MainFrame Devlog: May 31 2015

Over the past few months I've been working on a lot of things. One of those things is a game I''m currently calling MainFrame. That is subject to change but it works for now.

The Game takes place inside a computer. The player awakens inside this computer and doesn't really know what's going on but they know they are in immediate danger and must learn quickly to defend their selves. They are tasked with bringing down an evil corporation to prevent them from fulfilling their evil agenda. Clearly I haven't fleshed out that whole thing yet but I'll work it out. It's a twin stick shmup inspired by the likes of Tomb Raider: Temple Of Osiris, Contra 3, Smash TV, Luftrausers and Ikaruga among others.

A concept for a level where the player ends up in an error ridden part of the computer

I'm trying to be realistic with my scope and what I know I can do. The player is a bipedal character while the enemies are floating entities similar to robots so I can cut down on the animation required to support all the different types and really focus on their behavior. This works really well. I recently got help from Janice Chu doing concepts for the game. This has taken the ideas to the next level. She's been able to help design new and cooler ideas for the games world and really start to flesh out how these characters will move around what the environments will look like.

Another cool thing is the weapon polarity mechanic I was inspired by in Ikaruga. In this game the player will eventually encounter enemies that have a positive or negative charge. The player will also be able to swap the charge of their weapon. If the player shoots an enemy with a positive charge and their weapon is set to positive then they won't hit the enemy. So they'll have to swap their weapon to the opposite charge to kill the enemy. I'm currently signaling this to the player by a color. Purple is negative and orange is positive.

I'll be trying to keep the updates coming regularly. In the meantime here are some things going on right now to have a look at. The video also shows the weapon polarity mechanic in action.