Game Mechanics How to make a game deeper?

[Conradical]

Hey everyone! I've been making this game called Shuriken, and I really like the core idea, but am struggling to find a way to make the gameplay more rich. You can find a video of some gameplay here.

So in short, you control the ninja with the 4 directional keys and the spacebar. The directional keys are used to throw shurikens in those 4 directions, while the spacebar is used as a kind of "block". If running enemies hit you while you are crouching due to spacebar, they die. However, if enemies touch you, or you throw a shuriken that doesn't hit an enemy, you lose 5 seconds, out of the 30 you have to get the highest score possible. Also, the more enemies you hit consequently in a certain period of time, the brighter the "combostone" shines, and thus, the more points you get every time you kill an enemy. This adds a risk-reward dynamic into the game, since you want to go as fast as possible to get as many points as you can, but you don't wanna go too fast and miss your shots.

Despite all of this, I still feel like the game gets a bit stale quite quick. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[McWolke]

how about a "ultimate" bar which fills up a bit with every enemy you killed? once it's full, you can press a key to activate it and you kill every enemy on screen and maybe get a powerup for 3 seconds where you shoot in every direction?

or some other enemies, some that need to be hit more than once, which also look, well, "tanky" or fat or an enemy which can shoot with a bow or something like that which needs to be killed first, otherwise he might hit you, which would "stun" you? or loose you some time or points?

or you could add some different modes, like "arcade" which would be infinite time, until you get hit once. or a story mode, where you got different levels and a story, of course.

maybe some boss fights? where you gotta figure out a mechanic, like someone who duplicates himself and you gotta find the right one, which you can find by looking at the animation or something thats out of sync

 

[RangerX]

The feeling I have is that besides the score logic, everything is stale.
Here are some suggestions, things I would like to have in that game if I was playing it:

- The hero ninja could move inside some area in the middle of screen instead of staying in one spot. This could open up your gameplay much since the player now needs to manage position/movement
- Power ups! By making nice combos, power ups could appear at random position in the box. The player would move to touch-collect it. This is a pandora's box here. Different shots could affect mobs differently, affect the movement of the player, the rate of the shot, the spread, etc.
- Different types of enemies. Here again, total pandora's box you would open there. Instead of being all lined up, they could have a couple of different positions (like 3 positions per sides of the hero box or something). They could have different attacks, long, short, different spread, etc. Some melee some shooting, etc.