So yeah, I thought of how exactly would be a 3D Sonic game that kept the game design of the classics (about being very based on momentum) but also introduced new stuff. I basically thought "what if we had an equivalent of Super Mario Galaxy but with Sonic?", and this is what I came up. More or less for fun, doing game designs is kind of a hobby for me, I develop three per year on my head. (and also several annotations on my notebook and on .rtf documents on my computer)
Please, feel free to critique, but try to think what exactly would be the best for this idea. Try not to put your personal preference too much on here, I wanna know what could be improved on this, and not "I like sonic heroes" or "okay scrap this and do something entirely different like this".
The game only uses two buttons and the analog stick. I'm gonna call the first button "A", and the second one "B".
A makes you jump. It's essential however, to know how your jumping works the longer you hold A: Just tapping it makes a more straight-forward jump, less controllable, with small jump height, but makes you lose almost no momentum, while holding A longer makes you jump really high, and it's much more controllable, but makes you lose a lot of momentum.
Pressing A again mid-air makes you do the Jump-Dash, but the Jump-Dash here is just useful to get farther in jumping, it cannot be used to give you speed, because it works like this: You're propelled forward, but after propelled with a certain speed, you unaccelerate and lose all speed. You lose as much momentum as you would by doing a jump with maximum height.
Homming Attack is also present in this game, but it's a bit limited at first. You cannot chain your homming attacks at first. You can only attack one enemy with the homming attack, and then after that, you have to land, jump, and then homming attack again. You are able of chaining multiple homming attacks later, but I'll get into that way later. Plus, after doing a Homming Attack or a Jump-Dash, you fall in a non-spinning way, making you vulnerable to enemies, so be careful!
Tapping B makes you go spinning like a ball, just like in Sonic Adventure (it's also like pressing down while running in a 2D Sonic game), but in this concept, this ability is very very useful, and learning when to use this technique is very important because first: when you do this, you're very vulnerable to the curvatures of the ground, if you do this while you're going downhill, you can achieve a speed that you can't by just running.
And second, if you hit a wall head-on while running, you're screwed, because you are thrown to the ground and you lose all of your speed, but if you spin right before hitting on a wall, Sonic ricochets, making you not lose all of your speed, but just some of it. But of course, staying in this mode when you're not going downhill makes you lose your speed, therefore, knowing when to spin and when to quit spinning is very important. Pressing B again while spinning makes you go back to running.
Holding B makes you charge your Spin-Dash. The Spin-Dash is kind of broken in Sonic Adventure because you can hold it for less than a second and get a lot of speed, and then press B again to quit spinning and go running. And you can see how broken it is by how much this flaw is abused in speedruns. So in this one it kind of works like in Sonic CD, you have to wait a bit until it's fully-charged, if not, your boost will be really small. You'll notice when it's fully-charged when you hear a louder KEEEE noise and the dust behind you double its size. But there's something important you need to know about the Spin-Dash: you don't have to stop running to begin charging it!
If you hold B while running, Sonic will start charging his Spin-Dash, making him slide because of his speed that he had while running, and you can kind of control that sliding too. And this is very important because this is how you drift.
Go running, start holding B, drift through a curve with this sliding, and while it's sliding, it charges up the spin-dash, and when you're done with the curve and the spin-dash is charged, you release the B button, making you go through a large curve, while also keeping your speed or even speeding you up!
Also, there's this small detail about the Spin-Dash: When you release the charging and actually dash, you'll notice that in the first two seconds of the dash (when he's accelerating/boosting), Sonic will have this blue aura arund him, kind of like how the Spin-Dash looks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hitting enemies in that state makes you slice through them, instead of bumping, like you do when you jump/spin on an enemy.
Pressing B mid-air makes you do the Saw Spin. It's kind of like the Bounce Attack, but without the part where you bounce. You very very quickly dash downwards, slicing all the enemies that are in the way. It's fast, but it's so fast that you cannot really control it, so watch out where to use. You also have a little delay when you land somewhere, so don't land on a platform that can quickly fall and kill you.
