Stolen Valour: Design Doc

Design Specifications:

Overview：

ORBITT has always been sick of the way things are in their society, but has never had the gall to do something about it.  Until one day, they hatched a genius plan; stand up to the elites by using their own powers against them! ORBITT may not be strong enough to defeat the most powerful warrior in robot society, but with the powers of other warriors combined, perhaps they have a shot. In Stolen Valour, take control of ORBITT on their mission to defeat Trigord, an elite warrior robot, and stand up for the rights of smaller robots everywhere. If you can’t join em, beat em!

In spite of the violent concept, the tone of this game is very light-hearted and upbeat, with an intentionally outlandish plot and very cartoonish violence. Aesthetically, it’s very sci-fi, with characters being robot-like or alien-like, and environments being mechanical.

Core gameplay：

The core gameplay is similar to the Super Smash Bros. series, where the player is able to move, jump, and attack opponents on a 2D plane in a confined space. Certain mechanics also draw inspiration from action games like Devil May Cry; namely the Combo Meter, a meter that fills from good gameplay, and allows the player to perform powerful special attacks!. The tone of the boss fights  draws inspiration from a game like Monster Hunter, where your character uses their limited set of abilities to fight and defeat a much more powerful foe, in a fight of epic proportions.

After each fight, ORBITT will be able to add a part of the foe they just defeated to their body. This new part will add to their abilities in some way, such as unlocking new attacks or enhancing their movement.

ORBITT will have a basic grounded attack and a basic aerial attack, both of which can be used at no cost. As ORBITT defeats more foes, they will gain more powerful attacks, which can be used by consuming the combo meter. 

At the end, ORBITT will fight an enemy with access to all the abilities of the previous enemies at once. If ORBITT can defeat this enemy, the game will be completed. In order to vary repeat playthroughs, the fights that precede this ultimate enemy will be presented in a randomized order each playthrough.

Team Roles & Responsibilities

• Ethan Mattei
  • Roles: Music/SFX, Team Lead
  • Strengths: Sound design, Synthesis
• Keshav Sharma-Jaitly
  • Music/SFX
  • Strengths: Production / Sound Design, Turnaround Speed 
• Tarry Deng
  • Roles: Programming Lead
  • Strengths: industry experience in software engineering and 2+ years of unity experience 
• Rui Zhu
  • Roles: Programming, UI Design
  • Strengths:user interface design and user experience design
• Alex Nunes
  • Roles: Programming, Character Design
  • Strengths: Deep knowledge/experience of mechanics of fighting games. (High level Smash Bros. Player)
• Carmen
  • Roles: Art/Animation, Player Design
  • Strengths: 3D Modeling 
• Zora
  • Roles: Art/Animation, Boss Design
  • Strengths:Modeling and rigging

Gameplay & Mechanics:

Diagram of game arc:

• Player starts with no bosses defeated, and only the basic abilities.
• When bosses are defeated, the attributes of upcoming bosses change to become more difficult. This is the source of the difficulty curve throughout the game.
• If the player loses to a boss, they restart the game, but with a different boss rotation. Since the game is not very long, this is not an unreasonable penalty. The appeal of the game is the process of mastery the player must undergo to finally complete it! 
• Once all regular bosses are defeated, the next boss the player will fight will be the final boss. Defeating this boss completes the game.
• The final boss will be a challenge of all the skills that the player has learned throughout the game, and it will be noticeably harder than all the previous boss fights.

Game Mechanics

The core gameplay of Stolen Valor is boss fights, and as such these boss fights will be appropriately large, detailed, and difficult. They consist of multiple phases, with phase changes occurring at certain health benchmarks. These phase changes will introduce new attacks, and vary up previous attack patterns, so the player always needs to be on their toes!

The goal of the player is obviously to beat the boss, and in order for them to achieve that goal they are going to need to take the advantage of many game mechanics.

The first of the main game mechanics is the drops that the boss produces. By defeating a boss, the player can pick up a part of the boss and attach it to themself. By picking these parts up, players can gain new abilities, such as new special attacks, or new mobility options.

Players can also gain combo points by continuously hitting the boss in a short period of time and without getting hit by the boss. All the combo points will be stored in the point meter. Once the point meter reaches a certain level, players can use these points to activate the special abilities that they gain when picking up defeated boss parts.

Parry/Dodge can also help the player beat the boss. When the player hits the parry button during the boss’ attack window, the player will counter the attack and become invincible for a moment. During this brief moment the player's attacks fill the combo meter faster. Thus, a good player will be rewarded for going for risky parries. The Dodge mechanic is relatively simple;  when you press the direction and parry button you dash in that direction very fast in a short time. During this dash, the player is invincible.

The player has the ability to jump while in midair. However, they can only do this once before landing again, unless they acquire power ups that give them more midair jumps.

