[GAME][IDEA/IN DEVELOPMENT] Rep Bros!

[TomGuycott]

REP BROS
The Tale of Reputable Brothers

Concept: Scrolling Shooter where player controls two characters whose X coordinates almost always match, but their Y coordinate is determined by their difference in Reputation. The type of weapon powerup a character is using combined with other specific events causes Reputation collectables, both positive and negative, to pop up, and collecting them either sends the player up (Positive Rep) or down (Negative Rep) in relation to the other controlled player.

The Goal: The player starts at a given Rep Level at the start of each stage, with a slight difference in Rep between the Bros. Most stages require you to simply fly to the end and defeat a boss, but the boss can be different based on the current Rep Level of the bros. If you are between 80 to 100 rep, for example, you might fight a boss different from the boss you fight at 20 to 50 rep. Other stages will set a specific bar of Rep that you have to fall within in order to progress, or it might set two or more that send you to different stages afterward, giving the game a path system of sorts.

Rep Strategy: Having the two active characters split apart from each other gives the player a wider range of attack against oncoming enemies. However, it also tightens the play field. If the players are too far apart, dodging certain obstacles will become difficult or impossible, and if the two players get a reputation that's too far apart from each other, the game is lost, because the distance apart prevents them from being Rep Bros. If the player has the correct difference in Rep for a given situation, the situation becomes passable, while the wrong difference in rep could make it difficult or impossible.

Weapons: The standard weapon each player starts with produces no noticable difference in the creation of Rep Powerups. Weapon powerups vary (standard, spread, homing, etc), and have either a Positive or Negative polarity. Positive attacks generate more Positive Rep, and Negative attacks generate more Negative Rep. However, there are some instances where the presence of Positive or Negative Rep cannot be changed by the attack used.

Rep Bros Combine!: When both Bros have the SAME reputation, they combine into one powered up form. Their attacks become stronger, but their attacks generate fewer Rep related powerups, preventing stage progression if you aren't careful. However, the Rep Powerups collected will propel the combined player upward or downward several points without seperating the two. Only an attack from an enemy will split the bros, and will do so by at least 4-6 points. Another disadvantage is that the combination form is a bigger target, and that if the environment becomes tight and a Rep powerup or a bullet collides with the player, they might be knocked into a fatal wall collision.

Boss Fights: Bosses will sometimes have gimmicks or weaknesses based on your current Rep Level difference between Bros. For example, imaging a boss with an impenetrable shield with two nodes rotating around him. In order to destroy the shield, the bros have to hit both nodes at once. In order to do so, they must be a certain difference in Rep Level. Once they destroy the shield, the CENTER of the boss becomes weak, so being closer to one another becomes more advantageous.

Characters: The starting set of two characters I'm going to have is going to be TomGuycott and Lexou because of the fact that we recently became Rep Bros, and it made me want to make a game about the silly, but fun concept of Rep Bros on the forums. If I DO make other characters, I'll have to decide whether to have them as premade sets, or whether there will be a free mode at least where two sets of characters could play together, whether or not they're really associated as actual Rep Bros. The problem is the Combination forms and whether to make a unique combo for every character pair, or whether there would be some sort of common base for them with a pasted on feature to represent the players combining.

Development: So far I've spent about 5 minutes in Multimedia Fusion seeing whether the concept is even feasible (it is, but I knew it would be from the start too). So far though this is the only visual available:



More to come very soon, but I found out that tomorrow I wouldn't have time to post much more about it, so I got impatient and posted tonight with very little to show so far except the concept.

[[robo9]]

The starting set of two characters I'm going to have is going to be TomGuycott and Lexou because of the fact that we recently became Rep Bros, and it made me want to make a game about the silly, but fun concept of Rep Bros on the forums.

Oh, thanks a lot :c

Just kidding, Im interested in seeing how you do this in MMF2

[TomGuycott]

Ffffffttt, I had no idea.

That's kinda the reason I want interchangeable characters, more than two people can be Rep Bros. xD

[Gors]

this sounds really interesting! But say, so does this mean you can't go up and down at will? This sounds kind of limiting, knowing that bullets will come out from everywhere. I was thinking on making both characters go up and down, and collecting reps would decrease/increase the space between the two. It's like flying in formation.

Still, the way I'm thinking won't allow you to use the 'multiple path' system you've designed, which is a shame because I also like it. I don't know if I got something wrong, but this is what I understood from your explanation (feel free to correct me if I am!)

What I also suggest for this kind of shoot-em-up is to give the player some 'breathing space', e.g. giving them a health bar or making them immune to walls (unless being crushed by them and/or touching a warmful object, such as spikes). Giving those elements will certainly balance out the dificulty, seeing that this shoot-em-up plays differently and you have to manage TWO aircrafts at the same time, which can prove confusing for starter players (a similar example I can think of is Cotton 2; you don't die if you touch the walls, and you only lose a life if your life bar is depleted. This doesn't make the game any easy, though, because those elements are tailored perfectly to the game imo).

I am interested in this project; sadly I am busy with my own :c I'll give you full support, though!

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finally, if you're still thinking how the levels will be, don't use Darius as inspiration. I have recently played through it, and the levels are as interesting as looping backgrounds with no obstacles whatsoever. Be creative, make traps and interesting visuals to keep the player not only entertained by dodging bullets; make it also feel like a 'tour', if you know what I mean

[Garamonde]

I don't have any rep. siblings.

[TomGuycott]

I didn't properly explain how the player moved, did I? xD

Basically the player can control the position and height of the two characters at the same time, but the rep difference keeps them spaced a specific distance apart. You can move forward, back, up and down, but if your top player touches a wall above him, he'll be stopped and the player below won't be able to move higher, granted unless he gets positive rep power.

I was thinking about giving a gameplay style that was more lenient due to the somewhat confusing nature of having two ships at once. A health bar and immunity to walls are the two main things I thought about. One thing I was considering was having a separate health bar, or maybe even separate lives for each character. That way you could be willing to sacrifice a life on a character who built more up to save the other, like a true Bro would.

[Gors]

I had an idea about multiple path system.

As you explained in the OP, the number of reps can change the path. But since I assumed you couldn't move up or down, you had to collect a lot of them to reach high passages. One way to overcome this limitation was to simply sum both of the characters' reps; dependig on the total, you can access different paths (for example, char 1 has 15 reps, char 2 has 12 reps - the sum equals 27, which takes them to a specific path). Higher rep paths are harder than lower rep paths, but they have more rewards.

[TomGuycott]

Yeah, that's basically the system I had in place. Basically there would be slight breaks in the stage where, depending on the sum of your rep levels, you'd be automatically shifted up to a higher or down to a lower path. So if you botch up a bit at the beginning of a level, you can attempt to fix things up before you get bumped down or up.