Concept Work for Trash Bucket

Working Title:

Trash Bucket

Concept Statement:

Trash Bucket is a 2d medieval fantasy bullet hell where you play as a knight sieging a castle to release the king from captivity. Equipped with a bow, shield and armour you must fight off rival knights and collect their loot to level up and defeat the boss, an evil sentient trebuchet keeping the king from ruling Knight-York City.

Genre:

Trash Bucket has two main genres, the gameplay is based on bullet hell games which is a popular subgenre of shooters. Popular bullet hell games include Enter the Gungeon and Returnal. Bullet hells are traditionally top-down shooters where enemies shoot large quantities of often slow projectiles that the player must dodge. This central concept of the genre is prevalent in Trash Bucket particularly with its boss fight at the end vs the trebuchet.  The twist is that Trash Bucket implements the thematic genre of medieval fantasy. The game is set in a medieval world and all the enemies, and the player character reflect that. With knights, medieval siege weapons and magic abilities you can gain from killing enemies and finishing the first area.

Concept Creation Process:

The concept for this game was created by following a list of steps. First, what are the constraints that the game must be made within? Second, what genre of game is this? Third, what elements from the genre and other games in the space are essential? Fourth what is the twist to make the game interesting?

To Identify the constraints of the project I considered what we had done previously in KIT109. First, the game had to be 2D, I wanted to make a top-down game as that is mostly what we have worked within class and would make creating the game easier. Then I decided the game had to be limited to a few rooms/areas to limit the scope of the project. This left me with an outline for selecting the game genre.

Next, when picking the genre there were two main contenders, a turn-based strategy game such as Fire Emblem or a bullet hell shooter. While initially I was more set on the turn-based strategy game I decided a bullet hell would be easier to make and therefore leave more time for me to develop its creative elements. I would be able to reuse work from tutorials such as shooting scripts and player movement. Then what solidified that answer was the idea for the final boss, a sentient trebuchet that would fight off the player by launching large projectiles and other enemies.

To maintain the scope of the project I decided what elements of the genre are essential. The way projectiles are used in bullet hells needs to be maintained, but also picking up power-ups and loot. This makes the game more interesting for the player and is commonplace in the genre

Based on my idea for the boss the twist was obvious, medieval fantasy. Most bullet hell games involve guns due to the nature of the genre being shooting. I wanted to abandon this and give the enemies old-fashioned weapons such as arrows to shoot at the player. While I'm sure there are other bullet hell games set in the past with magic it is different to what is commonplace in the genre.

Audience and Competitive Analysis:

The target audience for this game is people who enjoy top-down shooters and bullet hell games, people who enjoy medieval fantasy, casual gamers who want a short experience, and players looking for a unique game with a sense of humour. It is accessible to a wide range of ages and only features a cartoon-level depiction of violence. Completing the game won't require run-based luck as there is no randomised items, the game just relies on the player's skill to dodge and shoot which will bring in players who don’t like the significant luck-based elements of many games in the genre.

Competition in the space includes Enter the Gungeon, The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth (I was told this was the most bullet hell of the series) and Brotato. These are some of the most successful top-down bullet hell games currently available for players. A difference between Trash Bucket and these games is the use of the rogue-like genre. All these games heavily use the genre with randomised items, weapons, stages, and boss fights. Meanwhile, Trash Bucket does not have randomised items. Further separating them is the setting of these games’ worlds. Enter the Gungeon is set in the future, Brotato is based on 80’s action films, and the period does not particularly matter in The Binding of Isaac. While Trash Bucket is set in an alternate medieval past, with simple magic and fantasy elements.

Game Treatment and Concept Art:

Game Rundown:

When the game is ran there will be a start menu, this menu contains 2 options, start and controls. Controls will bring up a simple menu telling the player how to control the character. Start will load the initial cutscene for the game and then put the player into the start area.

Whenever the player dies, they will have an option to restart that skips the initial cutscene or to go to the start menu.

The game contains 3 major rooms, the first room the player spawns in and is given a choice of 3 powers.  The second main room contains the first enemy encounter with knights that drop level-ups and the corridor that connects it to the next room. The third contains two platforms, one where the player stands and one with the boss.

In the start area, 3 powers will be presented to the player, each providing a bonus effect.

• Fire giving a base damage increase
• Water improving their dodge roll
• Poison adding damage over time affects to your arrows

Next, the player will fight through a hoard of knights that shoot arrows, each time one is killed it will increase the player's damage, you must kill a certain amount of knights to progress, but they will keep spawning allowing the player to increase its max damage at the cost of potentially losing health.

Finally, the player will make it to the boss, the sentient trebuchet that has captured the king, the player and the trebuchet sit on two opposing castle towers. After some dialogue, the fight will commence, and the trebuchet will lob projectile attacks at the player of varying types, this will include spread shots, faster direct ones, molotovs, and launching knights at the player's tower to fight them while they fight the boss. Once the boss is defeated the trebuchet will collapse and its throwing arm will make a bridge between the towers, there the player will free the king and the game will end.

Inspiration:

An inspiration of this games humour, visual style and one of its mechanics is Castle Crashers, a beat 'em up released in 2008 by Behemoth. This game has a cast of 4 knights trying to rescue a gemstone stolen from the kingdom by an evil wizard. While my artistic ability is limited, I intend to try and use a similar art style as this game for Trash Bucket. The element-themed powers the player can collect at the start are also partially derived from this game, but the effects are not the same excluding poison having a type of damage over time.

The other main inspiration is Enter the Gungeon, the bullet hell I've played the most. Enter the Gungeon is rogue-like bullet hell where the player must explore randomly generated maps and look for loot to defeat bosses. The ridiculous bosses and arena design were something i took from in the design process. Gatling Gull, Beholster and Ammoconda are just some of the many bosses in this game I tried to match the energy of (Eventually the Trebuchet will hopefully have a clever pun for a name too!).

Controls and Mechanics:

The player will have a limited number of times they can be hit before they die, with all attacks removing one life. Once hit the player cannot sustain any damage for a limited amount of time. These will be represented as hearts.

The poison damage effect will last for a limited amount of time when an enemy is hit by it, hitting the enemy again with this effect will not increase damage but reset its duration. This will not be particularly useful verse knights due to their lower health but will be significant verse the trebuchet

The game will feature 8 directional movements, dodge rolling, parrying, and shooting arrows, The controls will follow this scheme:

• Movement, WSAD
• Roll, Space
• Parry, Mouse 2 / Right Click
• Shoot, Mouse 1 / Left Click

Rolling will give you temporary invincibility and propel you a short distance, spamming this will not keep the player fully invincible however as the invincibility will last less time than the animation.

Parrying will allow the player to destroy an incoming projectile and buff their damage if this is successful, this move will have to be timed well to destroy the projectile while it is close but before it hits the player. This ability can only be used on a cooldown to prevent the player from repeatedly using which would make this ability overpowered.

Shooting will fire an arrow towards where the mouse is pointed on the screen, this arrow's damage is affected by level-ups the player has collected throughout the game.

Referenced Games and their Steam Pages:

(Images Taken From Steam pages of said games)

• Batsugun, Batsugun on Steam (steampowered.com)
• Enter the Gungeon, Enter the Gungeon on Steam (steampowered.com)
• Returnal, Returnal on Steam (steampowered.com)
• The Binding of Isaac, The Binding of Isaac on Steam (steampowered.com)
• The Binding of Isaac: After Birth 
• Brotato, Brotato on Steam (steampowered.com)
• Castle Crashers, Castle Crashers® on Steam (steampowered.com)