What is it?
You are a political dissident locked away in the depths of a dystopian prison. The Party has subjected you to unspeakable experiments. They've twisted you through their dark arcana into just the sort of abomination you spent your life fighting to prevent.
They put monster blood in your veins, fused cold metal with your flesh, and gave you the power to reanimate the dead -- but at what cost? Every time you bring someone back, they're a little less human, a little less stable. That much closer to rupturing into a mass of errant tissue, and leaving you with one less ally at your back.
Now, with the prison collapsing around you and monsters from dimensions most foul stalking its ruined corridors, you must lead your gang of increasingly well-armed and mutated followers toward escape, tearing through spacetime wormhole by wormhole, across a randomly generated nightmare facility.
TPK Gameplay
Goals with TPK
Adapt earlier prototype from Unity to Unreal
- As an action game, the systems here map naturally to Unreal.
- Much of the previous project was spent creating a poor-man's version of the Unreal framework in Unity (e.g. Pawn/Controller, Game Mode, Game Instance) -- why reinvent the wheel?
Simplicity
- Focus on gameplay to test concepts without worrying about deeper narrative experience.
- Cut everything that didn't relate to the core gameplay -- sometimes even if it's a "standard" game feature. For example ammo and reloading weren't necessary.
- Guide the player toward a specific target experience rather than supporting a large number of playstyles.
Unique themes
- There are a million top-down shooters. What makes this one stand out?
- Reanimation and mutation are front and center in the design. Characters become harder to maintain the more times they are reanimated, until eventually they sprout.
- Convey themes through gameplay rather than explicit narrative. For example, the mechanics imply a disturbing power dynamic between the player and followers -- the more you reanimate them, the more mutated they become... are you their shepherd or a ruthless abuser?
- Dystopian tone with minimal art. For example, keeping the characters' portraits anonymous with black censor bars over their eyes.
- Push the player to engage in active party control -- the ideal gameplay combines fast-paced top-down action and RTS unit micromanagement. Party control is simple and uses one button -- right click to send units out and they'll automatically return. Double click and they'll stay put.
Random level generation
- Level generator randomly creates floorplan and spawns tiles, which then activate walls on those sides without neighboring tiles. This creates a continuous, hollow interior for the player to explore.
- Procedural difficulty curve system, with various controls for gradually introducing content and ratcheting up the difficulty as the player advances.