Zorok Game Concept Log

Zorok (Working title) Devlog 1

Game Statement:

Zorok is a combination of the best elements from the SNES era platformers. Zorok will bring nostalgia to those early platformers you remember as a kid like super Metroid and Castlevania. I believe the most important mechanics in a platformer is the movement and combat so Zorok will focus on those while having an exploration element to the game. Zorok will have a power up system that consists of main weapon change, shields and consumable weapons which will be found across the level and consumables can be purchased in between levels but collecting another Consumable will wipe the current one.

Genre:

Zorok will be a platformer is a more sci-fi oriented world.

Concept creation:

Zorok started with my love for SNES style platformers. Zorok is going to be a mash up of many SNES games with both style and features. With games like Super Turrican and Mega Man being massively influential on the style of games I like to play. I started with Super Turrican's Character model

and wanted to create a world in a similar art style (as close as I can replicate) and bring features from other games in. I took Darius Twin  

and The Turrican series

Art style (And I want to Try to base the music off them but we will see if I get to that). I want to implement the shooting mechanics from both Super Metroid (Being able to open doors by shooting them with a certain power up and being able to break blocks to find things)

and Super Turrican (I want to replicate the style of Turricans shooting, The way the bullets "feel" and how the power up system works).

My level design will be based off mostly a mix of Castlevania's exploration, Megamans Platforming and Super Metroids Movement and explorations style. 

These are the general ideas but they are just what platformers I enjoy and ill try to keep to. It might become too much so it may get stripped back a little but we will see.

Audience

Retro gaming has had a massive boom over the last few years and with the rerelease of classic "Retro" games a new franchise with the same styling would be received very well especially if its quite challenging and has lots of rewards and maybe a high score which people can compare they would be an "Enthusiast" market as well as the casual players who enjoy retro platformers (Lots of the NES and SNES users on Switch). 

I feel as if I haven't seen a proper platformer in this vain for a while and with the lack of really good games releasing at the moment I believe it would have a market and would fit in with the switches ecosystem very well with the Indie platform it is.

I have started to draw assets and different parts of the game  (https://imgur.com/a/1YpmcWC This is all the things ive drawn including some rough level ideas i drew when explaining the game to someone) Im planning to try and make paralax backgrounds (

from this tutorial) and ive decided to make my backgrounds into layers. the Mechanical background would be a slice of this that would move along with the camera. I'm hoping that theme can make it across the 3-4 levels i plan to make but im unsure if ill have the time or technical ability to do that. 

From the Early sketch of the level design I want to create a lot of verticality through my game with lots of exploration being venture in one direction and complete an objective e.g. collect this power up or get this many x and then come back through a different route to the place you were originally where a new area can now be accessed. I dont want back tracking in the sense of walk the exact same path the player just went but instead I want to create a new way to get back to where the player started. I havnt exactly decided the best way to do this yet but for each level/ puzzle it will be different.

I want a wide array of enemies but i also want enemies who have different variants with both their personalities and they attack changing and maybe differing health and shields.  I want to create 4 classes of enemies, wanderers who walk back and forth like gombas, flying enemies who can swoop down on the player, shooting enemies who target and attack the player and then bosses. I would love to make intricate boss battles but I might just add fancy "Cut scenes" and have them just attack.