When starting out any game project, even one on a shortened timeline of 30 days, it’s best to start out with a plan. You need to define what it is you’re building and most importantly what it is you’re NOT building. This helps to keep things on track and avoid feature creep. To start out it’s best to define the game at a high-level with the Design Pillars, Major Systems, and Art Style.
Design Pillars
Design Pillars help us define the type of game and experience we want to create for the player. These pillars will help inform our Major Systems and Art Style since we can use them as reference points when deciding what fits within the game and what does not.
1. Familiar RPG Experience in a Bite Sized Package
For this game I want to deliver to the player a very familiar RPG experience, with an intriguing story, lots of quests to undertake, tons of loot to find, and hordes of enemies to defeat. However, we’re on a tight schedule so we need to be able to boil that experience down to its essential parts and nothing else.
2. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
To help facilitate the epic experience we want to deliver in Pillar 1, I will be making liberal use of game systems and assets which can make a little bit of content go a long way. Every system and piece of content will be designed with the intention that it can be reused and repurposed in a multitude of ways quickly and easily.
3. Simple Turn-Based Combat System
A turn-based combat system will be easier to implement with less moving parts. Part of this is a personal preference, since classic JRPGs with turn-based combat systems are the type of Role Playing Game I’m most fond of, but it will be more manageable in the end.
4. The ONE Hook
It’s not enough to just deliver an RPG in 30 days, there has to be some kind of fresh (or at least fresh to me) hook on the gameplay. I’m not sure what this is yet, but as the game comes together over the next 30 days I hope to find it. This pillar may seem a bit ambiguous given my earlier talk of keeping the project on track and avoiding feature creep, but the intent here is to let myself discover something unique during the course of development. Once I’ve discovered ONE and ONLY ONE potential hook, I’ll be doubling down and locking that idea in and avoiding any further additions to the game plan.
Major Systems
With the Design Pillars established we can now decide on the major game systems that will need to be implemented. For this project I’ve identified 3 major game systems that I will allot roughly 1 week of development time for, giving myself 1 final week for buffer and polish. These systems are: Combat, Exploration, and Town Hub.
Combat
In Combat the player will fight various enemies in turn-based battles. Defeating Enemies will award the player Gold to spend in the Town Hub, as well as Experience to level up their Characters.
Exploration
In Exploration the player will explore a labyrinthine Dungeon. In the Dungeon the player will randomly encounter Enemies and enter into Combat. They will also be able to find Treasure and complete Quests.
Town Hub
In the Town Hub the player can find new Quests that can be given to them by a Villager. Quests are the main way the player advances the game’s story. The player can also find in the Town Hub Item Shops where can spend their Gold on Consumable Items or Equipment.
Art Style
I am no artist, so I will be making use of freely available art assets as a base for my art style. For this project I will be using Tiny Town and Tiny Dungeon from Kenney – Free Game Assets. I love the pixel art style in these assets and they should be easy enough for me to build off of with recolours or other additions. If you like them as much as I do, feel free to give Kenny some love and support.
With the high-level Creative Direction of the project establish, I will be moving on to the design and implementation of the Combat System. Stay tuned!