GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT Travis Watkins Game Design Documentation-ITGM-706-OL SCAD | Spring 2018 | Professor Gregory Johnson 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 4 Player Characters 29 Game Treatment 5 Judd Bender 30 Presentation 6 Holly Dillon 31 Development 6 Layne Collins 32 General Goal 7 Sarah Lowe 33 General Gameplay 7 Chet Cruz 34 Core Features 8 Non Player Characters 35 Game Flow 9 Alien Scout 36 Play Mode 10 Alien Commander 36 Game Saves 10 Alien Drone 37 Introduction or Recap 10 Principle Vincent 37 Day Phase Character Select 11 Dan Hicks 37 Day Phase 12 Swayze 37 Night Phase Character and Location Select 13 Night Phase 14 Setting 38 The Town of Fairfield 39 Game Mechanics 15 Misc Places 41 Day and Night Phase Movement System 16 Night Phase Character Select Map System 17 Level Outline: Episode One 42 Time 17 Goals and Victory Conditions 43 Noise 18 Prologue 43 Interactions 19 Chapter One 44 Story Events 21 Chapter Two 47 Player Character Attributes 23 Chapter Three 50 Stat Modifiers 24 Chapter Four 53 Items for Consumption or Use 25 Chapter Five 56 Crafting 27 Combat 27 NPC Alien Tactics 28 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED) Level Document Example 60 Appendix I: Marketplace Analysis 83 Setup 61 Target Audience 84 Objective 61 This War Of Mine 85 Reward 61 The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series 86 Quest Start 61 Thimbleweed Park 87 Chapter Three: Night Phase: Invade the 62 XCOM: Enemy Unknown 88 Farcry 3: Blood Dragon 89 Basic Interfaces 66 Southpark: The Fractured But Whole 90 Main Menu 67 Fallout Shelter 91 Introduction OR Recap 68 Day Phase Character Selection 69 Sources 92 Day Phase Interface 70 Character Interactions 71 Important Conversations Interface 72 Crafting Interface 73 Night Phase Character Select Map Interaface 74 Character Load Out Interface 75 Night Scavenge Interface 76 Night Combat Interface 77 Searched Interface 78 Night Recap Interface 79 Start Menu Button 80 Settings Interface 81 Controller Scheme 82 Illustration By: Michael LaRiccia 3 INTRODUCTION 4 INTRODUCTION In Night of the Saucers you do not play as a heroic one man army trying to save the day; instead you play as a group of teens trying to survive an alien invasion. They not only struggle with the hostile alien threat but also with their teenage angst. The game provides a new horror RPG survival experience built on love and war in the 80s. Night of the Saucers is an episodic survival-themed strategy game with adventure RPG elements. The player controls a group of high school students who were stuck in detention when aliens attacked and took over their city. Now the students are taking it upon themselves to take the city back. Game Treatment Night of the Saucers is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. Those stories about kids overcoming their insecurities to achieve something thought to be impossible. Whether that be the nerdy kid getting the most popular girl in school to fall in love with him, or the class criminal rising to the occasion to save his schoolmates from alien annihilation. It fits right in with the 80s pop culture trend that has exploded recently, thanks in part to Netflix’s Stranger Things. However, rather than simply watching how the relationships unfold, the player will have a say in the matter. They will choose how to navigate teen angst and testosterone. They will need to help their characters navigate love and loss, together with life and death, in this new world ruled by alien invaders. Fig 1: The Breakfast Club Fig 2: Red Dawn Fig 3: The Goonies 5 INTRODUCTION Presentation The visual presentation of Night of the Saucers will be cartoon comic book-like, similar to cartoons from the 70s and 80s, like Scooby Doo, G.I. Joe, and Jonny Quest. But, it will be updated to have the neon 80s retro design that is currently popular in style. Fig 4: Scooby Doo Fig 5: G.I. Joe A Real American Hero Fig 6: Jonny Quest The soundtrack and sound design will be heavily inspired by horror movie soundtracks of the 80s, leaning heavily on the synthwave revival currently happening thanks to Stranger Things, bringing back inspired sounds from composers such as John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, and Goblin. Technology, items, and objects will be the cool trendy stuff of the 80s. For example, players will get power ups from wearing headbands, leg warmers, and weightlifting gloves. A character might find comfort from a walkman and cassette tape. To escape the aliens, the students might steal a ride in a Trans Am. The game will ooze with 80s nostalgia. Development Night of the Saucers will