Risa's Blog

This is the part where I finally info-dump about some of the game ideas I’ve been wanting to bring to fruition. First off, a smaller game I thought up about two years ago:

One day, in an otherworldly future, after a century of bloodless war…
The sun’s rage will unite those who remain under a single cause: survival.
With the threat of extinction casting its light upon the Earth, humanity begins it’s inevitable conquest of the stars.
The people of Earth had known nothing but cowardice their entire lives.
Forgotten generations had created a robot that could build upon itself and grow ever stronger, maintaining itself with whatever
resources were available. They were quickly weaponized, turning a simple scouting robot into a one-man army.
They were feared the world over, and the survivors lived in obscurity, living in the shadow of their engineered regrets.
The technological marvels that had been repurposed for war would finally serve their intended purpose:
To venture where humans could never dare to go, record and adapt to the unknown, and ultimately
return home with the most valuable artifacts they could find. They were designed to be independent, resilient, and loyal to the very end.
This particular unit has been searching for a human-habitable planet to search for some time now…
At last, a match is made. The pod speeds off towards the unknown.
…perhaps a little too hastily!
This war-torn piece of tech shows it’s damage as its human pilot fails to disengage the warp drive in time.
The scouting pod crashes into the planet’s surface, drilling deep into the catacombs below.
In order to complete it’s mission, the scout must make it’s way back to the surface, and report back to earth.

If you can’t tell, I wrote a short script, and tried to draw out an opening cut-scene, so that I could explain the story, and explain the core focus of the game.

Mission: Magi-tech is a game where you play as the Terrain Investigation & Long Distance Exploration droid, or T.I.L.D.E. The name is a nod to Cave Story, with it’s similarly named robot characters.

You were launched far into space in search of technologies that could help save the earth before it’s destruction at the hands of the sun. However, you were sent through space at so high a speed, you were buried in the planet’s crust on impact. Your goal is to make your way to the surface and re-establish contact with the earth, but your programming prohibits you from going any further until you’ve explored and documented every artifact in your vicinity.

The game is a top-down dungeon crawler, stylized to be like older DOS/PC games. You explore the dungeon via the View-port, clearing out the map, and collecting every item on a floor. Once you collect them all, and discover the path to the next level, you may leave. TILDE can hold 9 items at a time, and fuse them to create new ones. Some can be used to upgrade yourself, either offensively or defensively, but the majority can be used as-is for puzzle solving and combat.

Enemies roam the current level with various behavior patterns. If you encounter one, you’ll be faced with RPG combat. You must perform the action command correctly in order to both strike enemies, and dodge damage. The complexity of the command will rise with the strength of the attack. If you take too long to end an encounter, other enemies will join the fight. You’re not human, so killing them doesn’t make you stronger. You should avoid battle, and try to get to the next level without being attacked, or you may take lasting damage.

If you get hurt, need to save, or otherwise recharge, you can take a break in areas where the sun shines through the caves. Monsters will never enter the light, so you can wait them out there.

If I did make the game, it would probably be 4-5 Worlds, with 3 Levels each.

• The first world would be a dark lava cave, with obvious pitfalls, and few creatures due to the environment.
• Second, a network of silent catacombs, giving insight to the planet’s residents via the undead.
  Third, an ancient temple of knowledge, where the magic of this world lies dormant, for now.
• Fourth, a network of crystalline caves, where magic in it’s most primal form runs wild.
• Finally, an abandoned city carved out of rock, reclaimed by nature, and defended by a guardian meant to keep everyone safe from the surface world… as well as keeping them in.

These pictures are a little old, and are all I made for it. I may try to draw up some “screenshots” that are more complete and better represent what I imagine, if there is interest. I’m not a programmer, so I can’t bring this to life, but I’d like to fully develop the concept so that if I ever manage to learn, I know exactly what I want to make from the start. Is it backwards to do it that way? Either way, there is a story I want to tell with this, so maybe I’ll work on this some more.
…And make some actual character designs for once