Introduction

This week, we've completely revamped our game concept! We've also settled for an art style main game mechanic.

Behold...

Grandma Mania!

Core:

Collecting grandmas and delivering them to a moving drop point (car).

Narrative:

Grandmas escaped the retirement home, compete with your colleague to collect as many grandmas as possible before your car reached the end.

Earning points:

You earn points by putting grandmas in your car.

In order to pick up a grandma, you have to tackle them to make them ragdoll.

To steal the grandma, grab it from your opponent’s hands and fill up a gauge by button mashing. The other player can contest by trying to fill up his own gauge first.

Pushing a player by running into them makes them drop whatever they’re holding.

Sabotaging:

Clearing obstacles for opponent so their car moves a little faster decreases their time to collect grandmas, thus sabotaging them.

Tracks:

Both cars start and finish at the same point and follow the same track but mirrored: where ne would start by turning left the straight then right, the other would go right, straight, left.

This lets us intertwine the track of both players no matter how big the map is.

Obstacles:

A family of ducks roams around the map and disturbs traffic when they cross the street.

Other cars drive around the city and can hit the players, making them drop their grandma and ragdoll for a couple seconds.

Traffic lights slow down your opponent’s car so you can turn them green to speed them up and give them less time to collect grandmas.

End of game:

If one person’s car reaches the end, that person cannot collect grandmas anymore and the other has a limited time (like 10 seconds) to make a final move and try to catch up in the score. The player with the most grandmas at the end wins.

The game will be in split-screen and the UI will be made up of:

• A progress bar showing how far each player is along the track
• A point counter
• A button-mashing meter when fighting for a grandma.

Art

Cui created 2 concepts for the texturing style:

We're settling for type 1 because of its efficiency.

Gameplay prototyping

• Ine has been working on the carry and push mechanics: holding a button to hold a prop and mashing a button to push an obstacle. She made several prototypes, each with its own advantage.
• Holding a button to carry is a simple and elegant solution to move items around.
• Button mashing is a fun way to move larger items or obstacles.
• Mashing a button to pick up an larger item is also a fun option and lets the player have more control.
• Being able to throw an item based on how fast you can spam a button is also a fun option.

Coupled with ragdoll physics, these mechanics make for a chaotic experience!

What now?

We're so much more satisfied with our new concept, it feels actually fun and much more coherent.

Our next tasks are to:

• Prototype the cars’ path and behaviour with obstacles. 
• Prototype the grandmas’ spawning and wandering mechanics