action games but that’s not necessarily true, I can think of counter examples like Infectionator. There’s a game that easily fits the theme and it’s not action oriented, the gameplay consists of strategically choosing a start position for the virus and then watching chaos unfold. However, even if I can think of counter examples, I can’t come up with something interesting that fits the theme and it’s not an action game. That I like, that is. I was (and might still change my mind) thorn between two ideas:

You are the boss of a level from a bullet hell space ship game. In essense, its gameplay is close to a tower defence, the “players” (not the real player) come and you (the real player) have to destroy them by placing lazers and weapons, choosing attack pattern, just like bossess in these games. Everyone thought the theme was going to be bullet hell, so I started cooking this idea around that before the contest. Luckily it still fits the chaos theme, any bullet hell game fits the chaos theme! I hate bullet hell games! Anyway, I’m not that fond of the idea, even though it would not be an action game.

The idea that won my interest is a platform game. In this game the player is constantly being targeted by npcs with machine guns, helicopters etc, as long as he is moving he can’t get hit. That’s an important rule. That’s how I always thought Mirror’s Edge should be, by the way. There’s another thing, the whole place is destructable and, with everyone shooting at you, I expect that to lead to some interesting morphing scenary gameplay. That’s the mechanics, the context is a generic action hero that needs to go from A to B without dying in the process. I thought a cliché phrase would be a fun title for the game :)

I always had this fantasy of a platform game completely dynamic, where everything can be destroyed, constantly changing the configuration of the platforms. But it’s a raw idea that alone doesn’t make a game, it needed something more, and I think it works well with the other rules implying that the player can’t stop moving. It’s a damn hard technical challenge though, I started toying with Unity today to analize the possible approaches, like rigidbody player or not. Let’s see what comes out of it :)