WEEK7: MOTHERSHIP

Game Aperçu & History

Chinese New Year this week so didn’t get a whole lot of time to work on gamemaker stuff.

This week I wanted to make a game where the player controlled a mothership, and could deploy smaller baby ships to toggle certain status effects. The idea was that each baby ship would have an internal and external effect – for example, if docked it would regenerate health, but if orbiting the mothership it would act as a shield.

Jouabilité Mechanics & Systems

The main issue with this game was that it was really content heavy. Each state essentially relied on a new mechanic (shields, health regen, etc). In order to make something compelling it would need alot of different enemies.

I managed to get a single enemy type (AA turret) that shoots when the ship is in range and a single baby ship that can be toggled internal / externally. When internal it will regen the ships health, but I tried a few external mechanics and they didnt really make any real difference to the game (i.e whats the point of increasing speed if all enemies are static, so to justify it would need enemeies that follow the player at high speed and so on).

Release & Industry Impact

I did have a situation where a baby ship was crashed within the range of an AA Turret which made me think there are some interesting situations that could come out of a game like this but just not within my super limited scope.