Hi all, reading through the thread I had a few ideas.
1) I like how the character in Superku’s demo turned into a ball. I think it would be nice to expand this to abilities to bounce etc.

2) We need to come to some decisions about main character design along this line. Maybe just a being ball?


3) Maybe we could use small hourglass or egg timers as a combination of magnetic switch time limit thing, where the sand runs out so does the time.

You could let the player at least in some levels switch back and forth as they wanted with the restriction of the sands of time.

4) If this is all in 2d you could let the player break out into 3d once in while to retrieve something so to expand the game universe and add some comedy.

5) A retro space look, something more current than steam punk might be a nice look for such a game. Like captain Niemo’s ship from The League of ordinary Gentleman. Saw some cool looking ray guns the other day on the net with a similar look, of smooth white Ivory and Silver.

6) You could easily add mini games within certain levels to break up the action so its not to monotonous.


Just my thoughts I hope they help and make some sense.


Guardian

I was thinking that the main character could be a cute robot that is attracted (or not) by magnets placed on the floor, ceiling, etc.

Maybe player could also have some sort of mind powers when it comes to enemies. Something like: your on the cliff & a huge sneak is on the other side so you use your powers to force her to make a bridge by using her body. Or a huge Mammoth is opposite to a big pile of rocks so you use your illusion trick to make yourself seem big & scary so the mammoth would run away in the direction of the rocks and clear them off your path...

Btw: I always loved Angelas World & the idea of a little girl as a main character is great. ...and if she's in a dream environment that would gives us some space for more crazy things like: she can create guardians by imagining them, or change the enemies by transforming them into simple objects for a short time period...

I think robot would also be good. He could have non-fixed parts so if he needs, let's say, his hands to be in two different places at once he could just pull them off and send one to one switch and the other to the other switch. ...or be modular and change his body structure if he needs to go through small tunnel...

Remember that the Superku videos on youtube are videos of my own sidescroller not of our team project.

I have an idea:

The player is a divinity that is worshiped in one period of time but persecuted in the other age for something that he seems to have done. This explains why the level is deformed and destroyed in the second time period. He can talk, trade and buy things from people but their descendants haunt him in his "dark ages", so he has to find a way to undo this crisis.
When he travels through time, at first via portals, some levels later with an amulet (or some other item/ hourglass/ ...), it will take some time to recharge his device (f.i. 2 minutes, an hourglass seems to fit nicely when I think about it) and in this time period the player has to flee from his persecutors.
If you have ever played Metroid Fusion, you know how exciting this can be (escape from SA-X, "Someone should remake the game to be playable for xbox360/ps3/wii . Cause this game is the true definion of a horror game.").

I would say we limit the gravity change ability to 180° degree turns. Now we can add 90° curves in some corners that the player can walk on, the gravity adapts to his orientation. Hard to explain, have a look at my protoype video, there is a curve at the top right at the beginning.

EDIT: The bad people could invent a new god/ creature that is supposed to protect them and to hunt the player when the game progesses (only in the future).

Hm.
Tried out some ideas:

Small girl+boy in a dream/nightmare world, trying to get home:


Robot:
1. standing
2. when changing gravity, the driving-section turns about the robot...
3. so it can then always face the floor the robot stands on.
George's Idea with the "attach to metal", or "magnetifying objects" might work. Maybe we could not "change gravity" as such, but "change which object now attracts the player and all movable magnetic things". Of course, only metal objects could be magnetified...


I have no idea what a "divinity" looks like, but story-wise, that's definitely the best idea so far.
Present:

And Future:

I like the two player idea with this brother sister theme. Maybe one is alive and the other one is dead which could explain why both kids see different styles of the same world.

The style could be a mix of addams family and beetle juice. A cute goth girl and her brother living trying to solve complex time and gravity based puzzles.
A great example for time based puzzles is "day of the tentacle". I love this game and its style

Maybe we need some sketches (drawings not prototypes) to catch the possible spirit of the game and decide which way to go. [Edit]Oops, you posted you screenies while I was typing this

It is hard not put tons of new ideas on top of the gravity/time feature and we should think about levels, its single feature (feature introduction), and the upcoming levels with combined features from previous levels,...

what do we need?
- a description of what the game is
AND (this might be even more important)
- a description of what the game IS NOT

Hello everybody,

this is my first post on this forum and I would like to congratulate Superku and say that I am really pleased to be working in the same team with all of you. I am assigned for the sound

I'm glad to see there is already lots of good ideas for the story and gameplay so I would like to know what do you think about the music for this game.
I'm very fond of music theme George used in his prototype and I think that this kind of tune would be perfect for dream/nightmare world that Germanunkol was suggesting, or Slacer's sister/brother being alive/dead idea.
But if we don't go in that direction maybe some catchy, techno tunes would be nice.

Welcome!


I like that style but I think that we should not copy the (unique) style of another game.

Germanunkol@
Great images I think the robot pix is the best.

...and here are few I made. Nothing too serious- just having fun with dark divinity for two hours

slacer, "Maybe one is alive and the other one is dead which could explain why both kids see different styles of the same world."
I like that idea as well. But as for "seeing" different styles of the same world, I think everything they both see should be always visible, as we already have switching from one age to another. So if switching between characters would also change the look of the arena, that'd be 4 different views of the same level, which is too much. Instead, we could say that that each of them can only be hurt by objects they see ( = imagine), which would be in one color: all redish monsters hurt the boy, all black monsters hurt both boy and girl.

Superku: What game do you mean? Angelas World? The only thing we'd be "stealing" (and I wouldn't call it that because we can always talk to kihaku) is the idea of using a small girl. And I think we can always make her look very different: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZBt9SC2JE&feature=channel

Or do you mean stealing limbo's style? I don't think it'd be too hard to come up with a cool light-vs-shadow style without copying limbo...

Dimme, great to hear you'll be making musik! As you see, we're still debating ideas and the sound will of course depend on them very much...

Ganderoleg, I like your style of the divinity. the red dress is nice, and the staff's cool. I think it would be cool if he only walks upright and looks strong like that in the present, and in the future he has a gollum-like look, meaning his cloths are torn, his staff's broken and his back is bent... Of course, he still has to be recognizable as the same guy.

So, George... how will we decide on a style/story? Another poll?
And when?
I like all three (I think it's three atm) styles right now. I think a robot is much easier to programm but also much harder to get "character" into (wall-E did that very well, but in a game? how will we make the player identify with the robot and "like" the robot?). As I don't have to program the player behaviour, I vote for brother+sister or divinity