GZJ Game Design
The Ship of Theseus
ROLE Designer
DESCRIPTION
The Ship of Theseus is a Horizontal shooting game. Inspired by the ancient Greek philosophical fable of the Ship of Theseus, the game provides two rounds of gameplay. The ship that the players fly at the beginning of the game is rudimentary. Over the course of the first round, players are given multiple opportunities to update their ship. These upgrades will help the player navigate through the game, but in the final boss fight, the player will find that the boss has the ability to take the their upgraded parts. At the end of the first round, the player loses the boss fight because they lose all their weapons. In order to achieve the true ending, players need to hone their skills over the course of the second round and then defeat the boss with their original weapon at the end. The game is a work in progress.
Date
2022/6
Platform
PC
CONCEPT
If the wood on Theseus' ship was gradually replaced until none of the wood was the same, would the ship still be the same ship? Inspired by this classic question, I decided to design a game. In this game, the player is faced with a choice -- do you install all the powerful mechanical equipment on the ship, or do you stay the way you are and overcome the obstacles through your own abilities? The upgraded equipment is powerful, but when every part of the player's ship is upgraded, the player loses his or her own strength, and it is difficult to fight against the boss who are more compatible with mechanical parts.
GAMEPLAY
Beginning:Handmade Space Ship
During the first round, the player's attention was riveted by the exaggerated upgrades and changes in attack mode. The player receives upgrades to the cannon, arm, and leg in turn. With each upgrade comes an increase in attack damage and an improvement in attack style.
From the beginning, the player's ship should be as common, even humble, as possible. So I decided to use a handmade cardboard spaceship as the initial vehicle for the player. That decision inspired the game's story and worldview: a young boy strays into a fantastical mechanical world with his handmade spaceship.
Powerful Artillery
At the end of the first level, the boy will be enchanted by the evil little robot, upgrade the ship's cannon. Due to the large number of enemies in the second level, powerful artillery immediately gives the player a huge advantage.
Robotic Arms and Hammers
The upgraded weapon at the end of Level 2 is a robotic arm with a hammer. The monster refresh position in Level 3 is so close to the player that it can be a stressful level. But the arm not only does a lot of damage but also has a lot of scope, and if the player chooses to upgrade it, they can easily pass the difficult third level.
Invincible Mechanical Leg
Since the enemies in Level 4 are all on the ground, the power-ups for Level 3 are mechanical legs. You don't even need to fire to crush an enemy. At this point, all the parts of the original craft have been replaced with mechanical parts, and the player appears to be at the peak of his power. But can this specious ship help defeat the boss? The answer is no.
In a boss fight,The little evil robot that has been luring the player to level up becomes the boss. As the boss's health drops, he takes away the player's previous upgrades one by one. At the end of the level, the player is stripped of all of his equipment.
SECOND ROUND
In the second round, the player will be able to choose not to upgrade equipment and continue playing with the original ship. At the end of the second round, the player easily defeats the unarmed boss and returns to the real world with the original ship.
PROCESS
The mechanics of the game are simple and traditional compared to the idea of the game. Players only need to manipulate the spaceship to avoid the enemy attack, while using the long-range and melee attacks to destroy the enemy. After I listed the monster configuration for each level in a table, as well as the stat configuration of the monster itself, I started making the game.
The hull upgrades is the core gameplay of the game, so I spent a lot of time in the early stages of production designing and modeling the ship by Maya. I modeled each upgrade separately and deliberately used a high saturation solid color different from the base hull. This suggests to the player that all upgrades, while powerful, are incompatible with the original ship.
The handmade boat at the beginning
Artillery update
Robotic arm&hammer update
Upgrade of hull
In order to make the game scene fit to the world view, I decided to fill the world with mechanical elements. To save sometime so that I can focus more on the core mechanics of the game, I found a set of mechanical punk style maps and enemy models on a resource sharing website. （https://www.cgtsj.org/）
In the first version, the AI logic was relatively simple, with large and small enemies moving at the same speed and attacking in the same way. After being born, the enemy moves towards the player and automatically attacks the player when it touches the player. But after a few iterations，smaller enemies move faster and attack at shorter intervals. Large enemies move slowly and attack by taking two quick hits and then pausing for a long time before moving on to the next wave.
ITERATION
In the original version, I wanted to use the "oringin rate" to determine if the player had overmodified their mobile fortress. At the end of each level, the player can choose whether or not to restore hp, and if so, some patches will appear on the fortress. The texture of the patches is related to the scene within the level. The lower the origin rate, the more patches the fortress has, the more vulnerable the player will be in the final boss fight.
But for two reasons I abandoned this option and instead used weapon upgrades to represent the player's choice. First, limiting the player's ability to recover hp at the end of each level would have an impact on the player's experience. Second, it is difficult and not intuitive to control the texture and modeling of the model with fine ratios. The upgrades to the ship's weapons are more noticeable.
