GAME 4000 Proj 6

Game Description:

• Kill enemies and protect your Braziers
• Fire spell is effective against ice enemies, but ineffective on fire enemies
• Ice spell is effective against fire enemies, but ineffective on ice enemies
• Neutral spell is mediocre at both.
• Switch spells by shooting into the corresponding spell's brazier

Controls:

• WASD to move
• Space to shoot
• Mouse to aim

Design Documentation:

• Progression Mechanic Name: Upgrade Weapon Mechanic
• Description of mechanic and its progression: The more you upgrade your weapons, the more powerful they become, and the more expensive it is to purchase the subsequent upgrade. 
• Implementation description:  Vampire Survivors style game, ice/fire enemies spawn and go to attack the center. You kill them with fire/ice/neutral abilities. Killing enemies gives you points. Use points to upgrade damage. Each subsequent damage increase costs more coins. Swap spells by “Shooting” the brazier. Brazier and player has shared health bar, if health = 0 game over.
• Description of how your pattern(s) relate to the prototype. (Include a link the to pattern) 
  • 1.Careful! Don’t waste it!
  • Description: To make the game more balanced and allow players to use powerful weapons carefully, the developers could raise the cost of using these weapons to force players to use them only when necessary. https://patternlanguageforgamedesign.com/PatternLibraryApp/PatternLibrary/2454 
  • 2.
  • Description: It can be fun to add in "conditionally overpowered" weapons or abilities (e.g. Smite enchantment in Minecraft), but in order to make sure it stays balanced, the developer needs to be concerned with three perspectives - the ability to swap, the cost of obtaining, and the strength (including the use cost). The developer should control at least one perspective. For example, it would be balanced in Minecraft that the player can easily swap between weapons targeting different types of enemies, with low cost on use; but these enchantments are hard to obtain.
  •   https://patternlanguageforgamedesign.com/PatternLibraryApp/PatternLibrary/2415 

Our first (1) pattern is implemented through our progression upgrade system where the designer forces the player to only upgrade the weapon when necessary since it costs a lot of money… it adds more weight to the decision and properly scales for power vs price. We don’t want the player to be able to constantly upgrade their weapon on a whim, it has to progressively get more difficult per the power return you’re getting out of it. The second (2) pattern is implemented since we enforced a drawback in swapping spells: swapping requires you to shoot your weapon into the brazier which wastes a shot and wastes time… this makes the conditionally overpowered weapon balanced since you cannot easily swap whenever you want since there is a time and opportunity cost.