New Project, Day 1

Today is the start of what will be our second game project named Project Blade, a first person Rouge-like slasher for the Playstation 4.
It will feature a modular system to randomly place pre-made rooms in a grid pattern as well as upgrades that stack with themselves which augment the player in various ways.
Our team consists of five designers, three programmers and ten artists, making this team twice as big as the one we had for our first project. A few of the artists are ones I worked with in the last project, but apart from them the team is brand new for me.

Us designers have sat down and began to more thoroughly discuss the features we want and how exactly everything will work in the game. We have the design philosophy that the player should feel like a badass when killing enemies as well as always pushing forward through the opposition. This means that the player should never be incentivized to retreat but rather to always want to go on the offensive.
With these in mind, we’ve made a system to make the player want to clear each floor by giving them more options for upgrades at the end of the level. This to make sure the player doesn’t grow too powerful by getting an additional upgrade but still incentivizing to kill every enemy to more easily get the upgrades they want.

The artists have begun constructing an artguide to help them unify in a single style and work from that later on. The style they’re going for is very cyberpunk with plenty of neon colors mixed with japanese elements such as tattoos and old japanese weaponry. They will also be doing a lot of research about how things should look and what elements they can bring to the game.

Programmers have begun working on the core features of the game, such as the room randomizer, enemy AI and player functions. The room randomizer will essentially place pre-made rooms on a grid, connecting the entrance and exit of the level.

Though most of these first weeks will only be pre-production for us designers and artists, both giving the programmers more time to fix the essentials as well as allow us to have a clear view of where we want to take the project.