Ali the Android

Distant-future sci-fi narrative horror roguelike/metroidvania fusion built around acquiring weapons which affect the environment in different ways.

Game Design

• Goal: Ship something small, like really small. Fuse metroidvania with roguelike.

• 10 floors in total

  • The first eight floors are four pairs of new-skill, master-skill
  • The ninth floor combines everything together
  • The tenth/final floor adds a final boss

• User experience goals:

  • Feels like an awesome, strategic UX. You die because you made a mistake.
  • At the same time, when you win, you feel really smart/powerful/innovative.

• The four skills for the four floors:

  • Charge attack (waits a turn, additional knockback and maybe splash)
  • Mini-missile (breaks breakable walls, explosion damage)
  • Electric (bounces to nearby enemies, can short-circuit/unlock doors)
  • Forcefield (damages in a circle around you and pushes enemies away)
  • Plasma rifle (3-4 shots on one target)

• Other traversal upgrades:

  • Teleport drone (shoot it 3-5 squares away to teleport there, hits walls though)
  • Anti-toxic suit upgrade for deep levels

• Backtracking is encouraged to get stuff

Content + Spoilers

THEMES

• Theme should fit the core gameplay. which is what?
• Descending. Exploring.
• Killing monsters that kill you.
• Finding and assimilating alien technology.

STORY

• The Khalifah sends you to a derelict space station in the middle of deep space
• This station was a research station. They were researching some sort of cure
• Communication went dark a couple of weeks ago. No messages.
• You arrive and find it busted up - debris (breakable walls), no power (locked doors), plasma drive leaks (plasma rooms)
• NB: first floor with plasma, AI voice in ear says "be careful Trace, I detect plasma waves."
• NB: once assimilated, voice should tell you "oh I can do X things now" eg. destroy debris or teleport gaps or whatever

DATA CUBES BELOW

• It's my first day at Umbrella Corporation. They're building a super-healing thing. Excitement - because Qur'an teaches us, to save one life is to save humanity
• There was an accident. Was it sabotaged? Somehow, the prototype leaked, and affected a couple of the crew.
• It's not a cure. It's a weapon. We told the Ameer, he KNEW from the start. Doesn't he know that he will be taken to account on the Day of Reckoning?
• The cure, the delivery mechanism is an air-borne virus. It's in the vents. It's everywhere.
• I'm infected too, I can feel my senses sharpening, my brain slowing down, what am I turning into ... ?!
• The guards - they turned into Zugs. They blew out the engine ... (plasma wave warning)
• The Ameer holed himself up on the last floor. He may still be there ...
• I am the last one left. The Ameer is the worst mutant of all. He got infected, he self-generates ... [shahadah]

ENDING

• You find a last vial of the cure. Khalifah says: destroy it, it's too dangerous to risk! You say: ...

TBD

Defer

• Other upgrades (not needed for v1.0): health, damage, drone range, toxic suit damage blocked, missile explosion size, electric range/num-bounces/%-bounce, forcefield, forcefield range, plasma number of shots
• Ameer Saad was working with someone named Noya. He sent him a lot of messages. AND, one of the earlier prototypes of the "cure."
• Khalifah sent you because you're a prototype (disposable) and they can't send humans ya3ne, too risky. Suspected biological warfare.