Hey you!

My name is Sebastian and I am the project lead for ”Rhythm, Paper, Scissors”. The game is a school project for us second year students at “Dataspelsutveckling Design, Scripting & Programmering” in Skövde. We are a small team consisting of four students, each with their own individual goals with this project. Two designers, two programmers and eight weeks to make the game. Since the basic idea behind the game was mine I’ve had to take in what the others wanted to learn during this project and adjust my vision accordingly.

What RPS was first meant to be

“Rhythm, Paper, Scissors” was first intended to be a 2D side-scrolling metroidvania-game. The character would encounter rock-, scissor- and paper type of enemies that could only be defeated by attacking them with an attack that fits their weakness. Later in the game you would encounter enemies that could change their type or have multiple types at once.

All the action would take place in real time like most 2D side-scrollers do. The twist would be that you have to attack in sync with the beat of the soundtrack. The power of your attacks would vary depending on which beat you choose to attack on. Stronger attacks could be charged on the first or the third beat while weaker attacks could be dished out on the second or fourth beat. If you would be too far off from the beat you would not deal any damage at all.

On the eighth notes in between the beat (visualized with green color) enemies would give a hint about what kind of attack they would use on the next beat. Thus giving the player a chance to defend herself against the incoming attack.

The player character would later in the game have to learn new attacks in order to advance. Maybe the scissor could become a motor saw, the rock could become anything from a spring to a wrecking ball and the paper might be upgraded to a parachute or a paraglider to reach new areas and defeat new kinds of enemies.

What RPS is going to be

Some of these ideas have already been evolving into something slightly different while other ideas have been completely scrapped to better fit the whole team’s vision. The game is no longer going to be neither a side-scroller nor a metroidvania kind of game.

To better fit some of the individual goals we have in the team we’ve decided to make the game with a top-down perspective instead. Similar to The Binding of Isaac and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past – and Crypt of The Necrodancer. A game that I actually never had heard of before starting to work on this project a week ago. My fellow team members showed me the game and now I guess we have some work to do to separate us from that game.

We’ve also decided on a more fitting setting to go with the new perspective: The school yard! Here you’ll battle your way up the hierarchy by beating other students in Rock, Paper, Scissors. Face off with pupils at the Lower Level of Compulsory School and hone your skills to be able to beat far older pupils and students. Eventually you might even face off with your teachers or the headmaster.

Enemies won’t hunt you down unless you move somewhat close to them. If you enter their attention zone (visualized with yellow in the following picture) they’ll start hunting you. If you’re inside the attack zone they’ll start attacking you to the beat of the music.

If the player would lose a battle it doesn’t lose Health Points per se. At this point in time we are planning to implement a Respect meter that will increase or decrease regarding of your battle outcome. Some enemies won’t even bother fighting you if your respect level would be too low so make sure to make the best out of every battle opportunity.

As you can see, the project has already taken quite a few turns and it’s only been a few days. It’s important to be open for change as it’s inevitable anyway. Being stubborn and forcing your original idea in a group project like this won’t help anyone. I feel it’s better to adjust so that everyone feels like they’re contributing and working for something that they feel is fun to create.

It usually takes a while for a group to unite and our journey is still young. The game is however already getting input from all our team members and it’s slowly starting to feel like we’re uniting our visions in a good way. We have a long way to go, still, but conceptually we’re off to a good start.

Next time I’ll talk more about the music aspect of the game and how that’s going so far.