Pressing A near a wall makes you stick in it, and pressing A again makes you Wall-Jump. If you stick in a wall for more than two and a half seconds and you don't Wall-Jump, you unstick from the wall and fall. Be careful, when you Wall-Jump, you do it without spinning, so that makes you vulnerable.
There are also power-ups, in Sonic Adventure fashion, but they're more like "skills", as in you can improve them and they aren't gadgets/accessories that changes your character's appearence.
Homming Attack: You start with the Homming Attack already unlocked, and you can level-up it so that you can chain two enemies, then four, then six, and finally, you can chain as many enemies as you want. I decided to restrict the Homming Attack at first so that there would be something else about chaining it than just "LOOK A TRAIL OF ENEMIES IN AIR THAT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING AT ALL BUT WAIT TILL YOU HOMMING ATTACK THEM WOW THAT'S CHALLENGING". Leveling up this ability incentivates you to go back to previous levels and take alternate paths that you couldn't before, and also to think wisely when aiming. Sometimes there will be 6 enemies flying in air, but you can get through the trail of enemies by only doing 4 homming attacks.
Light-Dash: This skill works VERY different from its Sonic Adventure or Sonic Heroes counterparts, so pay attention: Like the Light Speed Dash or the Light-Dash, this skill is about running through a trail of rings. But you can only do that while you're charging your Spin-Dash.
It works like this: There's this large curve that you have to drift through, with this trail of rings that starts in the curve, but goes to another route, or are positioned in a way that if you go through them, you'll do the shortest way through the curve. So when you drift and you touch one of them, you drift through the trail of rings. When you do this, you don't unaccelerate (like you do when you usually charge your spin-dash), and your Spin-Dash charges faster. (you go faster through them, but don't go extremely fast through it like you do on SA or in SH) You can also dash out of the trail by just stop holding B.
Light-Attack: Also works kind of different. You charge it by jumping, and then after releasing the A button, holding it instead of tapping to do the Jump-Dash/Homming Attack. Sonic stops in air and spins fastly, charging the attack. As it charges, it aims at multiple enemies at once, doing a "trail" through the aimed enemies. After you release, Sonic homming attacks through all of the aimed enemies fastly, being invincible while doing it. At first, you can only aim at three enemies at once, and then you can level-up to four and then five.
Splash Jump: It's that skill from Sonic & the Secret Rings. It works like this: If you bump on a wall, you're propelled upwards some. You cannot multiple Splash Jump though.
Splash Dash: By doing the Saw Spin and pressing B when touching the ground, or by holding B while doing the Saw Spin, instead of tapping, Sonic is propelled forward with some starting speed.
Warp Attack: By spinning on the ground, doing jump-dashes, homming attacks or charging your spin-dash, you leave a blue trail behind you. If you're fast enough to get to the "tail" of your own blue trail, every enemy that's inside your "circle" of blue trail is destroyed, and all rings collected (plus you have a slight speed boost). By upgrading this skill, your blue trail increases size. But even if you're really really fast, your "circle" won't probably be very big, so this skill isn't really very broken!
Item Monitors:
Ring - Gives you 10 Rings
Shield - Protects you from a single hit, and then disappears. It can also deflect small projectiles and makes you breathe underwater.
Speed Sneakers - Gives you higher top-speed and acceleration, specially acceleration. You can also run on walls and on the ceiling while with this power-up. The music plays faster while you're with this.
Invincibility - Durp.
Double Ring - Doubles the value of rings collected for a certain period of time. Plays a rhythm along with the currently playing song (kind of like when you ride Yoshi on Super Mario World) that plays a faster tempo when the power-up is running out of time.
Safeguard Ring - A bright, white-ish, winged ring with a star. It "saves" your rings collected before you got the Safeguard Ring and also adds a ring to your counter. If you're hit, you'll only lose the Safeguard Ring and all the rings collected after you got the Safeguard Ring. In the middle of the rings you lost, there's a chance that the Safeguard Ring might be in the middle of them. It's bright and leaves a bright trail behind, but it bounces and disappears faster than other rings. So if you collect it, you will be able to keep the power-up. If you lose it again, though the Safeguard Ring will not be in the middle of the rings.
