Game Concept

Death's Purgatory » Devlog

91 days ago by mswalles

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!Flashing lights warning for the Just Shapes and Beats gif!

Title:

Death's Purgatory

Concept Statement:

See how long you can survive in "Death's Purgatory". A difficult bullet hell-like boss fight against Death himself.

Short description:

In "Death's Purgatory", you have committed acts so heinous that you have been sent to the farthest recesses of hell only known as Death's Purgatory. No body leave's Death's Purgatory for it is an endless onslaught seen only as a game to Death.

Genre: Bullet hell, avoid attacks similar to the Likes of Terraria (modded) bosses, Just Shapes and Beats levels or I wanna be the guy fangame bosses.

Influence:

Terraria

Terraria is a 2D survival crafter, where the main form of game progression is through defeating bosses. I love its pixelated art style and the movement physics of the character.

The Calamity mod for terraria is a massive expansion to the main game, with many new bosses, and new content beyond beating the vanilla final boss. What I love about the Calamity mod is its boss fights and how cool they are and how rewarding it is to fight and defeat them, along with the music being amazing as well.

Terraria Calamity Mod: Supreme Calamitas No-hit (Death Mode) - YouTube

Just Shapes and Beats

Just Shapes and Beats is an avoidance game where the obstacles appear in time with the music. My original idea for "Death's Purgatory" involved the bosses attacks being timed with music, but now I realise just how ambitious that idea was but I may expand upon the idea in a future project.

I Wanna be the Guy (IWBTG)

IWBTG is a precision platformer that was popular in the late 2000s to early 2010s when "rage games" were a popular genre of games on Youtube. The game parodies Mega Man but also contains many references to different retro games. IWBTG since became the base of many fangames including "avoidance" IWBTG fangames or bosses in fangames.

I wanna be the Noun - Delicious Fruit

Undertale

Undertale is an RPG with a gameplay mechanic that you can move a heart around in a box to avoid taking damage from enemy attacks. Obviously the avoidance gameplay is cool but it also does some 4th wall breaks in the gameplay at times to make it more interesting.

Concept Creation Process:

My idea for the game was to make a boss fight against a boss with many different attacks and have the player try to survive for as long as possible, with trying to go for new bests times as the replayability. I wanted to use pixel art as the art style and have player physics similar to Terraria's. The game idea at first was to make the boss attacks happen in time to the music and have the player survive until the end of the song similar to Just Shapes and Beats, but now that seems a little to ambitious, that's why I opted for a pure survival time based scoring system. I wasn't sure of what the games theme should be or what the boss should be at first, but then I thought of how I could make a story reason on why you can't "finish" the game. I thought maybe the character could be in a purgatory of sorts. It then lead to the theme being in hell and the boss being Death.

Audience:

The target audience of the game would be people who are interested difficult games or the boss fights from modded Terraria or Undertale. Even people who play 2D platformers would enjoy this game too. The age groups would be around the late teens to early twenties. This game have a high expectation of player skill but nothing that is unrealistic or unreasonable.

Competitive analysis:

Even with this game's many similarities to Terraria bosses or bosses from competitors, what this game does differently is that is isolates specifically a boss fight, sometimes people don't want to spend hours doing the survival game aspect of Terraria to get to a boss fight. That is what this game delivers, an isolated boss fight to test your skill.

Game treatment:

The game will be based off of surviving the bosses attacks for as long as possible with there being a phase 2 at a certain time survived. The player will have a dash button that will make the character dash in a certain direction and give a shot amount of invincibility frames. I plan on making the character have a 1 hit death, but also want to add a "Lindsay mode" toggle where you have invincibility or maybe the attacks are slower. Maybe Lindsay mode can be made accessible if you input a secret code on the menu. I want to add a second phase practice mode to allow players to go straight to phase 2. Possibly add some rewards or secrets for surviving a certain amount of time in non-Lindsay mode. There will be music that plays while fighting the boss to add to the mood of the fight.

Concept art:

I will make my own pixel art at some point. I definitely want him to have a scythe. Perhaps posing with the scythe behind him like Sister Friede from Dark Souls 3

Death sprite concept

Derpius The Reaper | Terraria Community Forums

Still unsure of character sprite

Hell Background similar to Terraria's underworld or maybe something darker because how far out the purgatory is set.

Terraria: The Underworld (Hell) Wallpaper | Hell Background | joprimsa.com

Dash mechanic similar to Terraria or Celeste with after images.

I have a few boss attack ideas but one that I want is one where Death cuts the screen with his scythe and the playfield gets separated and you have to avoid attacks in a smaller space. This was inspired by Undertale Red (a fangame).