2009/02/05

Game Idea Giveaway - Bubblebomb

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by venomblood:
  • what sort of game idea you're looking for
    Shooting, action, evolution, strategy
  • what your goals are in making this game
    A game that brings a new idea to the internet, with unique emotions, themes, and gameplay
  • what games you've made already
    TopDownShooters, Sidescrolling shooting games, life simulator, card game, puzzle game, minuscule platform experience
  • your favorite Flash games
    Games that entertain me from the beginning, and possess a consistent style. The gameplay element of "shooting"
  • your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
    Game design = %60, Programming = %80, Art = %60, Sound = %50, in terms of how well I am with them
  • your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
    Prefer making a game involving coding. I prefer to avoid animation/sound/art as a required part of the main gameplay. I also would like to avoid physics based games for coding purposes.

The weird idea: Selexion

The normal idea: Bubblebomb

In short, the concept is top-down arena shooter plus match-three bubble popper (like Puzzle Bobble). Instead of shooting normal bullets, you shoot colored balls that stick to your opponents and accumulate Katamari-style on their bodies. When a ball hits, if it creates a group of three or more adjacent balls of the same color, those balls explode, dealing damage to the opponent they're attached to. Any balls that get detached are then sucked back toward that opponent so that they reattach, possibly setting off more explosions that do even more damage. The strategy of setting up combos of explosions just from one shot is exactly the gameplay of most match-three casual games, motivated by impressive score multipliers (in this case damage multipliers) for each subsequent explosion in the chain reaction.

I had originally imagined this as a simple multiplayer arena game, where each player is running around with a bunch of colored balls on their back, trying to trigger explosions on the other players while avoiding getting shot themselves. However, I think it could work equally well as a single player game, with waves of different types of enemies, and bosses and such. Enemies could vary in their base body shapes, resistance to certain colors of balls, shooting pattern and bullet type, movement pattern and speed, and of course the basics like health and armor. Bosses might be able to shake off or clear balls from their bodies, in addition being bigger and stronger and having more advanced AI. Hey, if you want, you could even have the enemies evolve in a simple genetic algorithm-ish way, since you're interested in evolution. Let me know if you want ideas on that.

I can imagine lots of possibilities for powerups, special abilities and upgrades. The concept is pretty easily extensible, and would be compatible with most special abilities found in normal shooting games. One simple variation I'd add to the player's arsenal is the ability to lay down balls like mines, instead of just shooting them, which would attach to whatever runs into them and possibly trigger an explosion like a normal bullet ball. There's also the question of whether the ball bullets bounce off walls and objects or whether they'd stick. Maybe certain objects would be sticky, or instead maybe certain weapons would shoot bouncy balls. There's also the question of how ball color is determined. If it's like most match-three games, the color of the next ball would be randomly chosen, displayed prominently perhaps at the end of the player's gun. Often, the color of the second ball is also shown, to help the player plan ahead, and also so that there can be a special button that will swap the current and next ball color. If you'd like to go with this idea, I'd recommend downloading and trying out a bunch of free demos of casual games in the match-three genre. Let me know if you want recommendations.

Want an idea? Make a request on The Game Idea Giveaway Thread!

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