Serious Games

Inspirations

Inspirations for mechanics:

Jedi Fallen Order - Parrying

• One of the best ways to counter attacks in Fallen Order is by parrying.

• When executing a parry, the slowdown animation is very satisfying for the player.

• While parrying is a common component in many combat-oriented games, I particularly found timing in Fallen Order intuitive and consistent.

• All of the enemies in Fallen Order can be parried and the game communicates clearly when an attack is not parryable. Other games sometimes involve more guesswork regarding whether moves or enemies are parryable at all, and what the timing is for each individual attack.

Doom - Glory Kills for Health

• In the Doom reboots, when enemies are low on HP the player can get close to their opponent and perform a “glory kill”.

• Executing a glory kill causes health packs to drop from the corpse, which are scaled based on player HP: if players are in critical condition the packs restore more health. This encourages players to fight aggressively and take risks getting close to their opponents, even when low on health.

• On Ultra Violence and Nightmare mode, this can become instrumental to player survival, as health packs and stations are not plentiful in certain areas.

• Glory kill animations are extremely gratuitous and satisfying for the player, and there are even weapon point achievements earned from exploring the variety of glory kill types, which makes this mechanic even more rewarding.

Hollow Knight - Damaging Enemies to Heal

• Bloodborne’s revenge mechanic, where quickly hitting enemies after taking an attack would reward some health back, inspired the developers of Hollow Knight to take a similar approach to player health. In Hollow Knight, hitting enemies gives the player “soul”, a resource that can cast spells or heal the player.

• Damaging enemies fills a little of the soul meter at a time, and healing with soul is one of the few ways in the game to regain health.

• This encourages players to not be skittish during boss fights. Focusing only on dodging will not give players healing resources, and prolonging fights is a poor strategy because players eventually make mistakes.

Fromsoftware Games - Damage Over Time, Seppuku

• In Elden Ring there are many types of damage that are common across other RPGs, some of which are status ailments that inflict damage over time. Elden Ring has many status effects under this category, such as poison or scarlet rot.

• Demon’s Souls has a bleed status effect that functions like poison, but in later Fromsoftware games the bleed status changed: after enough successive hits, the bloodloss meter fills and damage hemorrhages all at once instead of over time.

• Combining the bleed mechanic from Demon’s Souls with the aesthetic and abilities of the bloodloss Ashes of War from Elden Ring would be interesting. One Ash of War in particular, Seppuku, is compelling due to the player having to sacrifice some of their own health in order to charge up their weapon’s bleed potency.

Thematic Inspirations

• Hyper Light Drifter

  • Fruitless fight for a cure, deterioration of main character as plot progresses

• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

  • Journey to Underworld to fight a goddess

  • Finds peace in the end/bittersweet conclusion

• Character Archetypes

  • Silent protagonist

  • Sisyphus

  • Prometheus

  • Agni (Fire Punch)

  • Ethan Winters (RE8)

Aesthetic Inspirations:

Character Aesthetic Inspirations:

Weapon Ideas:

• Dual Daggers

  • Fast

  • Normal Damage

  • Normal Bloodspray amount

  • Short Range

  • Easy parry timing

• Razerblade Whips

  • Fast

  • Normal Damage

  • Low Bloodspray amount

  • Long Range

  • Hard parry timing

    • Maybe parrying will pull enemies in and chain execution up close, where normal or large Bloodspray reward can happen

• Chainsaw

  • Slow

  • Large Damage

  • Large Bloodspray amount

  • Medium Range

  • Medium parry timing

Equipped Abilities Ideas:

• Barbed Wire Heart Monitor

  • Completely stops bleed + damage taken for 10 seconds by causing the heart to stop pumping blood, but when effect wears off Player will take 100% more bleed and damage for 10 seconds

• Blood Boil

  • Blood will fester and spit out from body, injuring enemies nearby, but player will bleed 50% faster

Environment Ideas:

• Blood Waterfalls

  • Healing and Saving

  • Transition from areas

• Tendon Bridge

• Respawn Pools

• Palace

NPC Ideas:

• Merchant

Enemy Ideas:

• Blood Goddess (Final Boss)

Feeling Ideas:

• Brutality

• Grueling

• Uphill battle

• Loss

Game Economy Ideas:

• Blood clots as money

• Exchanged with merchant for upgrades and items

Difficulty Scaling:

• Easy, Medium, Hard

  • How much damage enemies deal

  • How fast character bleeds

  • Aggressiveness of AI

• Player Stats Upgrades

  • Amount of max health

  • Some sort bodily upgrade, deals bigger damage to enemies

Design Document