KIT109 Assignment2: Codename: Rune Caster Concept

Game Concept

• 1. Working Title:

Codename: Rune Caster

• 2. Concept Statement:

“Unit 147- Biological Containment Enforcing (BCE), Operator: Rune Caster, magical division. Your orders are simple: Contain or eliminate the GMO mutant plant breach in sector UT-45, Sandy Bay, Neo Hobart city. Your arsenal: Magical runes and close quarters combat. Plants are extremely hostile and deadly; expect heavy resistance, caution with the environment is advised”.

• 3.Genre:

Side-Scroller, action-adventure.

• 4. Concept creation process:

The idea resulted from an attempt of combining elements from classic side-scroller action-adventure games of the late 1990’s and early 2000s’ like titles for portable consoles such as Megaman X series, Metroid Fusion/ Mission Zero, and Final Fantasy 2D series.  The elements of progression, character evolution and skill unlocking were exciting and engaging attributes of a game to me. Because of the previously mentioned influences, this game can be considered as a mashup. The plot of the game is based on eradicating and containing biosecurity plant material breaches. This later is a part of my job as a research assistant and some of my professional experiences as a microbiologist and plant scientist. Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs, result from either natural mutation processes (e.g., viral, UV radiation, transgenes) or human involvement, which results in alteration of their natural traits. Normally, such plants are harmless but in this case the result are extremely hostile organisms that need to consume human flesh for sustenance.

• 5.Backstory/Context:

Year 2050, The genetic engineering of staple crops to produce more sustainable food has become the main strategy to combat food insecurity across the globe. Due to huge population numbers and climate change, imminent and unprecedented humanitarian crises arose (crime, new diseases, increased morbidity). Many governments rushed to approve the total abolition of the global biosecurity vigilance and dealing Act so any capable farmer or industry could manipulate genomes of any crop or microorganism to fight global famine.

After a couple of years this measure seemed to be an effective policy and the hungry world seemed to cope. However, such freedom to the hands, minds, and hearts of many men and women would only mean an unavoidable disaster waiting to occur: The malicious release of resilient plant hybrids that displayed dominant primal predatory instincts. As these organisms multiplied successfully in vast numbers in the wild, soon the unprepared humanity became the prey. In an intent to control the new emergency local government decreed the institutionalization of a new military division agency, the Biological Containment Enforcing (BCE), that trained its members by managing the best practices of biological material containment and the use of recently discovered unorthodox source of lethal force, mystical arts of magical runes.  You are one of the best operatives, a Rune Caster from the magical division at BCE. Your unit specializes in containment of plant material breaches by lethal force as RC operators harness and channel natural elemental forces via ancient magical runes that can be used as weapons. Also, RC operators are proficient in close quarters combat which is an effective resource against these deadly mutant plants.

• 6.Player Role:

The role of the player is to destroy all the spawned enemies that are susceptible to particular elemental or physical attacks only and overcome scenario obstacles on all four planned stages without losing its limited number of lives in the process. During this short adventure the player will have access to 3 elemental powerup tokens scattered throughout level that replenish individual magical rune gauges (Water, Electricity, and Savia -or plant sap).

• 7.Game treatment:

7.1 Mechanics:

The mechanics that will structure the game will be split into the following categories:

• -Main character 4-way movement throughout the world (Jumping, left, right)
• -Spawning (Player instantiation after death, enemy spawning)
• -Attacking (Magical shoots, enemy attacks and punching scripted behaviors)
• -UI elements linked to events (Health, magic bars, lives counter, scenes pop-up, world text)
• -Triggers and animations (Damage, death, killing an enemy, scriptable tiles with sound, Cinemachine effects)
• -Particle Systems (For effects on title screen, for depicting magic casting and magic bullet)
• -Post-Processing effects (when punching enemy, when enemy is nearby, on death)

7.2 Concept art:

The following concept art items are partial elements of the project. Additional elements will be presented in the final build (See attached images on header of Devlog).

Figure1. Animation frames depicting the shooting animation sequence.

Figure 2. Elemental tokens for rune powerup electricity (up left), water (Down), and Savia/sap (Up right).

Figure 3. Enemy 1 tomato/solanum frame sample.

• 8. Targeted audience

Based on searches from popular game library and streaming platforms, such as Steam (Valve Corporation), the side scroller/action/adventure games represent about 5.3% of the whole game collection with the estimated net revenue in a single title as high as $77M USD and as low as $18 USD (GameStats, 2019-2023). For this reason, this platform is a likely target to publish an eventual polished indie product to reach potential purchasers worldwide. Based on the available information from the Side-Scrolling Game Market Outlook 2022 report, the most popular side-scroller sub-genres fall into the Metroidvania like and the Soulslike games mainly, my project falling into the former category. The regions on which the markets that have leading compound Annual Growth Rate percentage (CAGR%) are the North American (United States, Canada, and Mexico), followed by European (Germany, United Kingdom, France, etc.), and the Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, etc.)(Precision Reports, 2022). The public that are more likely to have access to my potential product will be teenage to young adult American people, which are the main target audience. Research has shown that about 97% of American teenagers between 12-17 years of age consumed digital games and the gender proportion that play these was about 53% male and 47% female by 2013. Finally, the average age of a digital game consumer, as adult, is of 30 and started playing by the age of 18 (Terlutter and Capella, 2013).

References:

GameStats (2019-2023). Side-Scroller Games Steam Marketing Tool. https://games-stats.com/steam/?tag=side-scroller&page=107. (Pages 1 to 107 that contain lists of earnings per project from higher to lower USD.

Precision Reports (2022, February 22). Global Side Scrolling Game Market Research Report 2022. Market Watch. https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/side-scrolling-game-market-research-20...

Terlutter R., Capella M., (2013) The Gamification of Advertising: Analysis and Research Directions of In-Game Advertising, Advergames, and Advertising in Social Network Games. Journal of Advertising. 43(2-3). Pp. 95-112.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24749877.pdf

Soundtracks that are planned to be included in the project:

Danit T(2019, December 19). Amanecer. [Video].  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSWzZQrF3d

Kurup (2018, October 3). Lusco Fusco. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POYZ8p3bCHs