- You're a cute little sheep dog, running along, trying to add more dogs to your pack while avoiding obstacles
- alternative concept: fish/school of fish
- Horizontal sidescroller
- constant horizontal (rightward) movement
- vertical movement using controls in lower left corner of screen
- Friendly nodes (friendly dogs) wander by
- if a friendly node gets close enough (within an arbitrary radius) its behavior changes such that it coheres with the player and moves with the player's "flock"/"pack"
- 3 buttons
- up/down
- placement: lower left corner of screen
- action
- default: "bark"
- secondary: use item/powerup (items/powerups are delivered periodically via the event queue discussed below)
- placement: lower right corner of screen
- Obstacles are generated offscreen and wander by the player
- player takes damage if hit by an obstacle
- friendly nodes (members of the player's pack) insulate the player from damage
- if an obstacle makes contact with a friendly node, the friendly node "dies" (player loses a member of their pack)
- Player has a "damage meter"
- when the damage meter reaches 0, player "dies"
- Gameplay is driven by "events"
- Environmental
- (earthquake, lightning strike, etc)
- Powerups
- (speed boost, obstacle destroyer, etc)
- Event queue along bottom of screen
- Events are "dealt" periodically, and are visually represented along the bottom of the screen (like cards)
- every "x" seconds and new event/state card is "dealt", appearing in the bottom bar
- Environmental
- Player's score increments with each friendly node added to their "flock"/"pack"
- ... more complex formula TBD
Good start on the base concept.
One thing to go through is the controls, is it lane based, jump when you tap, hold to change altitude, or some other control setup.
For damage, could it just be having a "pack" and when you run out of nodes in the pack
For scorekeeping, a slightly more complex formula, possibly use group size as a multiplier and the score based on distance travelled and pickups / events.