Design Document: Dracula's Castle Part 2

Feature Set

General Features

• Become a Monster- Complex and meaningful "morality system" that affects the game in fun and interesting ways based upon decisions made during game-play.
• It's a Scary World Out There- Persistent world consisting of Dracula's Castle, the manor town surrounding it, and the immediate environs of the Transylvania countryside.
• Lord of the Night- The climax of the game is the show-down with Dracula himself, but he doesn't fight fair. He summons his cronies and henchmen, boss fights in their own right, to his aide during the ultimate confrontation. However the player can seek them out beforehand and deal with them individually, or take all comers in Dracula's throne room. All the decisions the player has made up to this point will provide noticeable changes to how the battle progresses. In any case the final fight is sure to be an epic battle.
• The Dead Travel Fast- The game world is easy to navigate and explore. Characters can fast travel back to key areas, or return instantly to the place they died in their previous life, or choose to return to their home base.
• Death Comes Easy- Simple controls, combat consists of two buttons and the right analogue stick. Camera controlled by the left analogue stick, gives player control of view of the battle.

Multi-player Features

• Team Up To Take Evil Down- 2 player mode that lets players join a friend to take on Dracula together.
• The Enemy of My Enemy- Alternatively one player could play with the controls of an Evil character and one of a Good, and fight both Dracula and each other to see who comes out on top.

Game-play

• Light and Darkness- Players are given prompts in game, not in a cut-scene or dialogue tree for moral choices that affect how the game progresses. Does the player attempt to flee the angry villagers who are afraid of his monstrous form without doing damage? Or do they cut a bloody swath through the torch and pitchfork wielding crowd with their demonic power? Issues of morality should constantly come up through game-play that never leave the player entirely comfortable. For example, even "good" players have to suck blood from innocents to regain health, but must be careful not to drink too much lest they kill the innocent victim. Likewise "evil" actions lead to greater gains of power in the short term, but have obvious negative effects in the future. A "good" player can still transform into the monstrous vampire form, and the "evil" player can still use the vampire hunter tools a good player utilizes, just to a lesser degree for each.
• Things That Go Bump In the Night- The game will feature many "boss battles" with it's main focus being the final boss battle with Dracula at the end. Each boss will offer different and interesting tactical options, with a variety of different game-play possibilities for each encounter. By focusing in on a few complex and interesting enemies, instead of having the main focus killing hordes of smaller, simpler foes, we engage the players interest a great deal more and separate ourselves from other games in the market.
• Blood Lust- Controls are quick and intuitive. It's the same light attack heavy attack format seen before in other games, but light attacks are just tapping "Square" and heavy attacks are holding it down, this free up other buttons for jumping and using items. The strength on the heavy attack is based on how long the player holds the button down for, so the player can do more damage by getting into the rhythm of the opponents attacks, and striking just before it is about to.
• Explore- Platforming levels encourage exploration while blue orbs of "St. George's Fire" let players know their are secrets to be found.
• The Quick and the Dead- The game world is designed to be accessible to players interested in exploring the world. Players can return to the "hubs" of different area's to explore certain parts of the game world at their leisure, by simply pausing the game and selecting the place they'd like to travel to.
• The Hour is Drawing Nigh- Many difficultly modes. Normal difficulty is a standard game, the player fights, dies, and returns to the last check point, (their will be mid-boss fight check-points). Hard mode gives you a time limit of saving yourself from the vampires curse before the next full moon in 28 game "days." When a player dies in game, it rises the next morning by it's grave, (or last check point if they so choose), having lost a day, if all 28 days elapse before Dracula is killed, Game Over. Extreme gives the player only an in game week to slay the the Count. In all game modes a persistent day/night cycle changes the world and game-play in important ways.
• A Killing Machine- Over the course of the game the player has the opportunity to gain either Vampire Powers or Vampire Hunter Tools by completing boss battles. These upgrades will expand the tactical options available to the player and generally make them more effective in combat. Gaining these power-ups are critical to improving the players chances in the fight against Dracula.
• Whenever You Are Ready- At any time during the game, the player can decide they are strong enough to attempt to kill Dracula and storm his castle. It is recommended that a player try and stack the odds in his favor by gaining upgrades and killing Dracula's henchmen throughout the town and in the castle before the confrontation with him, but ultimately the decision is up to the player when to fight the Vampire Lord. Everything the player does up until the fight will have a noticeable affect on the final battle, so the player must consider his actions prior to battle very carefully.

This concludes part 2 of the design document, the features list. I know it seems like this is all pie in the sky fancy, and not to mention totally ignorant of the realities of actually making a game. The reason why most games don't implement many of the features I outline here are probably due to the practical realities of the medium. So why write this design document for a game I don't have the resources to produce at all?

For two reasons, first these pure thought exercises serve as a carrot to get me in the habit of writing this blog. Secondly implementing all these features in one package might be impossible, but writing out all of the possible ways they could be implemented might give me an idea on how to implement the feature for a game that is within my scope. This blog can also serve as a common place book, and I can look back on this when I (God willing) gave the resources of a large game studio behind me and try to pick up the idea then.

Also I seem to have a very liberal definition of when "Friday" is, as we are now a half hour into Saturday. Please forgive the oversight, you would not believe the week I'm having, but this isn't Live Journal, so I won't trouble you with this here. I promise to be more punctual in the future.