Game Idea 2: Satellite Defender
What is satellite defender?
In this game you play as a Houston operator (NASA) whose job it is to track your satellites for incoming threats, throughout this tower defence type game the player will be shown a model of the earth as well as the satellites they have in orbit and during that time different strikes will be taken by enemy country's in attempts to destroy your satellites.
The player must use the custom controller to turn the aimer towards the trajetery of the missile in order to destroy the missile in time
If the player successfully stops a missile they gain coins and every 100 coins a player can make another satellite which increasing the amount of coins you gain from destroying missile but also makes the game harder because as the waves of enemy missile increase so will your number of satellites making it harder for you to defend.
If a satellite is lost the screen will go to static for a few seconds causing the player to not be able to take action against other missile as a kind of connection loss.
Custom controller sketches and ideas
This is the design for the custom controller this game would use.
The idea is that the player can rotate the globe in relation with what they see on screen in game using the aimer to line up to where the missile is in game and then pressing the red button in order to shoot a missile to that location in game.
The globe will need some gyroscopic capabilities in order to make this work however
The Lenses Of Essential Experience
What experience do I want my player to have? – stressful I want the player to start the game feeling in control of the incoming attacks but then as the game goes on and on and the more waves of missiles come in I want the player to feel like they are out of control
What is essential to that experience? – increasing game difficulty for example if one wave is one missile the next would be two misses and so on
How can my game capture that essence? – I feel the game can capture this stress induced essential experience by using things such as sound and colour in order to add further pressure onto the player like by having a red blinking light on screen that gets faster the closer the missile gets to a satellite and sound that just goes “DANGER!” over and over
Schell, J. (2018). Art Of Game Design. (page 22).
The lens of essential experience has made me realise that the experience I want my player to feel is stress so I want them to feel overwhelmed with the task of defending the satellites, so I had a dig through the Art of game design book by Schell, J and found the "Lens of Competition" and thought that this linked to the stress experience of this game idea because of the competition of competing locally with friends for the highest score.
The lens of Competition
Does my game give a fair measure of player skill? – not too sure I feel a players skill could be determined by how many waves of missiles they get through so I think if the missles stayed at the same speed and more just appeared it would work as if the missiles are too fast the players skill may not be fairly matched
Do people want to win? – I believe they would as looking at other tower defense or wave based games like plants vs zombies or call of duty: zombies players play to get to the highest number of waves and get a higher score than other players making a competition between the audience
Can novices have meaniful play? – I believe so due to the implementation of the custom controller all players regardless if they have played wave based games before or not will have a new experience making everyone have the same experience
Custom Controller Prototype
The video on the left was a quick prototype I made using a tissue box and a large Christmas bauble for the custom controller and I know this may seem odd however I made this video to explain how I envision the custom controller to work.
The box is meant to represent the base of the controller as seen in my concept art further up on this page and the bauble is meant to represent the globe part of the controller.
In this prototype I am taking on the role of the player who is rotating the globe with gyroscopic movement capabilities to allow a full 360 degree rotation of the globe until they (me) find a missile that us inbound on a satellite of there's that they are seeing on the gameplay screen (visible in the second concept art image above) and they then press the launch button on the base of the controller to launch their counter missile.