Clock - Speeds down everything but you. Everything around you loses its saturation and are all grayscaled. The music also sounds slower and muffled. Everything starts gaining colour gradativally, indicating the power-up is running out.
C+C pls.
Please, feel free to critique, but try to think what exactly would be the best for this idea. Try not to put your personal preference too much on here, I wanna know what could be improved on this, and not "I like sonic heroes" or "okay scrap this and do something entirely different like this".
The game only uses two buttons and the analog stick. I'm gonna call the first button "A", and the second one "B".
A makes you jump. It's essential however, to know how your jumping works the longer you hold A: Just tapping it makes a more straight-forward jump, less controllable, with small jump height, but makes you lose almost no momentum, while holding A longer makes you jump really high, and it's much more controllable, but makes you lose a lot of momentum.
Pressing A again mid-air makes you do the Jump-Dash, but the Jump-Dash here is just useful to get farther in jumping, it cannot be used to give you speed, because it works like this: You're propelled forward, but after propelled with a certain speed, you unaccelerate and lose all speed. You lose as much momentum as you would by doing a jump with maximum height.
Homming Attack is also present in this game, but it's a bit limited at first. You cannot chain your homming attacks at first. You can only attack one enemy with the homming attack, and then after that, you have to land, jump, and then homming attack again. You are able of chaining multiple homming attacks later, but I'll get into that way later. Plus, after doing a Homming Attack or a Jump-Dash, you fall in a non-spinning way, making you vulnerable to enemies, so be careful!
Tapping B makes you go spinning like a ball, just like in Sonic Adventure (it's also like pressing down while running in a 2D Sonic game), but in this concept, this ability is very very useful, and learning when to use this technique is very important because first: when you do this, you're very vulnerable to the curvatures of the ground, if you do this while you're going downhill, you can achieve a speed that you can't by just running.
And second, if you hit a wall head-on while running, you're screwed, because you are thrown to the ground and you lose all of your speed, but if you spin right before hitting on a wall, Sonic ricochets, making you not lose all of your speed, but just some of it. But of course, staying in this mode when you're not going downhill makes you lose your speed, therefore, knowing when to spin and when to quit spinning is very important. Pressing B again while spinning makes you go back to running.
Holding B makes you charge your Spin-Dash. The Spin-Dash is kind of broken in Sonic Adventure because you can hold it for less than a second and get a lot of speed, and then press B again to quit spinning and go running. And you can see how broken it is by how much this flaw is abused in speedruns. So in this one it kind of works like in Sonic CD, you have to wait a bit until it's fully-charged, if not, your boost will be really small. You'll notice when it's fully-charged when you hear a louder KEEEE noise and the dust behind you double its size. But there's something important you need to know about the Spin-Dash: you don't have to stop running to begin charging it!
If you hold B while running, Sonic will start charging his Spin-Dash, making him slide because of his speed that he had while running, and you can kind of control that sliding too. And this is very important because this is how you drift.
Go running, start holding B, drift through a curve with this sliding, and while it's sliding, it charges up the spin-dash, and when you're done with the curve and the spin-dash is charged, you release the B button, making you go through a large curve, while also keeping your speed or even speeding you up!
Also, there's this small detail about the Spin-Dash: When you release the charging and actually dash, you'll notice that in the first two seconds of the dash (when he's accelerating/boosting), Sonic will have this blue aura arund him, kind of like how the Spin-Dash looks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hitting enemies in that state makes you slice through them, instead of bumping, like you do when you jump/spin on an enemy.
Pressing B mid-air makes you do the Saw Spin. It's kind of like the Bounce Attack, but without the part where you bounce. You very very quickly dash downwards, slicing all the enemies that are in the way. It's fast, but it's so fast that you cannot really control it, so watch out where to use. You also have a little delay when you land somewhere, so don't land on a platform that can quickly fall and kill you.
Pressing A near a wall makes you stick in it, and pressing A again makes you Wall-Jump. If you stick in a wall for more than two and a half seconds and you don't Wall-Jump, you unstick from the wall and fall. Be careful, when you Wall-Jump, you do it without spinning, so that makes you vulnerable.
