Mad Max prototype

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For those who follow me on twitter, you’ve already seen the stuff I’ve been prototyping with the many GIF’s I’ve been spamming. It was a new prototype I started after my metroidvania level generator was done and all the graphics and idea’s I threw at it simply didn’t work out!

I think that as a game-developer I reached that point where I need to try new stuff with every game to keep it interesting to work on. The metroidvania stuff was cool, but once the levels got generated it was basically another platform game and I had no interesting idea’s for it.

Mad max

The new prototype started with just the idea of a Mad Max style world, with you being able to run around, get in cars, shoot stuff, and that was about it.

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I grabbed the cool artwork I did for the “Tiny punchers” beat-em-up prototype I did some months ago, drew a few cars, and started working on things I never did before.  With the mad-max setting I also try to create a more “dirty” and gritty game. I plan to add less polish to all the game things, have the graphics a bit simple, the physics very raw, and more of that “Indie game” vibe than I usually have in my games due to the polish I add on top.

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The road so far

So far I’ve been mostly dropping in all the idea’s I had without really having a clear goal on what the gameplay will be. So there are cars you can get in and out (old-school GTA style) there are multiple weapons (rockets, flamethrowers, boomerang, shotgun, etc).  You can even do a beat-em-up style attack punching and kicking enemies around.  Big explosions throw enemies around the screen with simple physics and much pixelated-gore.

There’s a big sand-worm implemented you can attack with rockets, there is a day/night cycle added, and I’m adding the first few buildings with avatars to the mix. These buildings will be side-on “platformer” levels to mix things up even more.

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The road ahead

So.. yeah, I’ve been busy! For now this is still named a “prototype” because of two reasons: I have no clear gameplay goal, and there simply is no title yet.

With the gameplay I do have more idea’s flowing, some key ideas that might or might not get added are:

  • main goal: survive as long as possibles (counted in game-days)
  • sub goal: collect items for your inventory. From food, water, fuel, to bullets, or “quest” type items for trading
  • a big sandbox/open-world environment, partly procedurally generated.

You’ll need the food and fuel to stay alive, and you’ll be able to trade items you find in the platform levels with avatars in various parts of the game world for food or ammo.

As for game titles, the list of options is growing. Right now my main one is “Six years later” but we’ll see!

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