The Start of Project: Infinity Gun

Today I started working on a game idea that I had been playing around with in my head for a while. Its current working title is “Infinity Gun,” and it came about as a result of myself looking at all the restrictions I had and thinking about how I could still make a great game despite these restrictions. That meant that I needed to make a game that had:

• No AI – Since I did not have much experience with Artificial Intelligence, I decided that it would be best if entities in my game (such as enemies) did not use any form of complex AI. This is difficult, since AI is a staple of many video games. This resulted in me deciding that the enemies in my game would all follow a predetermined path in each level, one that the player would be able to see to help them avoid/attack the enemies.
• Limited Art – Since I am not the most experienced artist, I also decided that my game should not require any sort of realistic or high-quality art. Since I also only have a basic understanding of 3D Modeling, I decided that the game should stick to being 2D, since I figured that would help with programming as well.
• An Original Gimmick – While it might be easiest to start with a stereotypical 2D platformer or 3D FPS, I wanted to also flex my game design capabilities and come up with an original idea that could also work well with these other restrictions. I ended up thinking about what I could do with a game where the main character’s hands are stuck to a gun. This gun ended up evolving into a high-tech secret weapon that could evolve into a variety of firearms to help dispatch the enemies on each level.

So, this is the pitch that I came up with:

Infinity Gun is a puzzle game where the player plays as a secret agent that has gotten their hands stuck to a mad scientist’s secret weapon. The player must now fight their way out of the mad scientist’s lab using this secret weapon, and all of its quirks.

• Levels: The game is played through a series of levels, where the complexity and difficulty of the game ramps up as the player gets through each level.
• Perspective: The player sees each level from a top-down perspective, where each level is layed out on a grid. The player always has full view of the entire level, even when enemies are behind walls.
• Character & Movement: The player’s character is a token that takes up one square on the grid. The token always shows which way it is facing. The player can move their character in several directions: Pressing “A” will cause their character to slide west, pressing “D” will cause their character to slide east, pressing “W” will cause their character to slide north, and pressing “S” will cause their character to slide south. In addition, the player can press “Q” to make their character’s facing turn 90 degrees counterclockwise, and “E” to make their character’s facing turn 90 degrees clockwise.
• Turns: The game has a special turn-based format. The player’s turn ends the moment they move or turn their character, and the enemies move at the same time as the player character. This unique turn system is inspired by the turn system of the game “Rogue,” a famous dungeon-crawler video game from 1980.
• Pattern: Each level gave the player a specific pattern at the top of the screen which showed how the gun would shoot. Every turn, the marker on the pattern would move up one spot, and when it reached the end it would restart the pattern from the beginning. An example of a simple pattern would be “Blank, blank, shoot.” Where the gun would shoot every 3 turns. When the pattern’s marker reached the “shoot” spot, the player character would also shoot their gun after completing their movement. This gun shot would move forward from the direction the player character is facing, and if it hits an enemy, the enemy will be dispatched. The player would therefore have to move while understanding this pattern in order to dispatch the enemies effectively, and make sure that they avoid the enemies when they are not able to shoot the enemies.
• Enemies: the plans are to give the enemies several different flavors, but to begin with, the enemies will be basic tokens that are very similar to the player character; Each enemy will be a token that takes up one square on the grid, and the token always shows which way it is facing. However, the enemies will always have a pre-established movement pattern that the player will always be able to see. If the player character is ever in front of this enemy token, where the enemy is facing the player, the enemy will instantly shoot the player character and the player will have to restart.
• Win Condition: The player wins when they manage to shoot every enemy on a level.

Using this pitch, I decided to begin with creating a prototype to make sure that the game is actually any fun before beginning to develop it. The next stage will therefore be to create a paper prototype of the game!