be designed for Xbox One and PS4. It will be built using a multiplatform engine similar to the one created for This War of Mine. 6 INTRODUCTION General Goal The main goal of the game is to defeat the current alien threat while keeping as many of the teens alive as possible. General Gameplay Using the High School as their base of operation, the player will need to venture out with their teens into the city to find supplies, gather information, and execute plans. The pace of Night of the Saucers is imposed byDay and Night Phases. During the day, aliens patrol the city preventing the teens from venturing too far; this gives them time to devise plans, craft items, and care for each other. At night, one teen can go on a mission to find supplies and carry out plans at set unique places in the city. Once the Night is over, the game progresses to the next Day. 7 INTRODUCTION Core Features Choices Matter: What you say and do effects your future as well as those around you. • The player starts off with five students to control. The choices the player makes with the students will change how they act towards each other. This affects how the student will perform during events as well as how they perform with their group. • Players will need to make life-and death decisions driven by their hearts and brains. They will need to try to protect everyone in the group, but as relationships become more intertwined tough decisions will be forced upon the player. Episodic: Like a comic book or tv show story arc, the game’s narrative unfolds over multiple episodes. The choices you make will send you off through a branching story tree with different outcomes. • Each episode contains 5 parts where the player will have to make an important decision, choosing from limited options available. These decisions will affect each student as well as the narrative. Chance: Players will be placed in situations where they will have a to risk themselves in order to gain advantage over the aliens. The game play style puts the focus on relationship group decisions rather than the direct actions of an individual’s performance. This is in direct contrast to traditional first person shooter, and 3rd person action game narratives. Moods: A character’s mood changes throughout the game which effects their attributes and how they perform in the game. This can give them greater odds of success in tense situations or push them closer to a deathly result. • Playing as fickle emotional teens with raging hormones, the player will need to provide constant intervention in order to keep the students alive. It’s up to the player to maintain their characters’ health and mood levels while building towards the episode’s win condition. 8 GAME FLOW 9 GAME FLOW Play Mode Night of the Saucers is a Single Player Episodic Game. New Episodes will be released as downloadable content in the form of updates to the existing game. Game Saves The game will automatically save at the completion of each day and night. Introduction OR Recap From either starting a new game of continuing a game from the Main Menu, the player will first be treated by either a brief introduction cutscene that sets the story for the beginning of the game or if this is a continuation from a previously saved game it will play a brief recap of what happened in the last play session. This will resemble a clip segment of things that happened on a previous episode of a TV show. 10 GAME FLOW (CONTINUED) Day Phase Character Select Before the player begins the Day Phase, they will need to select their character that they will be playing as for this particular Day. This being an homage to 80s movies it would not be complete with out exploring the viewpoints of each character. The Night of the Saucers does this is by limiting the player to only using one character at a time, and then that character cannot be used again until all other characters have been used. This makes each member of the Brunch Bunch equally valuable and forces the story to be experienced from different emotional viewpoints. • Pink outline is the one the player is selecting. • White outline means they are available to play as, but the player has not selected them. • The PC that the Player played as before is colored in teal and is not available to be play as again until all of characters have been used. • Deceased player characters (PC) remain on the menu but are greyed out and not selectable. 11 GAME FLOW (CONTINUED) Day Phase When a place or building is visited, it is shown and interacted with through a 2D profile street view that resembles a cross-sectional cut dollhouse, with the player navigating the environment through the students.