Ideas Help!

A bit like "The Blob"!


What about this: You have just one weapon that can fire color bombs and you have to hit each enemy with his own color to kill him, the more colors the harder the game. When you hit an enemy he dies with a colorful explosion.
This way you will need few 3D models.

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Original post by wildhalcyon Im working on an idea for a game, but I need some advice on powerups. The game is a 3D platformer where the player must restore color to the world. The player starts out with a simple gray sword and must advance towards unlocking all of the colors. Each color represents two things: A weapon and a special ability. The colors that I'll be including are: Red Yellow Blue Orange Green Purple/Violet Shade The first three colors can be earned in any order, as well as the second set of colors. Weapons can be anything from guns to lasers or magic, while abilities can range anywhere from grappling hooks to growing/shrinking, etc. I have a few ideas for a few, but I'd like to hear what other people suggest as well... Thanks!

I'm not sure I get the idea of the game, but I would advise you to avoid making too many abilities. In order to prevent any learning curve inconsistency, I strongly recommend you do NOT earn the colors in any order, unless the place where you get each one of them contains an obvious puzzled involving them. Personally, I would rather make only three colors available (Red Green Blue), and allow the player to combine them at one point of the game. It is way more gratifying for the player to feel he's crafting a new power (even if this feeling is artificial) than just being given a brand-new one. Red and Blue result in Purple (which is not only a combination of their skill but is related somehow). For example, if Red is a hand-to-hand claw and Blue a whip, Purple is a clawshot (just like in Zelda). At any rate, I advise you to keep things consistent. You choose to make the game around colors: don't forget that the player will expect some form of logic, even if you chose to make purple different from red+blue. If Red is a slide and Blue the double jump, but Purple is a form of bomb, the player will think it's inconsistent and weird (and a player who's confused will not be as receptive as a player that thinks everything falls into place).
Shade could be an extra variation to any other combination/native color, but be warned: it will force you to devise all the combinations. It WILL be time consuming for maybe nothing.

My last piece of advice is about something I often see among game designers: the fear of emptiness. Do not be afraid of making just a few features. Using ingeniously some features is better than using poorly a bunch of them. Just combining basic moves, you can devise an incredible amount of good ludemes, so make sure that everything you add to the game is worth it (more content doesn't mean better content!).
And one last after last piece of advice:

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Weapons can be anything from guns to lasers or magic, while abilities can range anywhere from grappling hooks to growing/shrinking, etc

I'm not ok with it, personally. Again, DO make sure that you keep some logic and consistency. If I get you wrong, forget about this, but having a laser as a weapon and as an ability the slide, it will feel weird and won't get your player anywhere. If you wrote this sentence thinking "A laser that shrinks some objects and enemies" or "A grapple that can kill enemies but make rope bridges as well", then I'm mistaken about the meaning of the paragraph. The ability should be a direct side effect of the weapon primary use (think of the gravity gun in Half-Life²).

Good luck in making your game! I hope this could help you somehow.

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Original post by Tohwaku I'm not sure I get the idea of the game, but I would advise you to avoid making too many abilities. In order to prevent any learning curve inconsistency, I strongly recommend you do NOT earn the colors in any order, unless the place where you get each one of them contains an obvious puzzled involving them. Personally, I would rather make only three colors available (Red Green Blue), and allow the player to combine them at one point of the game. It is way more gratifying for the player to feel he's crafting a new power (even if this feeling is artificial) than just being given a brand-new one. Red and Blue result in Purple (which is not only a combination of their skill but is related somehow). For example, if Red is a hand-to-hand claw and Blue a whip, Purple is a clawshot (just like in Zelda). At any rate, I advise you to keep things consistent. You choose to make the game around colors: don't forget that the player will expect some form of logic, even if you chose to make purple different from red+blue. If Red is a slide and Blue the double jump, but Purple is a form of bomb, the player will think it's inconsistent and weird (and a player who's confused will not be as receptive as a player that thinks everything falls into place). Shade could be an extra variation to any other combination/native color, but be warned: it will force you to devise all the combinations. It WILL be time consuming for maybe nothing.

Well, really, what I have is pretty much 8 abilities - one for each color element. Shade only counts as one ability. Similar to Zelda, there is a dungeon for each ability, after beating the dungeon, you free the color to be released to the outside world. Rather than have BOTH a weapon and ability for each color, I've chosen instead to have just one ability. The ability might be used to defeat enemies, or move differently, but its still just one element per color.
Im not worried about players feeling like the ability choice for each color is inconsistent either. Instead of combining colors, I'm having the abilities be themed after the color itself. Somewhat.

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My last piece of advice is about something I often see among game designers: the fear of emptiness. Do not be afraid of making just a few features. Using ingeniously some features is better than using poorly a bunch of them. Just combining basic moves, you can devise an incredible amount of good ludemes, so make sure that everything you add to the game is worth it (more content doesn't mean better content!). And one last after last piece of advice: Quote: Weapons can be anything from guns to lasers or magic, while abilities can range anywhere from grappling hooks to growing/shrinking, etc I'm not ok with it, personally. Again, DO make sure that you keep some logic and consistency. If I get you wrong, forget about this, but having a laser as a weapon and as an ability the slide, it will feel weird and won't get your player anywhere. If you wrote this sentence thinking "A laser that shrinks some objects and enemies" or "A grapple that can kill enemies but make rope bridges as well", then I'm mistaken about the meaning of the paragraph. The ability should be a direct side effect of the weapon primary use (think of the gravity gun in Half-Life²). Good luck in making your game! I hope this could help you somehow.

Here's some stuff that I came up with last night:

Initial Weapon - Paintball Gun

Red -
Blue - Water Hose
Yellow - Electric Whip

Green -
Orange - Grenades
Purple - Hover Boots

Shadow -

As you can see, I've got a bit to go. Kambiz, I like your idea, and actually its exactly how my game idea got started - you start with a paintball cannon that can fire different colors, and enemies have to be defeated by coloring them correctly. More difficult enemies might require two or three shots from different colors. I just wanted to introduce a few more elements that could be used in puzzle solving throughout the game so I came up with the idea of adding a tool to each color.