There are also power-ups, in Sonic Adventure fashion, but they're more like "skills", as in you can improve them and they aren't gadgets/accessories that changes your character's appearence.
Homming Attack: You start with the Homming Attack already unlocked, and you can level-up it so that you can chain two enemies, then four, then six, and finally, you can chain as many enemies as you want. I decided to restrict the Homming Attack at first so that there would be something else about chaining it than just "LOOK A TRAIL OF ENEMIES IN AIR THAT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING AT ALL BUT WAIT TILL YOU HOMMING ATTACK THEM WOW THAT'S CHALLENGING". Leveling up this ability incentivates you to go back to previous levels and take alternate paths that you couldn't before, and also to think wisely when aiming. Sometimes there will be 6 enemies flying in air, but you can get through the trail of enemies by only doing 4 homming attacks.
Light-Dash: This skill works VERY different from its Sonic Adventure or Sonic Heroes counterparts, so pay attention: Like the Light Speed Dash or the Light-Dash, this skill is about running through a trail of rings. But you can only do that while you're charging your Spin-Dash.
It works like this: There's this large curve that you have to drift through, with this trail of rings that starts in the curve, but goes to another route, or are positioned in a way that if you go through them, you'll do the shortest way through the curve. So when you drift and you touch one of them, you drift through the trail of rings. When you do this, you don't unaccelerate (like you do when you usually charge your spin-dash), and your Spin-Dash charges faster. (you go faster through them, but don't go extremely fast through it like you do on SA or in SH) You can also dash out of the trail by just stop holding B.
Light-Attack: Also works kind of different. You charge it by jumping, and then after releasing the A button, holding it instead of tapping to do the Jump-Dash/Homming Attack. Sonic stops in air and spins fastly, charging the attack. As it charges, it aims at multiple enemies at once, doing a "trail" through the aimed enemies. After you release, Sonic homming attacks through all of the aimed enemies fastly, being invincible while doing it. At first, you can only aim at three enemies at once, and then you can level-up to four and then five.
Splash Jump: It's that skill from Sonic & the Secret Rings. It works like this: If you bump on a wall, you're propelled upwards some. You cannot multiple Splash Jump though.
Splash Dash: By doing the Saw Spin and pressing B when touching the ground, or by holding B while doing the Saw Spin, instead of tapping, Sonic is propelled forward with some starting speed.
Warp Attack: By spinning on the ground, doing jump-dashes, homming attacks or charging your spin-dash, you leave a blue trail behind you. If you're fast enough to get to the "tail" of your own blue trail, every enemy that's inside your "circle" of blue trail is destroyed, and all rings collected (plus you have a slight speed boost). By upgrading this skill, your blue trail increases size. But even if you're really really fast, your "circle" won't probably be very big, so this skill isn't really very broken!
Item Monitors:
Ring - Gives you 10 Rings
Shield - Protects you from a single hit, and then disappears. It can also deflect small projectiles and makes you breathe underwater.
Speed Sneakers - Gives you higher top-speed and acceleration, specially acceleration. You can also run on walls and on the ceiling while with this power-up. The music plays faster while you're with this.
Invincibility - Durp.
Double Ring - Doubles the value of rings collected for a certain period of time. Plays a rhythm along with the currently playing song (kind of like when you ride Yoshi on Super Mario World) that plays a faster tempo when the power-up is running out of time.
Safeguard Ring - A bright, white-ish, winged ring with a star. It "saves" your rings collected before you got the Safeguard Ring and also adds a ring to your counter. If you're hit, you'll only lose the Safeguard Ring and all the rings collected after you got the Safeguard Ring. In the middle of the rings you lost, there's a chance that the Safeguard Ring might be in the middle of them. It's bright and leaves a bright trail behind, but it bounces and disappears faster than other rings. So if you collect it, you will be able to keep the power-up. If you lose it again, though the Safeguard Ring will not be in the middle of the rings.
Clock - Speeds down everything but you. Everything around you loses its saturation and are all grayscaled. The music also sounds slower and muffled. Everything starts gaining colour gradativally, indicating the power-up is running out.
C+C pls.