Controls:

Here is a layout of Stolen Valor’s control scheme on a standard controller, with an analog stick, four face buttons and two shoulder buttons.

ORBITT moves on a 2D plane, and as such the analog stick’s left and right inputs will move ORBITT left and right. ORBITT can move left and right while grounded, as well as control his drift left and right while airborne.

When the downward direction is held on the analog stick while ORBITT is airborne, ORBITT will fall faster than normal. 

The upward direction on the analog stick will allow the player to hover in the air for a small period of time while held, if the rocket powerup is unlocked. Otherwise, it has no use.

Special attacks 1, 2, and 3 will all be abilities that are unlocked when certain bosses are defeated. Before that condition is met, these buttons will do nothing. When the abilities are unlocked, and the player has enough of the Combo Meter filled, pressing one of these buttons will launch the special attack that is mapped to it. If the attack is unlocked but the player does not have enough Combo Meter, these buttons will do nothing.

The left shoulder button will be used for both dodging and parrying. Pressing this button without any directional input from the analog stick will initiate a parry. Pressing this button alongside directional input will initiate a dodge in that direction, granting a brief period of invincibility alongside a burst of movement in the inputted direction

The attack button will use the grounded attack while ORBITT is grounded, and the aerial attack while ORBITT is in the air. By the nature of their existence, the grounded attack will be more limited in use than the aerial attack. To balance this, the grounded attack will be able to deal more damage and fill the combo meter more than the aerial attack.

The jump button will be used to initiate both the grounded jump, and the aerial double jump.

Opening the menu has the additional feature of pausing the game, as well as allowing the player to adjust the settings of the game, and exit the game.

The directional pad and second analog stick have no use.

Character & Asset Designs: ORBITT

ORBITT is a shy robot that is used to not taking action, even when they’re passionate about a cause. Stolen Valour chronicles the moment they decide to take their fate into their own hands, and knock the elite Trigord down a few pegs. They fight for all of the smaller bots who are tired of being ruled over by the giant elite robots.

• Basic Attack: ORBITT has long arms that they slap their opponent with, and acquires new gadgets throughout the fight to add to their arsenal.
• Aerial Attack: ORBITT spins around in the air and flings their long arms around them, causing damage to anything that they hit. This attack hits all around ORBITT

• Fire: Adds lighter/mini flamethrower, allowing the player to shoot a small fireball forwards. This fireball is the least costly special attack, but also the weakest.

• Lightning: Adds antenna with the plasma ball on top. Player can summon lightning that auto-targets the boss, and deals big damage. However, this is the most costly special attack, requiring a lot of the combo meter

• Laser: Adds Laser cannon. Allows the player to shoot a laser out of the cannon using a special attack. This laser is stronger and faster than the fireball, but costs more of the combo meter.

• Rocket: Gives the player the ability to hover for a bit while airborne, if they hold up on the analog stick. Also enables a second aerial double jump.

Level (Boss) Designs: Trigord

Fight takes place on spaceship ADM Keane 6, where a society of sentient robots live. The colony is ruled by giant robots who have made their way to the top through combat, and they enforce a set of laws where all disputes are settled in a dedicated fighting arena. They uphold their rule by restricting access to more effective combat tools so that they may never be outmatched in the ring.

Trigord has many different weapons in his arsenal, all of which he uses in his attempt to defeat ORBITT. These phases will be randomized so that each battle with Trigord is a different experience where you navigate the strengths and weaknesses of certain weapons against others.

• Fire Phase: A lighter that throws fire on the ground, which the player needs to avoid. Spreads along the ground so that the player is forced to jump over it or take damage.
• Lightning phase: A plasma ball that allows the boss to summon lightning. Creates a warning above the player and shortly after fires the lightning bolt. The player will be hit if they don’t move left or right to avoid it.
• Laser Phase: A laser cannon that fires lasers at the player. This is a basic projectile that the player can avoid by dodging or jumping over it.

• Rocket Phase: A jetpack that allows the boss to fly, and fly into the player. Includes a ground pound style attack.
• Final Phase: Boss has access to abilities from all previous phases. This phase will be consistently at the very end, and is a functional mirror match where both the player and the boss have similar abilities and must win on skill alone.

Diagram of an example boss fight:

• This is a sample flow of the Laser Boss being fought as the first boss in a new playthrough
• The difficulty of these bosses scale based on how many bosses the player has defeated prior. Changes include reduced idle time between attacks, more damage on attacks, and more health.

Music and Sound Design:

• Music: 
  • Dance-y, happy hardcore/bubblegum bass inspired
  • Varied music for each phase of boss
  • Focus on digital sounds, emphasis on synthesis
• SFX:
  • 16-bit era fighting game inspired
  • Emphasis on keeping it recognizable, but with our own spin
  • Sharp impact sounds to enhance the feel of landing hits or being hit

Sample Music 1

Sample Music 2

Sample SFX 1

Sample SFX 2

Development Timeline