What do I need?

[CrackedGamer§]

So I have been working on a top down game. My friend said that he could make a more efficient engine and wanted me to make a list of everything I want in the game.

Player
Movement
8 - axis Movement (controller / keyboard)
Dash (damages half of normal meele damage)
Sprint

Attacks
Throwing knives (shatter on impact, possibly just dissapear)
Sword (lvl 1 stab, other levels swing)

Misc.
Take damage from enemies


Enemies
AI
Move towards player but walk around solid objects
Stop for 1 sec after attack

So my question is basically: "What do you want from a Top-Down Exploration Game?"

 

[Nick Kiley]

Isn't this a design question? And, well, it's gonna be really difficult for us to tell you what you want, because only you could know that.

 

[CrackedGamer§]

Isn't this a design question? And, well, it's gonna be really difficult for us to tell you what you want, because only you could know that.

Well yeah but I should probably rephrase the question, "what do you want from a Top-Down Exploration Game?"

 

[Niels]

You want art, sound, a theme, code and level design.

 

[CreatorAtNight]

I'm making a top-down game myself right now, I would say smart artwork that actually shows you what you are looking at. Top-down can make it hard to see what's happening as we are not used to see stuff only from above.

 

[CrackedGamer§]

You want art, sound, a theme, code and level design.

Can you be more specific about "A Theme" do you mean a song theme or just that the game should feel like it has it's own theme?

 

[Gamebot]

The game should have its own theme, characters and style.

No matter what you choose its more importamt to stick with this theme and same style. In other words dont make a pirate game without pirates. Nor should you play an entire game to only find them at the end. Dead or alive.

If your using pixel art, stick with it. Dont use pixel art, realistic, cell shading, hand drawn and 3d as a 2d image. Please!

Personally though I Iike exploration and the ability to see different places/cultures ect. The ability to be fooled by thinking I can go somewhere but find I need a key or do something else first. Spooky or creepy would be an awesome top down if you can come up with some cool stuff...without the cheep jump scares. Thanks to many movies and games that spawn we just arent scared anymore.

 

[CrackedGamer§]

Well, my biggest inspirations are Pokemon and Fallout. So I plan to make a HUGE world that will take time to explore with nine different "areas" all with different enemies, loot & decorations. So I want a lot of exploration

 

[CreatorAtNight]

Do you have any experience with making games? I get a strong feeling this will be your first game? A very common mistake people make is that they have a really ambitious idea for a game but don't have any understanding of how to make a game. It makes it easy to think of a complex/big game idea without knowing how much work it will be. You refer to Pokemon and Fallout. Those are really big games made by big teams. I would suggest to make a super tiny game first, like pong. And before you start you think of how much time it will take you to make it, and when you're done compare it with the actual time it took you. That will teach you a lot about how long it takes to make games.

I'm not trying to take away your motivation, I'm trying to make you aware of how big of a project you're thinking of. Try to start small and build out your knowledge and skills. This will make it so at some point you can actually start working on your ambitious idea. If you try to go for the big project now you will find yourself frustrated soon and you might never finish it because you get stuck.

 

[Niels]

Can you be more specific about "A Theme" do you mean a song theme or just that the game should feel like it has it's own theme?

Every game should have a theme, because it's what seperate them...
For example you can have 3 racing games with the same basic mechanics but still have 3 different games if you pick 3 themes.
-tiny cars in improvised racetracks around the house
-racing in different time periods(from dinosaur age to the far future).
-racing in an distopian post-apocalyptic world