THEME

The Taking of the SS Amusement takes place on an enormous start ship cruise liner, that has themed decks that evoke ideas of different periods of history, mythologies, or other theme park tropes. The ship has been hijacked by a disgruntled ex-employee of the cruise line and he has taken control of all the robots that litter the ship; turning them on the cruise visitors and staff. It is the goal of the player to trudge through the many layers of the ship, battling any turned robots they find along the way, until they reach the bowl of the ship where they fight to regain control of the ship and its robots. 

The game contains an initial level that explores theme of a buffet or restaurant area that is prevalent in these kinds of cruise ships, and a second smaller boss level that is cold metal and meant to evoke the feelings of the service areas or innards of the ship that a cruise passenger wouldn't normally be exposed to. 

The games theme ensures that it is almost infinity expandable. Any theme that can be imagined in the context of an amusement park can fit into the aesthetic of the game. Which is why we developed the game with that level of expandability in mind.

MECHANICS

The Taking of the SS Amusement is a rouge-like game that is intended to give the player a difficult challenge and require multiple playthroughs to beat. The game mechanics draw heavily from other rouge-likes. Specifically, Rouge Legacy was a large inspiration and it contains a map generator we were trying to closely emulate. 

The combat follows closely to other side-scrolling rouge-likes. The player needs to actively dodge and weave in order to be effective. Special care was taken to ensure there is adequate warning to let the player know when they need to move while still making the dodging skill-testing. The player is constrained to only moving and attacking with a melee strike. However, the enemies have much more varied means of attack. Some can charge, some can swipe, some hurl projectiles, and the two bosses have many means of attack.

There are also Items that are scattered around the ship waiting to be found. They are chips the player can install onto their space suit in order to aide them in their combat. The items were one place where we were going to give the player large amounts of variety to each playthrough. As it stands now, the items do add a layer of variety but they do not alter the optimal strategy meaningfully.

DESIGN GOALS

Some aspects of the game were designed to be simpler to implement in order to ensure we would be able to deliver a complete experience by our deadline. As such our initial goal when designing the game was create a minimum viable product that exemplifies a rogue-like game with this particular theme. Our goal for this minimum product was to create a procedurally-generated first level for the game with a few enemy types and a simple one button combat system. 

We ended up ahead of our schedule and had reached our goal with two weeks left to spare. We used this extra time to develop a second level that consisted of only a boss fight with the antagonist, however this fight was designed to more much more complex, interesting and skill testing as any other. It also required the creation of much more art assets than any other element of the game. We also used this extra time to develop an item system to instill more variance in a playthrough of the game. After finishing these two tasks we still had some time to spare, which we used to polish the game a bit more by adding more decorations and visual candy to the levels and further developing the user interface. 

FUTURE GOALS

The main goal for future development of the game is to flesh out some of the aspects of the game that were left more simple. Combat, for instance, would benefit from the addition of more attack and movement options for the player. Giving the player more options to navigate a fight gives the player more skill-testing rewarding moments.

Another area that would benefit from more complexity is the item system. Most items currently are pure stat bonuses, however creating items that create more substantial differences in gameplay would create more variety. Items would also ideally create learning moments for players as they explore the uses and benefits of the items. The creation of new items is very well supported by the current infrastructure of the game. If new behaviors are necessary to create a new item, it is simple to extend the functionality of the base item to define that behavior. Then any number of items can be created from that definition.

The creation of new levels and themes is another goal that can be easily realized utilizing the current infrastructure. Creating new levels requires only development of new art assets for the new theme, designing room templates using those art assets, and creating a new instance of the map generator with that references those new assets.